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How can higher education today create a community of critical thinkers and searchers for truth that transcends the boundaries of class, gender, and nation? Martha C. Nussbaum, philosopher and classicist, argues that contemporary curricular reform is already producing such "citizens of the world" in its advocacy of diverse forms of cross-cultural studies. Her vigorous defense of "the new education" is rooted in Seneca's ideal of the citizen who scrutinizes tradition critically and who respects the ability to reason wherever it is found--in rich or poor, native or foreigner, female or male.

Drawing on Socrates and the Stoics, Nussbaum establishes three core values of liberal education: critical self-examination, the ideal of the world citizen, and the development of the narrative imagination. Then, taking us into classrooms and campuses across the nation, including prominent research universities, small independent colleges, and religious institutions, she shows how these values are (and in some instances are not) being embodied in particular courses. She defends such burgeoning subject areas as gender, minority, and gay studies against charges of moral relativism and low standards, and underscores their dynamic and fundamental contribution to critical reasoning and world citizenship.

For Nussbaum, liberal education is alive and well on American campuses in the late twentieth century. It is not only viable, promising, and constructive, but it is essential to a democratic society. Taking up the challenge of conservative critics of academe, she argues persuasively that sustained reform in the aim and content of liberal education is the most vital and invigorating force in higher education today.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Preface
• Introduction: The Old Education and the Think-Academy
• 1 Socratic Self-Examination
• 2 Citizens of the World
• 3 The Narrative Imagination
• 4 The Study of Non-Western Cultures
• 5 African-American Studies
• 6 Women's Studies
• 7 The Study of Human Sexuality
• 8 Socrates in the Religious University
• Conclusion: The New Liberal Education
• Notes
• Index

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Publishers Weekly Review

Just when you thought the culture wars were over, the next combatants step in to take up their swords and shields. Nussbaum is a culture warrior who earned her stripes defending universities from charges of caving in to the demands of politically correct multiculturalists. In this vigorous response to critics, Nussbaum adopts an unusual approach in her defense of the college-level multicultural curriculum. Instead of casting multicultural instruction as a type of payback for the sins of Western racism and sexism, she artfully argues how the Western philosophical tradition itself leads directly to a multicultural agenda. The Socratic demand to examine ourselves, as Nussbaum sees it, requires that we study those unlike us. To understand our culture's influence on our economic, sexual, racial and social views, we must explore the influence the cultures of others have had on theirs. In short, we learn best by contrasting what we believe with what others believe, especially if the goal is to make us world-citizens, a view that, according to Nussbaum is as old as the Greco-Roman philosophy itself. Though at times flatly written, Nussbaum's arguments are convincing. She is careful to avoid the pitfalls of cultural relativism, and there is no debating the cosmopolitan effects of the educational process that she supports. Her work is a welcome addition to the ongoing debate about culture and curriculum. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Nussbaum's wide ranging discussion of liberal education and its evolution at the end of the century is both thoughtful and concrete. She supports the idea of liberal education, suggesting that it should be shaped by institutional realities at individual colleges and universities, and by broader intellectual trends in American and world society. She is committed to the internationalization of the curriculum and recognizes the value of such new fields as women's studies and African American studies. Nussbaum (law and ethics, Univ. of Chicago) links her contemporary discussion with references to classical Greek philosophers, marshaling the support of Plato and Aristotle for modern liberal education reform. The book is based in part on her examination of trends in liberal education in an interesting array of American colleges and universities. Nussbaum discusses how education at institutions such as Notre Dame and Brigham Young has evolved. Nussbaum does not have a specific program to promote. Rather, she reflects on the state of American undergraduate education and advocates continued change and reform as part of a commitment to the core values of liberal education. Recommended for general readers and upper-division undergraduates through faculty. P. G. Altbach; Boston College

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Martha C. Nussbaum is the author of The Fragility of Goodness , The Monarchy of Fear , and Citadels of Pride , among other works. She is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is in the Law School and Philosophy Department. She has received three of the world's most significant awards for humanities and social science: the Kyoto Prize, the Berggruen Prize, and the 2021 Holberg Prize.