Review of Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities

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1 Stud Philos Educ (2011) 30: DOI /s Review of Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities Princeton University Press, 2010 Maughn Rollins Gregory Published online: 3 May 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V Reflection on our ways of living, and especially on what is wrong with those ways of living, has always been a vital function of philosophy. [T]he ancient questions, Am I living as I am supposed to live? Is my life something more than vanity, or worse, mere conformity? Am I making the best effort I can to reach my unattained but attainable self? make all the difference in the world. (Hillary Putman 2008) In her new book from Princeton University Press, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010), American philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls attention to a new, silent crisis (1) in education: [A] new conception, focused on profit, has taken over, in the process sidelining the whole idea of imaginative and critical self-development (4). Throughout the book, Nussbaum focuses on the United States and India as examples of democratic nations with legacies of important educational theory and practice (culminating in the work of John Dewey and Rabindranath Tagore), which are abandoning those legacies today in the pursuit of individual and national profitability. For Nussbaum, these examples illustrate what amounts to a world-wide crisis, in which [t]he future of the world s democracies hangs in the balance (2). Of course, education that focuses on socio-economic advancement to the neglect of more humanistic aims making the most of one s talents, finding one s moral bearings, becoming practiced in the virtues, advancing disciplinary knowledge, continuing traditions of cultural excellence, pursuing political justice, and otherwise living meaningfully is nothing new; it was, after all, a primary object of scorn for Socrates. But Nussbaum calls attention to the anti-democratic terms in which the agenda of education for wealth and status has been reiterated in recent years. This time the agenda s object is not students per se, but nation-states. It is the nation that must become competitive and profitable, and if this conception doesn t specify which segments of society will contribute the most to and M. R. Gregory (&) Department of Educational Foundations and Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ 07043, USA gregorym@mail.montclair.edu

2 420 M. R. Gregory benefit the most from national profitability, neither does it stipulate equality of economic opportunity through education. Nussbaum traces this new conception of education to an old conception of national development, according to which, the goal of the nation should be economic growth. Never mind about distribution and social equality, never mind about the preconditions of stable democracy, never mind about the quality of race and gender relations, never mind about the improvement of other aspects of a human being s quality of life that are not well linked to economic growth (14). As her examples reveal, the call for education for profit comes from multiple sources. These include private sector leaders of business and finance and public sector politicians, government officials and policy makers, who, for various reasons, prioritize economic growth above all other corporate and public goods. Another source is students themselves and their parents intent on getting their children filled with testable skills that seem likely to produce financial success (4). Caught between these groups are school, college and university administrators who must answer to both parents and policy makers, and are increasingly quick to accommodate their demands for profit-focused education, as funding for education declines. The agenda shared by these groups that education be designed first and foremost as a means to personal and national profitability derives largely from two separate and contestable propositions, to which Nussbaum gives only brief attention. The first is that prosperity is fundamentally linked to all other goods. In the case of nations, the link is to public health, social justice, civil rights, achievement in the arts and sciences, environmental sustainability and the other goods of a democratic society. In the case of individuals, the link is to happiness or the good life. This idea is deceptive, because it is half right: a certain level of prosperity is necessary but not sufficient for these more intrinsic goods. There is a threshold of national economic viability below which other public goods will be undermined as, indeed, they are being undermined throughout the developed world today, as economic austerity measures include reductions in health care, in public services, in funding for scientific research and the arts, and in the degradation of standards of environmental protection. But the other side of this argument that economic viability or even strong economic growth over a long period of time, by itself, will somehow produce those other goods is simply not true. Indeed, a nation obsessed with economic growth as an end in itself may neglect the ethical, political and cultural ends that, arguably, justify its existence and functions. Likewise, economic stability is a necessary component of individual wellbeing, and preparing students with the disciplinary knowledge, the intellectual, social and technological skills, and the cultural capital they will need to compete successfully in the job market is a legitimate aim of education, as Nussbaum acknowledges. But a student who is capable of making a good living may not be capable of living well: may not be able, or inclined to engage in social and political work against injustice or toward civic improvement, or to engage with the kinds of existential questions reiterated by Putnam above. 1 The point of Nussbaum s book is not that education for economic prosperity is 1 Sternberg s first recommendation for education for wisdom is that teachers explore with students the notion that conventional abilities and achievements are not enough for a satisfying life. Many people become trapped in their lives and, despite feeling conventionally successful, feel that their lives lack fulfillment. Fulfillment is not an alternative to success, but rather, is an aspect of it that, for most people, goes beyond money, promotions, large houses, and so forth (2001, p. 238).

