Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (review)

Every sentiment about the value of the humanities celebrated in this short book deserves our respect. Nussbaum rallies us to attention while praising attributes of mind and soul reflective of a liberal education: imagination, respect for the ideas of others, capaciousness of mind and spirit, enlightened tolerance, and the ability as well as the desire to engage in self-examination. It might seem difficult to find many people finding fault with such habits of mind.

But Nussbaum finds such people, and they are, she reports, growing in number and authority—in this country and elsewhere in the world. They emerge as national budgets grow tighter and resources dwindle. They feast in a time of want and declare the humanities peripheral to the essential business of life—which is commerce, providing and securing an existence, bettering the lives of people. Nussbaum thinks this concern crass and cites India as a nation absorbed in educating too many of its people in finance, engineering, and the applied sciences. The United States—should it not remind itself of the lessons of Horace Mann, John Dewey, and the traditions of the best liberal arts colleges—now risks going the same wrong way. The business major is not as valuable, she announces, as the one in philosophy.

After all, she observes, "people who lead the unexamined life . . . often treat one another disrespectfully." But Nussbaum, as philosopher, ethicist, and student of government, seems insufficiently prepared to deal with two primary and obvious objections to her ardent plea. The first is that one must demonstrate, not just proclaim, that the study of the humanities necessarily adduces to human goodness. Put directly: are the humanists we know, immersed as they are in the teaching of self-examination and capaciousness of mind, less inclined to treat one another disrespectfully? On what evidence do we find them morally superior to anyone else? Second, if we are to honor "the ability to judge political leaders critically, but with an informed and realistic sense of the possibilities available to them," on what strong ground can we rightly derogate a leader, an Indian leader perhaps, who might well believe that economic security, health, safety, and literacy must come before refinement of mind and the admirable luxury of self-examination? The study of painting, poetry, and all the arts, John Adams long ago said, follows the study of philosophy, but philosophy must wait its turn after politics and war.