Books, Arts & Manners: News from the Thinkery

Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, by Martha C. Nussbaum (Harvard, 328 pp., $26)

MARTHA Nussbaum, a celebrated classicist who has lately become Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, has good news about American universities. “Never before have there been so many talented and committed young faculty so broadly dispersed in institutions of so many different kinds, thinking about difficult issues connecting education with citizenship.” Or is it good news? If I heard that “never before have there been so many talented young mechanics, thinking about difficult issues connecting transportation with citizenship,” I should want to know whether cars were running better. Talented young faculty may be thinking at East Boondoggle State Teachers College, but I am more concerned to know whether their students are learning the difficult subjects they will need to learn in order to participate effectively in the complex Western traditions of self-rule and science.

EK

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E. Christian Kopff

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Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, by Martha C. Nussbaum (Harvard, 328 pp., $26)

MARTHA Nussbaum, a celebrated classicist who has lately become Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, has good news about American universities. “Never before have there been so many talented and committed young faculty so broadly dispersed in institutions of so many different kinds, thinking about difficult issues connecting education with citizenship.” Or is it good news? If I heard that “never before have there been so many talented young mechanics, thinking about difficult issues connecting transportation with citizenship,” I should want to know whether cars were running better. Talented young faculty may be thinking at East Boondoggle State Teachers College, but I am more concerned to know whether their students are learning the difficult subjects they will need to learn in order to participate effectively in the complex Western traditions of self-rule and science.