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.
Martha NussbaumRead
There is no reason why an American scholar cannot by himself or herself develop an adequate understanding of another culture. And I don't find any reason to suppose that the birth within a culture automatically confers understanding.
Interpretation
Understanding another culture is achievable through individual effort, not just by being born into one.
Martha Nussbaum emphasizes that anyone, regardless of their cultural background, can gain a profound understanding of another culture through dedicated study and exploration. She challenges the notion that simply being born into a culture grants inherent understanding, suggesting that it requires intentional effort and engagement to truly comprehend different ways of life.
In practice
In a speech about cross-cultural communication, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of education in understanding others.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.
I went to Goucher College in Maryland for the best possible reasons - to learn - but then I dropped out at 19 for the best possible reasons - to become a writer.
Give yourself permission to dream. Fuel your kids' dreams too. Once in a while, that might even mean letting them stay up past their bedtimes.
They told me that, as a woman, I'd never get into graduate school in physics, so they got me a job as a secretary at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and promised that, if I were a good girl, I would take courses there.
They went to university because someone, at a time when universities seemed important, said that in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree. And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers.
Travel stories teach geography; insect stories lead the child into natural science; and so on. The teacher, in short, can use reading to introduce her pupils to the most varied subjects; and the moment they have been thus started, they can go on to any limit guided by the single passion for reading.
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