Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (The Public Square) |  | Author: Martha C. Nussbaum
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
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Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 3,775
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 178
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Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 0691140642
Dewey Decimal Number: 370.115
EAN: 9780691140643
ASIN: 0691140642
Publication Date: May 2, 2010
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Product Description
In this short and powerful book, celebrated philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes a passionate case for the importance of the liberal arts at all levels of education. Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have rightly been seen as essential for creating competent democratic citizens. But recently, Nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry both in the United States and abroad. Anxiously focused on national economic growth, we increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable and empathetic citizens. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world. In response to this dire situation, Nussbaum argues that we must resist efforts to reduce education to a tool of the gross national product. Rather, we must work to reconnect education to the humanities in order to give students the capacity to be true democratic citizens of their countries and the world. Drawing on the stories of troubling--and hopeful--educational developments from around the world, Nussbaum offers a manifesto that should be a rallying cry for anyone who cares about the deepest purposes of education.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
 A thoughtful and important book. June 27, 2010
Book Junkie
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
In this book the author reminds us that a successful democracy requires citizens who can engage in reasoned argument and who have the ability to see issues from multiple points of view. Liberal education fosters both abilities, and therefore is essential to democracy. So runs Nussbaum's straightforward argument in this educational manifesto. Nussbaum also points out that liberal education is under threat in the few countries where it has been established at all, an observation that is confirmed by recent events taking place at British universities (the attempt to make philosophy professors redundant at Kings College and the closing of the philosophy department at Middlesex). Overall this is good piece of writing, combining passionate enthusiasm with calm arguments and informative examples. Not for Profit reminds us all that the deeper purposes of liberal education go well beyond personal advancement or national competitiveness. A thoughtful and important book.
The problem of scientism May 15, 2010
John C. Landon (New York City)
16 out of 27 found this review helpful
At a time when the domination of scientism reigns unchecked this discourse on the imbalance in much current education is both timely and important. Especially in the current debates over religion, evolution, and the issues of secularism, an observer becomes suspicious that scientifically trained authors are concealing a kind of rank ignorance of cultural history, philosophy, literature, and anything not included in a standard science track. Nothing else can explain the 'smart' stupidity in the cult of scientism now in high tide. Nussbaum's book is therefore important reading for those considering the condition of contemporary education. The slant of the book is on the economic aspects of education, and this is also of utmost importance. The dollar value of specialized, usually scientific, education has created an insufferable arrogance and complacency in the technical cadres, and the result is a kind of 'half an animal' romping through all forms of social discourse.
The remedy is unclear, and requires something more than a sprinkling of humanities courses. The entire history of cultural duality, viz. the geisteswischenshaften/naturwissenschaften streams, since the Enlightenment and Romantic movement suggest the need for an extra-scientific domain of discourses that can challenge, transcend and outsmart the current floodtide of scientific overspecialization.
That requires also a new and more basic kind of humanities.
 A Lot of Good Ideas from Nussbaum Here July 3, 2010
Gregory Murray (Pittsburgh, PA USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I started this little book about a month ago and just got around to reading the last chapter of it last week. It was pretty good, I would say. Nussbaum describes it as a manifesto, and this is most certainly a correct characterization. Generally, she argues that the humanities and liberal arts education are vital to democracy because they help to cultivate informed, empathetic, and critical world citizens: the sort of people necessary to sustain democratic societies. She criticizes the growth-oriented model of education in which the natural sciences and engineering (among other disciplines) are promoted at the expense of history and literature and philosophy; the former set increases GNP whereas the latter only contributes to the full realization of its students' humanity, which does not directly increase GNP. Nussbaum's own values are evident in her arguments, but this is no criticism, as (1) that her book is a manifesto does not compel her to conceal her values and (2) I agree with much of what she says. I am skeptical that her arguments will have much impact in places where liberal arts education is not already the norm, and I only hope that they will help to sustain it in places where it is. After all, the growth-oriented model is steamrolling ahead.
 Learned, but not sufficiently persuasive August 24, 2010
Jay C. Smith (Portland, OR USA)
I share the disappointment of certain other reviewers with this book. While Martha Nussbaum's position here -- a defense of the value of a humanities education -- will appeal to many (me included), based on her eminence and her admirable previous work one would expect her case to be better argued than it is.
Nussbaum stresses how the humanities strengthen democratic citizenship by fostering critical thinking, encouraging us to transcend mere local loyalties, and exercising our ability to imagine sympathetically the predicaments of others.