3 Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities 421 unimportant, or that it is incompatible with education for personal and public wellbeing, but that education that focuses exclusively on the former will not automatically achieve the latter. The second proposition behind for-profit education perhaps more ubiquitous but less often articulated than the first is that economic prosperity is a valuable end in itself, for persons and for nations, and is in fact more valuable than the other personal and public goods mentioned, with which it might sometimes compete. In practice, this unspoken value makes government agencies, schools and even families and students into corporations: entities for which profit is the overriding concern, to which all other concerns are subsidiary. In principle, it narrows the understanding of what it means to be human. As Yale psychologist Robert J. Sternberg has observed, in many families, Education is seen more as an access route not so much toward the enhancement of learning and thinking as toward obtaining through education the best possible credentials for individual socioeconomic advancement. Education is seen not so much as a means of helping society but of helping one obtain the best that society has to offer socially, economically, and culturally (1999, 62). Taken as an end in itself, economic prosperity no longer represents the power (e.g. stable assets and good credit) to realize intrinsic goods, but as a certain lifestyle or standard of living, characterized by material acquisition, social status and influence (in the case of nations, global status and power). The families Sternberg described demand an education that will prepare them for nothing more than pursuing unexamined and commerciallymanipulated desires in a free-market economy. And as national educational policies are increasingly tailored to that mindset, it is important that thinkers like Nussbaum call attention to, and problematize this agenda. But then, this mindset and this agenda are only problems from the aspect of a very different notion of what it means to be human, and of the value of democracy. One of the strengths of Nussbaum s book is that it is informed by her extensive work in Hellenistic philosophy and in justice studies (2010, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2004, 1998, 2000, 1996a, 1996b, 1994, 1986). Her own ideal of a humane, people-sensitive democracy (25) clearly has roots in the humanistic and religious wisdom literatures, both of which give a normative account of human potential, and recommend a way of life typified by compassion, reasonableness, self-sacrifice, humility, and solidarity, rather than by hubris, intemperance, avarice and animosity. Post-modern suspicion notwithstanding, that characterization of what it means to live well, personally and collectively, is manifestly multicultural and persistently perennial. Indeed, as Jacob Needleman has argued, the welllived life has been central to the meaning of democracy, historically: What, after all, could be the ultimate value of outer freedom, of liberty in the external sense of the term, if inwardly we are and must remain enslaved and tyrannized? For, let us emphasize again, the deepest spiritual source of the early [American] colonists rejection of political and religious tyranny was that such tyranny prevented them from searching for inner freedom. (100) Isn t the whole purpose of political liberty to support the internal rebirth of the psyche through learning, through love, through the struggle to serve what is higher than ourselves and to help each other? (115) Nussbaum s own humanism is present between the lines of every chapter of this book but only between the lines. Almost in passing, she tells what, for her, the aims of education should be: to prepare students for [democratic] citizenship, for employment and,

4 422 M. R. Gregory importantly, for meaningful lives (9). As the title indicates, her purpose in this book is to explore the first of these aims, pursuing the contrast between an education for profitmaking and an education for a more inclusive type of citizenship (7). But in fact, her arguments for democratic education depend on a more particular understanding of what constitutes meaningful lives than is explained here. The question is: What kind of democracy and what kind of personhood is put at risk by profit-centered education? Nussbaum s conclusion that education for profit-making undermines democracy rests on three premises, each constituting an argument in its own right. The first is that democracy requires three broad kinds of abilities the ability to think critically; the ability to transcend local loyalties and to approach world problems as a citizen of the world ; and the ability to imagine sympathetically the predicaments of another person (7). Significantly, each of these democratic abilities involves self-discipline and self-limitation, and becoming other-regarding and other-informed. The second premise is that a liberal arts education, with emphasis on the arts and humanities, is necessary to cultivate these abilities. This argument is rounded out with an explanation of factors that tend to