Martha Nussbaum Quotes
Fear and monarchy pair nicely. But democracy means you have to work with people you may not like but you must still believe are your equals. And a fearful people never trust the other side.
Nussbaum, Martha. The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis. Simon & Schuster, 2018.
This statement is at first hard to comprehend in that the Arab League is made up nations not one of which guarantees much less allows its citizens any modicum of freedom. However, the notion of freedom for many Muslim nations at the time was that individuals have obligations and duties while groups and nations are entitled to group freedom. Thus this Prime Minister of an autocracy with no freedom guaranteed any of its citizens can call for freedom for the Palestinian people as a group of Iraq as a nation. The concept is different than that of Western, industrialized democracies.
Martha Craven Nussbaum is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosophy department. She has a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy, existentialism, feminism, and ethics, including animal rights. She also holds associate appointments in classics, divinity, and political science, is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a board member of the Human Rights Program. She previously taught at Harvard and Brown.
