Martha C. Nussbaum Interviewed on Fear, Protest, and Donald Trump

Q&A: Martha Nussbaum on Fear, Protest, and Donald Trump

Chicago magazine caught up with the philosopher by phone to discuss her work and her thoughts on how to keep fear from wreaking havoc upon our politics. The highlights from the conversation, below:

What do you hope people get out of the book?

I hope that they get out of it a kind of habit of looking within and thinking about how the personal and the political are so closely interwoven—always. In general, I agree with Socrates that what democracies badly need is the examined life, and we need to think critically about ourselves. But Socrates didn’t think critically about the emotions. And I think we have to do that too, and very powerfully so at this particular time.

So thinking about: Why are we doing what we’re doing? What are the motives that prompt us? And are these really things we want to stand for in our lives? What are the alternatives—what are other ways of conducting politics? I talk a lot about Martin Luther King Jr. in the book, because I think he understood this point—that you have to get a productive political movement. You have to address anger, fear, and then to think about what the alternatives are: hope, faith, a certain kind of brotherly love. And then you have to set yourself to cultivate those. And otherwise you’re just going to be talking on the surface.

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