preclude those democratic abilities, which liberal arts education must counteract, including religious- and class-based animosities (125) and tendencies to flaws in reasoning, to parochialism, haste, sloppiness, selfishness [and] narrowness of the spirit (142). The third premise is that the new agenda for profit-driven education involves the de-emphasis and even elimination of teaching the arts and humanities a phenomenon Nussbaum explains not in terms of opportunity cost, but of ideology: [E]ducators for economic growth will do more than ignore the arts. They will fear them. For a cultivated and developed sympathy is a particularly dangerous enemy of obtuseness, and moral obtuseness is necessary to carry out programs of economic development that ignore inequality. Art is a great enemy of that obtuseness, and artists (unless thoroughly browbeaten and corrupted) are not the reliable servants of any ideology, even a basically good one they always ask the imagination to move beyond its usual confines, to see the world in new ways. So, education for economic growth will campaign against the humanities and arts as ingredients of basic education. (23 4) On a more mundane level, one might point to the impoverishment of content, the reduction of pedagogy to information delivery (increasingly carried out by technology), and the excessive testing that typify education for profit-making, all of which is inimical to liberal arts education. Nussbaum presents these arguments in chapters 1 ( The Silent Crisis ), 2 ( Education for Profit, Education for Democracy ), and 7 ( Democratic Education on the Ropes ). The three middle chapters are given to more detailed explanation and justification of education in the three democratic abilities critical reasoning, global citizenship and sympathetic imagination. The first of these is the focus of chapter 4, Socratic Pedagogy: The Importance of Argument. Here Nussbaum traces a genealogy of Socratic education in which the child [is] an active and critical participant, (57) to eighteenth-century Europe and North America, and nineteenth-century India. As she explains it, Socratic pedagogy combines a focus on the child s ability to understand the logical structure of an argument, to detect bad reasoning, [and] to challenge ambiguity, with a focus on Socratic values, such as being active, critical, curious, [and] capable of resisting authority and peer pressure (72). Nussbaum describes the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johan Pestalozzi, Friedrich Froebel, Bronson Alcott, Horace Mann, John Dewey, and Rabindranath Tagore, but explains that their work is mostly too theoretical, their recommendations too general

5 Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities 423 and too time- and place-specific to show us what we should do or can do here and now, in the elementary and secondary schools of today (72). Even Dewey, whom she credits as the most influential and theoretically distinguished American practitioner of Socratic education, (64) never addressed systematically the question of how Socratic critical reasoning might be taught to children of various ages. (73) She finds one solution in an exemplary program: Philosophy for Children, developed by philosopher Matthew Lipman at Montclair State University. 2 Nussbaum extols the program for its attention to the logical properties of thought, its presentation of complex ideas through engaging stories, its illustration of how attention to logical structure can pay off in daily life, the progression in complexity of novels for children of different ages, its treatment of philosophical topics such as mind and ethics, and its respect for children (73 6). Nussbaum s call for Socratic pedagogy echoes that of two prominent psychologists who have written about education, each of whom, not coincidentally, has also endorsed Philosophy for Children. Sternberg found that program to be one of a very few well-designed for teaching for wisdom, as he constructs that notion (2003, p. 163, 2001, p. 237). Like Nussbaum, he recommends a much more Socratic approach to teaching, that would engage students in critical, creative and practical thinking in the service of good ends, give them practice in discussion and dialectical thinking, have them study not only truth, as we know it, but values as well, help them develop their own values, and encourage them to consider better and worse uses for the knowledge they accumulate (2001, p. 238). Harvard psychologist and multiple intelligence theorist Howard Gardner has identified seven approaches or entry points to teaching school subjects that map onto multiple intelligences. He recommends Philosophy for Children for offering students the foundational (or existential) entry point to school subjects, which examines the philosophical and terminological facets of the subjects and provides the opportunity for students to pose fundamental questions of the why sort associated with young children and philosophers (1993, pp ). As psychologists, Sternberg and Gardner are concerned with the capacities for learning and for self-realization of individual students a strong indication that the three kinds of abilities Nussbaum