Cultivating HumanityHow 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. |
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Review: Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education
用戶評語 - John Doe - GoodreadsThere is a debate in the humanities about the relevance of the western cannon. Neo-conservatives think it is important for the west to have its own distinct identity which is cultivated by the ... 閱讀評論全文
Review: Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education
用戶評語 - Nohea - GoodreadsRead Chapter Eight: Socrates in the Religious University 閱讀評論全文
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第 115 頁 - Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
第 98 頁 - Through me many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, And of the threads that connect the stars...
第 155 頁 - Twas not long since I left my native shore The land of errors, and Egyptian gloom: Father of mercy, 'twas thy gracious hand Brought me in safety from those dark abodes.
第 145 頁 - Dharma is possible in many ways. But its root lies in restraint in regard to speech, which means that there should be no extolment of one's own sect or disparagement of other sects on inappropriate occasions and that it should be moderate in every case even on appropriate occasions. On the contrary, other sects should be duly honoured in every way on all occasions. If a person acts in this way, he not only promotes his own sect but also benefits other sects. But, if a person acts otherwise, he not...
第 98 頁 - Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.
第 61 頁 - Their point was even more radical: that we should give our first allegiance to no mere form of government, no temporal power, but to the moral community made up by the humanity of all human beings.
第 168 頁 - For him, a group tradition must supply compensation for persecution and pride of race the antidote for prejudice.
第 17 頁 - I tell you that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being, you will be even less likely to believe what I am saying.
第 12 頁 - This means the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself...