All Thinkers

Martha Nussbaum

Martha Craven Nussbaum is an American philosopher. She is one of the most influential and widely read philosophers of the past fifty years. She was born on 6 May 1947 in New York City. Her family was wealthy and Protestant, with roots in the American South. She later said her comfortable childhood made her acutely aware of inequality and the contingencies of privilege. She converted to Judaism in 1969. She studied classics at New York University and earned her PhD from Harvard in 1975. Her doctoral work was on ancient Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle. Classical scholarship has remained central to her work throughout her career. She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and, since 1995, at the University of Chicago, where she holds a joint appointment in the Law School and the Philosophy Department. She has written more than thirty books and hundreds of articles. Her major works include The Fragility of Goodness (1986) on ancient Greek ethics, Women and Human Development (2000) on her capabilities approach, Upheavals of Thought (2001) on emotions, and Political Emotions (2013) on how societies cultivate good feelings. She has worked with the economist Amartya Sen on the capabilities approach to human development, which has influenced the United Nations Human Development Index. She has been a public intellectual throughout her career. She has written on women's rights, LGBT equality, disability, animal welfare, and the role of emotions in law and politics. She has received many honours, including the Kyoto Prize and the Berggruen Prize. She is still active, writing and teaching in 2026.

Origin
United States
Lifespan
1947-present
Era
Late 20th-Early 21st Century
Subjects
Philosophy Ethics Capabilities Approach Emotions Classical Philosophy
Skills
Ethical Thinking Critical Thinking Emotional Intelligence Cultural Heritage And Identity Creative Expression
Why They Matter

Nussbaum matters for three reasons. First, she has developed one of the most influential approaches to ethics and justice of our time: the capabilities approach. Working with the Indian economist Amartya Sen, she has argued that societies should be judged by what their members are actually able to do and be. A good society is not just one with high income. It is one where people have real opportunities to be healthy, educated, connected to others, and able to shape their own lives. This approach has influenced the United Nations' Human Development Index, disability policy, and debates about global poverty.

Second, she has brought emotions back into philosophical ethics. Much of modern moral philosophy, following Kant, treated emotions as obstacles to clear moral thinking. Nussbaum argued the opposite. Emotions like compassion, grief, fear, and love contain important information about what matters in human life. Ignoring them produces bad ethics. She has written major works on how emotions work, how they can be educated, and how societies can cultivate the right kinds of feeling. This turn has reshaped whole areas of moral philosophy.

Third, she writes for the public. Many of her books are aimed at educated general readers, not only specialists. She has argued passionately for the humanities as essential to democracy. Her book Not for Profit (2010) defends the study of literature, philosophy, and the arts as training in the imagination that democratic citizens need. Her example, of a philosopher who combines serious scholarship, public engagement, and defence of the humanities, is a model for engaged academic life today.

Key Ideas
1
The Capabilities Approach: What Can People Actually Do?
2
Emotions Are Not the Opposite of Reason
3
Why the Humanities Matter for Democracy
Key Quotations
"The best approach to the question of social justice is the capabilities approach: what are people actually able to do and to be?"
— Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, 2000
This sentence summarises Nussbaum's central claim. Forget debates about income or utility or preferences. Ask instead what people can actually do with their lives. Can a woman travel alone safely? Can a disabled person get an education? Can a farmer access clean water? These concrete questions cut through abstract debates. For students, the quote is a good starting point for understanding what the capabilities approach actually asks. It is practical, not abstract.
"Emotions are not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature, they are parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creature's reasoning itself."
— Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, 2001
Nussbaum makes her case in memorable language. Emotions are not the fuel under the engine of reason. They are part of the engine itself. This sentence captures her whole approach to emotions. They are 'messy', yes, but they are a kind of thinking. For students, the quote legitimises taking their own feelings seriously as a source of understanding, not just as obstacles to clear thought. It also introduces a rich tradition in philosophy that sees heart and head as deeply connected.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Ethical Thinking When discussing what makes a good society
How to introduce
Ask students: how would you judge whether a country is good or bad? Most will mention wealth, safety, or happiness. Then introduce Nussbaum's capabilities approach. Ask instead: what are people actually able to do? Can they go to school? Can they vote? Are they safe from violence? Can they love? This is a concrete, practical exercise. Students can apply it to countries they know. It is a strong introduction to thinking about social justice beyond just money.
Emotional Intelligence When students think their feelings are getting in the way of thinking
How to introduce
Young people often hear that emotions are the enemy of clear thinking. Calm down and think properly, they are told. Nussbaum argues this is wrong. Emotions carry information. Feeling afraid tells you something is threatening. Feeling angry tells you something is unfair. The task is not to silence feelings but to think with them carefully. This affirms students' emotional lives while teaching them to examine what their feelings are telling them.
Further Reading