identifies as necessary for democracy are equally necessary for wisdom-oriented self-work. In chapter 5, Citizens of the World, Nussbaum explains the two-fold nature of the second democratic ability, global citizenship. Education for democracy must, on the one hand, cultivate in students the ability to see themselves as members of a heterogeneous nation [and] world, and to understand something of the history and character of the diverse groups that inhabit it, (80) and, on the other, to participate as an active, critical, reflective, and empathetic member of a community of equals, capable of exchanging ideas on the basis of respect and understanding with people from many different backgrounds (141). As one would expect from a philosopher who has written about justice in terms of gender, religion and disability, Nussbaum s argument goes beyond the well-rehearsed, but still-important point that democratic citizens need to be sufficiently well-informed and practiced in dialogue to participate in democratic politics. As she explains, Every modern democracy is also a society in which people differ greatly along many parameters, including religion, ethnicity, wealth and class, physical impairment, gender, and sexuality, and in which all voters are making choices that have a major impact on the lives of people who differ from themselves (9). 2 The program s official website is accessed 2/25/11.

6 424 M. R. Gregory In fact, the challenge of democracy is to bring together two compelling aims so that each enhances, rather than undermines the other: to create a sphere of equal freedom and opportunity for the pursuit of individual and interest-group growth (as defined by the individual and the group), and to identify and pursue objectives of common good. Profitcentered education does not prepare future citizens to work for equal freedom and opportunity, much less to transform some aspects of personal interest into common objectives, but to take maximum advantage of open economic and social markets. It caters to, and inflates the desire to get ahead, but ignores something just as human. As Michael Sandel (2010) recently commented, there is a yearning for a public life that addresses things that people care about deeply. A yearning for a public life of larger meaning, that goes beyond purely economic questions. This argument indicates another tension between liberal arts education and education for profit-making: the latter habituates students into reading the world in terms of selfinterested competition, even in contexts like ethics, politics and personal relationships where that reading is not only inappropriate but self-defeating. Of course there are theorists who do understand politics that way, as an extension of the market as an arena for collective selfishness. But Nussbaum is not among these. As we know from her previous work, she sees democratic politics not as a mechanism for aggregating claims of self interest, but as cooperative intelligence in the pursuit of justice and other facets of collective wellbeing. On this understanding, the practice of politics is inseparable from practices of empathy, intercultural curiosity, paring down the ego, and other humanistic virtues. 3 The idea of democracy as collaborative inquiry in which participants make themselves vulnerable to the reasons and the interests of others, in pursuit of shared understandings and the articulation of a common good, has been described in quasitranscendental terms At the deepest roots of the ideal of free speech lies an understanding of what is necessary for the conscience of the community to be heard. Every individual must be free to express his or her mind and his or her personal sense of what is right and true. The approach to truth is a communal process; no single individual can find it alone or impose it on others. Thus, the ideal of free speech is inextricably linked to freedom of thought, and both freedom of thought and freedom of speech have their ultimate justification when serving the higher intelligence and moral power of the community (Needleman 2003, 24), as well as in more naturalistic terms [W]hen we re not quite sure what we think about a hard moral question, we are pitched into moral reflection and deliberation. And we can t really know fully what we believe and why about big questions of justice and rights and the right thing to do unless we are able to argue it through or think it through in the company of other people, whether they are members of our families or our communities or neighborhoods, or for that matter in a classroom (Sandel 2010). 3 Nussbaum makes oblique reference to this connection in explaining how Mahatma Gandhi, one of the primary architects of an independent and democratic India, understood very well that the political struggle for freedom and equality must first of all be a struggle within each person, as compassion and respect contend against fear, greed, and narcissistic aggression. He repeatedly drew attention to the connection between psychological balance and political balance, arguing that greedy desire, aggression, and narcissistic anxiety are forces inimical to the building of a free and democratic nation (29).

