I’m looking forward to receiving Martha Nussbaum’s new book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, which I’ll read after the semester ends. In the meantime the Times Literary Supplement included the opening pages as “Skills for Life” in their April 30th issue. I’ve included a few quotes below, but encourage you to read the entire article.

On the need for reflection:

Socrates proclaimed that “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”

On the need for the development of Socratic critical-thought skills:

The idea that one will take responsibility for one’s own reasoning and exchange ideas with others in an atmosphere of mutual respect for reason, is essential to the peaceful resolution of differences, both within a nation and in a world increasingly polarized by ethnic and religious conflict.

On the need for art in education:

Dewey insisted that what is important for children is not some contemplative exercise in which children learn to ‘appreciate’ works of art as things cut off from the real world; nor should they be taught to believe that imagination is pertinent only in the domain of the unreal or imaginary. Instead, they need to see an imaginative dimension in all their interactions, and to see works of art as just one domain in which imagination is cultivated.