For a first introduction, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010) is short and accessible. It gives a strong sense of Nussbaum's voice and concerns. Her Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (2011) is a clear introduction to the capabilities approach. Many interviews with Nussbaum are available online, including discussions on the BBC, NPR, and Philosophy Bites. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on her work are reliable and well-written.

Key Ideas
1
Ten Central Capabilities
2
Political Emotions and Good Feelings
3
Disgust, Shame, and the Law
Key Quotations
"There's a rush of insight and delight in poetry that can be a kind of thinking."
— Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, 2010
Nussbaum is defending the humanities. She claims poetry is not just decoration. It is a kind of thinking. When you understand a poem, you grasp something that cannot be grasped any other way. This is an important defence of the arts in a world that often measures education by earning potential. For students, the quote is a reminder that reading carefully and writing creatively are serious intellectual activities, not just pleasant ones.
"To lose a beloved spouse or a child, to lose a limb, to lose a job, to lose one's citizenship: these are real losses, and to the extent that a good life depends on things other than our own virtue, we are vulnerable."
— Paraphrased from The Fragility of Goodness, 1986
This captures Nussbaum's argument that the good life is vulnerable. She lists concrete losses to make her point concrete. You can be good and still suffer these losses. A good life includes real attachments, and real attachments can be broken. Some ancient philosophers said true happiness requires getting rid of such attachments so you cannot be harmed. Nussbaum disagrees. Reducing yourself to avoid pain is not wisdom; it is a smaller life. For students, the quote opens serious questions about what it means to live well.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Cultural Heritage and Identity When debating whether the humanities are still relevant
How to introduce
Many students are told that the humanities are useless for getting a job. Nussbaum has argued the opposite: that democracies need citizens trained in the humanities. Ask students: what does reading a novel teach you that a business class does not? What does studying philosophy teach you that coding does not? This is a productive discussion that helps students think about what their education is actually for, beyond just future earnings.
Ethical Thinking When studying how laws have treated marginalised groups
How to introduce
Give students a brief history of a law Nussbaum has discussed: laws against homosexuality, anti-miscegenation laws, or laws targeting people with disabilities. Ask: what emotions drove these laws? Often it was disgust or fear, dressed up in legal language. Nussbaum's work on disgust and law helps students see that emotions are not just personal; they shape what societies count as criminal or acceptable. This is a powerful tool for historical and contemporary analysis.
Critical Thinking When comparing different ways to measure human well-being
How to introduce
Compare three ways of ranking countries: by GDP, by the Human Development Index, and by the capabilities approach. The first measures wealth. The second combines income, life expectancy, and education. The third asks about what people can actually do and be. Ask students which seems most informative. This exercise shows that measurement is not neutral. What you measure shapes what you value. It is a useful lesson for any student who will later encounter statistics about development, happiness, or social progress.
Further Reading

For deeper reading, Women and Human Development (2000) is a key work for the capabilities approach. Upheavals of Thought (2001) is her major book on emotions, long but rewarding. Hiding from Humanity (2004) is very readable and politically relevant. Political Emotions (2013) extends the emotions work to liberal democracy. For secondary literature, Barbara Arneil's Sen and Nussbaum on Justice compares the two major versions of the capabilities approach. Daniel Callcut's edited Reading Bernard Williams includes essays that engage with Nussbaum's ethical thinking.

