Martha Nussbaum llegó a la filosofía a través del teatro. Ella era una joven actriz que al interpretar las tragedias griegas se sintió interpelada por la condición humana que atraviesa, en su fragilidad, el paso de los milenios.
A lo largo de su obra, la filósofa desarrolla la teoría del florecimiento (“flourishing) como finalidad de la vida humana.
Define el espíritu crítico, propio de las Humanidades, como: “searching critical thought, daring imagination, empathetic underground of human experiences of many different kinds, and understanding the complexity of the world we live in.” (p. 7)
Este ensayo debe leerse para pensar cómo enseñamos a leer el mundo a través del encuentro y no de las gafas coloreadas, distorsionadas de la realidad, de la ideología.
...a catalogue of facts, without the ability to assess them, or to understand how a narrative is assembled from evidence, is almost as bad as ignorance, since the pupil will not be able to distinguish ignorant stereotypes purveyed by politicians and cultural leaders from the truth, or bogus claims for valid ones. (p. 94)
But the pursuit of a dream requires dreamers: educated minds that can think critically about alternatives and imagine an ambitious goal -preferably not involving only personal or even national wealth, but involving human dignity and democratic debate as well. (p. 137)
Education based mainly on profitability in the global market magnifies these deficiencies (sloppiness, selfisness, narrowness of the spirit…), producing a greedy obtuseness and a technically trained docility that threaten the very life of democracy itself, and that certainly impede the creation of a decent world culture. (p. 142)
Martha Nussbaum, Not for profit. Why democracy needs the Humanities, 2010
Comentarios