CAHSS Faculty Articles

Why Democracy Needs the Humanities

Publication Title

Quadrivium: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship

ISSN

2474-5766

Publication Date

Spring 2011

Abstract

Excerpt

I must start by saying something about the title of this essay. Soon after I agreed to offer a presentation (of which this essay is a revised version), I was asked to submit a title. In an email response to that request I typed the first thing that came into my head, which was “Why Democracy Needs the Humanities.” As it turns out, that title is also the subtitle of a recently published book by Martha Nussbaum, a contemporary American philosopher for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration.2 I had been looking forward to reading her book in preparation for my presentation. I had it on my Amazon wish list after all. So I guess the title was in my mind. But then I realized I couldn’t read the book, for fear that people would get the impression that I borrowed her title and her ideas. As of this writing, I have not read her book, but I am eager to do so.

Volume

3

Issue

1

First Page

1

Last Page

7

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