7 Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities 425 Nussbaum s chapter 6, Cultivating Imagination: Literature and the Arts, is given to the third democratic ability: sympathetic imagination, which enables us to see other human beings as full people, with thoughts and feelings of their own that deserve respect and empathy (143). As she explains it, literature and the arts simultaneously address two facets of this ability: They cultivate capacities for play and empathy in a general way, and they address particular cultural blind spots (108). Importantly, her defense of empathy and moral imagination does not contrast these to the cognitive and social abilities, as romantic and non-reflective, but presents them as faculties that have to be exercised, for which she prescribes the practice of literature and the arts as disciplines. As she notes, instruction in the arts requires discipline and ambition, if it is to stretch and extend the capacities for both empathy and expression (106). The disciplined study, practice and appreciation of philosophy, literature and the arts no less than of mathematics and the sciences involves patient observation, close attention, reflective analysis, collaborative insight, and a substantive background of theoretical and empirical knowledge. Of course, working in the humanities brings the additional benefit mostly unavailable in math and science of studying a range of culture-specific ways of life. Such study benefits democracy by helping citizens overcome fear and suspicion in favor of sympathetic and reasoned debate (143). For that it has to be multicultural, i.e., one that acquaints students with some fundamentals about the history and cultures of the many different groups with whom they share laws and institutions includ[ing] religious, ethnic, economic, social, and gender-based groups (91). Again, in relating this kind of intercultural literacy to democracy, Nussbaum reveals her allegiance to humanistic values. Education in the humanities is meant to cultivate the faculties of thought and imagination that make us human and make our relationships rich human relationships, rather than relationships of mere use and manipulation. When we meet in society, if we have not learned to see both self and other in that way, imagining in one another inner faculties of thought and emotion, democracy is bound to fail. (6) Empathy is a humanist value, without which, intercultural literacy might just as easily become a tool for relationships of use and manipulation, and even bullying and persecution, as it might become a means of personal growth and political collaboration. And so, it s not enough that liberal arts education be multicultural; it also has to focus, at least in part, on the humanistic values of the cultures it studies their normative accounts of what it means to be human. Again, Needleman: Ideas of this kind are formulated in order to have a specific range of action on the human psyche: to touch the heart as well as the intellect; to shock us into questioning our present understanding; to point us to the greatness around us in nature and the universe, and the potential greatness slumbering within ourselves; to open our eyes to the real needs of our neighbor; to confront us with our own profound ignorance and our criminal fears and egoism (6). Nussbaum s new book is published as part of Princeton s Public Square series, intended to showcase some of the world s finest public intellectuals writing on topics at the forefront of public discourse. 4 As that series title suggests, it is important for theorists, researchers and other experts to engage the non-expert public in discourse about problematic issues that confront us as a public and to find ways to make their work 4 accessed 12/30/10.