One troubling deficiency is that she gives us primarily just opinions, little significant empirical evidence, that the humanities indeed do these things. Nor does she even consider that there might be other means to achieve the same ends, either through formal education (doesn't science require critical thinking, for instance?) or otherwise (how about transacting business as a means of broadening understanding of others, for example?).
Further, as it turns out, it is not just the humanities per se that she is advocating. A good part of her argument revolves around the merits of Socratic inquiry, including for young children. She also promotes the value of play and cooperative activity. Her educational formula is a concoction of the ideas of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Alcott, Mann, Froebel, Dewey, Winnicott, and Tagore.
She touches lightly and uncritically on the programs of each of these men, giving somewhat more attention to Tagore. Her knowledge of him and of education in India are areas where I gained some value from this book, as I suspect may be true for many other American readers.
Nussbaum believes that liberal arts education has been better rooted in America than in Europe or India, where a single-subject emphasis has been the norm. Yet she does not tell us whether she thinks that democratic practice is relatively stronger in the U.S. than in those other nations as a consequence (the conclusion that would seem to follow from her premises, unless there are other unmentioned factors that outweigh educational content, which there may well be).
Her chief concern is that the arts and humanities apparently now face cuts all over the world, including the U.S., in favor of technical programs aimed at economic growth. She does not say just how this trend might be reversed, but even those who share her views may be skeptical that books like Not for Profit will do much to sway policy-makers.
 Disappointing July 21, 2010
J. Marlin (Bridgewater, N.J. USA)
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
I was very much looking forward to this book as I have enjoyed and learned from Martha Nussbaum's writing in the past. Moreover, I strongly believe in the general thrust of this book -- that the humanities are being undervalued as our colleges and public schools become more and more career oriented. I teach humanities (English and Philosophy) myself, so I was predisposed to her thesis before I even picked it up.
But I found the argument to be mediocre at best; in fact, the whole book read like it was a journal article that had been stretched, padded, and embellished to meet the minimal page count to be credibly marketed as a book. There's also something of a dashed-off quality to the prose, lots of repetition from chapter to chapter along with loose sentences, incomplete thoughts, vagueness, and other signs of haste.
The book makes a decent case for critical thinking, but seems to lack that quality itself -- it unhesitatingly endorses the educational thinking of Rousseau, Dewey, and Tragore without critically engaging their thought or methods. Nussbaum argues that we need critical thinking in order to challenge traditions without seeming to be aware that she is simply making claims based on authorities that form a tradition, and, indeed, lots of educators and philosophers challenge these approaches. And she nowhere critically engages the possibility that some traditions might be valuable.
I am reminded that Mark Edmundson cogently observed that what passes for critical thinking these days is using methods of thought and vocabulary that one doesn't really believe to debunk world views one would rather not be challenged by. I fear that Nussbaum's approach to critical thinking would probably lead to that kind of superficiality.
Nussbaum's desire to mold students into "citizens of the world" whose perspective is global is, to me, naive idealism (and revealing of the political agenda behind her thinking). I'm all for students learning as much as they can about other cultures and political systems -- at least there we agree -- but there is no all-encompassing global perspective that can embrace, say, strict Sharia laws that force women into subservience and Western feminism (I could give a legion of other examples). Moreover, Nussbaum casually drops in the tired old trinity of "race, gender and class" enough to make me think that she would embrace crass West-bashing, such as we have seen in culture studies programs for decades now -- the kind that forgets that critical thinking is foundational to the Western tradition (indeed, she invokes Socrates at several junctures). (And please, I know that the West is not without fault, and that its faults should be exposed and corrected; but the West is not without virtue, and all too often those virtues are ignored or denigrated.)
I agree entirely that our students (and future workers, managers, leaders) need to be skilled at critical thinking and have educated imaginations, and I wholeheartedly endorse the book's title and theme: "Not for Profit." Among the great things about the humanities is that they help us to live complete and meaningful lives and to see things from other perspectives beyond that of "how is this going to make me money." In fact, I like to joke with my students that the great benefit of a humanities degree is that I can B.S. myself into believing I am happier with my pittance of a salary than I would be as a millionaire tycoon.
I simply don't think this book is worthy of Martha Nussbaum's powers as a thinker and a writer. She's better than this, and I expect she'll prove that on her next outing.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
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