Key Ideas
1
The Fragility of Goodness (1986)
2
Debates with Sen, Rawls, and Butler
3
Global Justice and Animals
Key Quotations
"The disgust idea is a bad basis for law because it is fundamentally about shielding ourselves from the reality of the human."
— Paraphrased from Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, 2004
Nussbaum makes a strong claim. When we use disgust to guide law, we are not being moral. We are trying to escape the reality of being human. Human beings are bodies. We sweat, excrete, die, and decay. Disgust is often aimed at groups of people associated in the mind with these realities: bodies of a certain kind, sexualities of a certain kind. Using disgust to make law is a way of trying to be less human by excluding other humans. This is a profound argument that has influenced debates about LGBT rights, disability law, and hate speech. For advanced students, the quote connects emotional analysis to political philosophy in a powerful way.
"I think if you lose the capacity for imagination and storytelling, you lose the capacity to live with dignity."
— Interview, BBC, 2010
This is a strong claim from Nussbaum. Imagination is not optional. It is connected to dignity itself. Why? Because imagining allows you to grasp other people's lives, to envision possibilities, to understand yourself. A person without imagination is trapped in the immediately visible. A person without stories cannot connect yesterday, today, and tomorrow into a life. For advanced students, the quote connects Nussbaum's defence of the humanities to her deepest claims about what makes a human life worth living. It also gives a strong answer to anyone asking why young people should read novels.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Emotional Intelligence When exploring how loss shapes a good life
How to introduce
Nussbaum argues that loving someone makes you vulnerable to grief. Trying to love no one to avoid grief would not make you wiser. It would make your life smaller. Ask students: is a life with less love and less loss a better life, or a worse one? This is a serious conversation. Handle with care, especially with students who have experienced recent loss. But it is exactly the kind of question that philosophy can help students think through with dignity and depth.
Ethical Thinking When discussing duties across national borders
How to introduce
Nussbaum argues that people in rich countries have real duties to people in poor countries, not just charity but justice. Ask students: do you agree? What grounds such duties? What are the limits? Compare Nussbaum's view with more traditional views that see justice as a matter among citizens of one state. This discussion is directly relevant to students' views on migration, foreign aid, and climate change responsibilities.
Common Misconceptions
Common misconception

Nussbaum's capabilities list is a Western imposition on other cultures.

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What to teach instead

She takes this challenge seriously and has responded to it at length. She argues that the capabilities on her list are genuinely universal, though how they are achieved will vary across cultures. She has developed the capabilities approach partly through fieldwork with women's groups in India, working closely with Indian feminists. Her collaborators include non-Western thinkers like Amartya Sen. The charge of Western imposition deserves serious engagement, but treating it as a knock-down objection misses the careful way Nussbaum has built her position through cross-cultural dialogue.

Common misconception

Nussbaum is a 'feelings-based' philosopher who abandons rigorous argument.

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What to teach instead

Her work on emotions is philosophically rigorous. She draws on ancient and modern cognitive science to argue that emotions are evaluations of things that matter to us. This is a technical philosophical claim with careful supporting arguments. She does not celebrate unexamined feelings. She argues emotions can be educated, refined, and sometimes rejected. Calling her a 'feelings philosopher' as if she abandons reason misreads her whole project. She is trying to understand how reason and emotion actually work together, not to replace one with the other.

Common misconception

The capabilities approach is the same as human rights theory.