8 426 M. R. Gregory accessible enough to inform that discourse. This book is clearly intended for teachers, educational administrators, policy makers, parents and undergraduate education students, for whom it is an important new resource. The book will frustrate readers who notice all the intriguing philosophical pathways Nussbaum does not take, for instance: what tensions exist among the educational aims of job readiness, critical citizenship and a meaningful personal life? How universal is the humanism that informs Nussbaum s ethical and political commitments? Do illiberal religious and ethnic groups have the right to deny their children a liberal arts education? Happily, a fuller and more philosophical account of Nussbaum s views on education is available in her 1997 book, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. And Nussbaum s ability to write about the complex ethical and political dimensions of education for non-philosophers with intelligence and wit, but without technical language and overwhelming references is admirable, in fact, worth studying itself. Nussbaum s work on education overlaps with that of a number of contemporary educational theorists such as Maxwell (2007); Noddings (2005); Palmer (1993); Rose (2009) and Sternberg (1999, 2001, 2003), who have drawn attention to the moral and political dangers of education that focuses narrowly on students economic competitiveness, and have explicitly called for education that aims for well-being, happiness and wisdom. However, the current threat to liberal arts education does not only come from efforts to tailor education to economic growth; it also comes from cultural critics both conservative and radical. The former worry that students who cultivate critical-mindedness and a cosmopolitan perspective may abandon traditional (especially religious) values, and perhaps become moral relativists. The latter worry that critical thinking and so-called great literature and art are at best Eurocentric and at worst the very kinds of instrumentalist thinking and supremacist valuation behind race- class- and gender-based oppression. Nussbaum addressed these concerns and defended liberal arts education against them in her 1997 book. It is curious that she did not address them in this new book, as ones that should be taken up in the public square. The fact that most of the discourse among cultural critics takes place in academia doesn t mean that the issues they address are remote from the day-to-day business of education. In fact, they come up in every public school where reading lists are drawn up, history books are chosen, the Pledge of Allegiance may or may not be recited, religious attire may or may not be permitted, LGBT perspectives may or may not be included in the curriculum, and test preparation may or may not be interrupted to make time for children s own philosophizing. One reason the general public needs to be informed about the culture wars going on in the academy is that it is academics who prepare and certify public school teachers; and one of the first places a grass-roots call for liberal arts education must be heard is in the nation s colleges of education. References Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice. New York: Basic Books. Maxwell, Nicholas. (2007). From knowledge to wisdom: A revolution for science and the humanities. London: Pentire Press. Needleman, J. (2003). The American soul: Rediscovering the wisdom of the founders. Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Putnam: New York. Noddings, N. (2005). Happiness and education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. (1986; 2000). The fragility of goodness: luck and ethics in greek tragedy and philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M. (1994). The therapy of desire. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

9 Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities 427 Nussbaum, M. (1996a). For love of country. Beacon Press: Boston. Nussbaum, M. (1996b). Poetic justice. Boston: Beacon Press. Nussbaum, M. (1997). Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M. (1998). Sex and social justice. New York: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2000). Women and human development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2004). Hiding from humanity: Disgust, shame, and the law. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of justice: Disability, nationality, species membership. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2007). The clash within: Democracy, religious violence, and India s future. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2008). Liberty of conscience: In defense of America s tradition of religious equality. New York: Basic Books. Nussbaum, M. (2010) From disgust to humanity: sexual orientation and constitutional law. New York: Oxford University Press. Palmer, P. J. (1993). To know o know as we are known: A spirituality of education. New York: HarperCollins. Putnam, H. (2008) 12 Philosophers And Their Influence on Me, American Philosophical Association Proceedings and Addresses, Vol. 82, No. 2 (November 2008), online at V82_2_12philosophers.aspx. Accessed 20 November Rose, M. (2009). Why school? Reclaiming education for all of US. New York: The New Press. Sandel, M., & Fabrisio, D. (2010). Justice. In D. Fabrisio (Producer), Radio West. Salt Lake City, UT: KUER Public Radio. Retrieved from. 0/ /RadioWest/ Sternberg, R. J. (1999). Schools should nurture wisdom. In B. Z. Presseisen (Ed.), Teaching for intelligence (pp ). Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Training and Publishing. Sternberg, R. J. (2001). Why schools should teach for wisdom: the balance theory of wisdom in educational settings. Educational Psychologist, 36, 4. pp Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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