Skip to content
ContemporaryIntermediateBook

Cultivating Humanity

Martha Nussbaum

Liberal education / cosmopolitanism

It is a leading contemporary case linking the humanities to cosmopolitan democratic citizenship.

Synopsis

A defense of liberal education that develops critical self-examination, world citizenship, and the narrative imagination needed for a pluralistic democracy.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

A good education cultivates three capacities: critical scrutiny of oneself, a sense of belonging to humanity beyond one's group, and the imagination to enter others' lives.

It defends humanistic, multicultural education as essential civic preparation rather than ideological fashion.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with Roger Scruton, How to Be a Conservative.

Reading note

Read it as a reasoned defense of the liberal arts, noting how it answers critics of multicultural curricula.

Best paired with

Roger Scruton, How to Be a Conservative

Find this book

More by Martha Nussbaum