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What to teach instead

The two overlap but are not identical. Human rights are usually framed as rights against something (torture, detention, discrimination). Capabilities are framed as what people should be able to do and be. A right not to be tortured is roughly equivalent to a capability for bodily integrity. But the capabilities approach pushes further, asking about substantive opportunities rather than just legal protections. A country can have legal rights for women without having a real capability for bodily integrity if women cannot safely move around. Nussbaum sees capabilities as underpinning rights, not replacing them.

Common misconception

Nussbaum's criticism of Judith Butler shows she opposes queer theory or feminism.

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What to teach instead

Her 1999 critique of Butler was specific: she argued Butler's difficult style was politically evasive. She did not reject feminism or queer theory. Nussbaum has written extensively on women's rights, LGBT equality, and the capabilities of people who do not fit traditional categories. She was an early and consistent defender of gay marriage. Her disagreement with Butler is a disagreement among feminist thinkers, not a rejection of feminism. Students should read both sides of the argument to see that serious disagreement is how philosophy makes progress.

Intellectual Connections
In Dialogue With
Amartya Sen
Sen and Nussbaum developed the capabilities approach together through decades of collaboration. Sen provided the economic framework; Nussbaum provided the philosophical grounding. They agreed on fundamentals but disagreed on specifics, especially whether there should be a fixed list of capabilities. Their partnership is one of the most productive in recent social thought. Reading them together shows how philosophy and economics can genuinely collaborate rather than simply ignoring each other.
Develops
Immanuel Kant
Nussbaum is a major contemporary Kantian. She takes Kant's emphasis on human dignity seriously and develops it in directions Kant himself did not go, especially towards disability, global justice, and non-human animals. She also criticises Kant where she thinks he was wrong, including on his narrow view of emotions. Reading Nussbaum alongside Kant is a good way to see how philosophical traditions develop over centuries through careful critical engagement.
Develops
John Rawls
Rawls's Theory of Justice is the starting point for much of Nussbaum's political philosophy. She admires his work but argues it has important gaps. Rawls's theory assumes participants are 'free, equal, and independent'. Nussbaum points out that this excludes people with severe disabilities, non-human animals, and people in other countries. Her capabilities approach tries to extend Rawlsian justice to these cases. This is a careful, respectful kind of critique that builds rather than tears down.
In Dialogue With
Judith Butler
Nussbaum's 1999 essay The Professor of Parody was a sharp critique of Butler's work. Nussbaum argued that Butler's difficult prose and focus on performativity amounted to political retreat. Butler and others have responded. The debate has continued. Both thinkers are serious feminists but their styles and conclusions differ sharply. Reading the exchange shows two very different models of what feminist philosophy can look like. It also shows that disagreement among feminist thinkers is a sign of a living tradition, not a problem.
Develops
Aristotle
Aristotle is the single most important influence on Nussbaum. Her first major book was on Greek tragedy and Aristotelian ethics. Aristotle's emphasis on human flourishing, the role of fortune in a good life, and the importance of friendship and emotion all run through Nussbaum's work. She is sometimes called a neo-Aristotelian. Her contribution has been to bring Aristotle's concerns into contact with contemporary issues like disability, animal rights, and global poverty.
Complements
Maya Angelou
Nussbaum and Angelou both argued that literature and art are essential to democratic life. Angelou, as a poet and memoirist, did the work Nussbaum defends philosophically: using words to enlarge the reader's sense of other people's lives. Nussbaum has written about the role of such writing in cultivating empathy. Reading them together shows how a philosopher and an artist can work on the same cultural project from different angles.
Further Reading

For research-level engagement, The Fragility of Goodness (1986) is her major scholarly work in ancient philosophy. Frontiers of Justice (2006) extends Rawlsian political philosophy to disability, animals, and global justice. The Monarchy of Fear (2018) applies her framework to contemporary politics. For critical engagement, see the Nussbaum volume in the Library of Living Philosophers series, where major thinkers critique her work and she responds. Justice for Animals (2022) is her most recent major book. Martha Nussbaum's collected essays in Philosophical Interventions gather shorter pieces for serious readers.