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I thought as an actress I would be able to have broader emotional experiences, but then I quickly figured out that I wanted to think about tragic dramas, not act in them.
Martha Nussbaum
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote reflects a desire to engage with deep emotions through thought rather than performance.

Martha Nussbaum expresses her realization that while acting could provide her with a means to explore a wide range of emotions, her true passion lies in contemplating the complexities of tragic dramas rather than portraying them. This highlights a distinction between experiential engagement and intellectual exploration of emotional narratives.

Themes

EmotionArtDramaThoughtExperience

In practice

Example use cases

During a panel discussion on the role of art in society, this quote can illustrate the difference between performing and understanding dramatic narratives.

More from Martha Nussbaum

Envy, propelled by fear, can be even more toxic than anger, because it involves the thought that other people enjoy the good things of life which the envier can't hope to attain through hard work and emulation.
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This is true across every single society; we project grossness onto a racial or gender subgroup or caste. A big part of social subordination and discrimination is to ascribe hyper-animality to other groups and use that as an excuse for subordinating them further.
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Often, we feel helpless in lots of situations in our lives. The way anger gets a grip on us is it seems to be a way to extricate ourselves from helplessness.
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Courses in the humanities, in particular, often seem impractical, but they are vital, because they stretch your imagination and challenge your mind to become more responsive, more critical, bigger.
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I find so often, you know, just on a very mundane level; you've got a meeting and your child's acting in a school play. You can't do both things. And it's not simply that you can't do both, but whatever you do, you're going to be neglecting something that's really important.
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Look at the great tradition of Western political philosophy. Those people were all immersed in revolutionary movements. Most weren't career academics - often, they were too radical to be accepted in the academy. Rousseau's books were banned. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill couldn't hold academic positions because they were atheists.
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