Martha Nussbaum

Early Life and Education

Martha Craven Nussbaum was born on May 6, 1947, in New York City. She grew up in a wealthy Philadelphia family — her father was a lawyer — and has described her privileged upbringing as giving her both a classical education and an awareness of the moral complacency that can accompany privilege.

She studied theatre and classics at New York University before pursuing graduate work in classical philosophy at Harvard, where she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. She became the first woman to hold a Junior Fellowship at Harvard and taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford before joining the University of Chicago in 1995, where she holds appointments in both the Law School and the Philosophy Department (Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics).

Classical Philosophy and Literature

Nussbaum's early work established her as a leading scholar of ancient Greek philosophy. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986) examined how Greek tragedy and philosophy (Plato, Aristotle) addressed the vulnerability of the good life to fortune. Against the Platonic-Kantian tradition that sought to make the good life invulnerable to contingency, Nussbaum argued — drawing on Aristotle and the tragedians — that vulnerability to loss, luck, and the uncontrolled aspects of human existence is not merely a deficiency but is constitutive of many of the highest human excellences.

The Therapy of Desire (1994) explored Hellenistic philosophy (Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics) as forms of philosophical therapy for the passions, arguing that ancient ethical philosophy was not merely theoretical but practically oriented toward the relief of suffering.

Love's Knowledge (1990) and Poetic Justice (1995) developed a distinctive philosophical defense of literature as a form of ethical reasoning — arguing that novels (particularly those of Henry James and Charles Dickens) cultivate moral perception, empathy, and the capacity to attend to the particularity of human situations in ways that abstract philosophical argument alone cannot.

The Capabilities Approach

Nussbaum's most influential contribution is the capabilities approach to justice and human development, developed in Women and Human Development (2000), Frontiers of Justice (2006), and Creating Capabilities (2011). Building on Amartya Sen's earlier capabilities framework and on Aristotelian political philosophy, Nussbaum argues that justice requires ensuring that every person has access to a set of central human capabilities — not just formal rights or aggregate welfare, but actual opportunities to function in ways essential to a dignified human life.

Nussbaum specifies a list of ten central capabilities: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; and control over one's environment (political and material). These capabilities define a minimum threshold of justice: any society that fails to guarantee them to all its citizens falls below the line of decency.

The approach has been adopted by the United Nations Development Programme as a framework for assessing development beyond GDP and has influenced policy discussions in areas including disability rights, gender equality, animal welfare, and education.

Emotions and Political Philosophy

Nussbaum has made major contributions to the philosophical analysis of emotions. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001) developed a neo-Stoic "cognitive-evaluative" theory: emotions are not mere animal impulses but forms of evaluative judgment about things we consider important for our flourishing. This analysis of emotions grounds her political philosophy: democratic societies need to cultivate certain emotions (compassion, love of justice) and resist others (disgust, shame directed at marginalized groups).

Hiding from Humanity (2004) argued that disgust and shame are unreliable bases for law, while Political Emotions (2013) explored how liberal democracies can cultivate civic love and compassion without becoming repressive. The Monarchy of Fear (2018) analyzed the role of fear in American political life.

Other Contributions

Nussbaum's work extends across an extraordinary range: religious liberty (Liberty of Conscience, 2008), aging and disability (Frontiers of Justice, 2006), animal rights (Justice for Animals, 2022), and global justice. She has been a consistent defender of the humanities against calls for purely technical education (Not for Profit, 2010).

She is among the most awarded living philosophers, having received the Kyoto Prize, the Berggruen Prize, the Holberg Prize, and dozens of honorary degrees.