Rating: 
Summary: Classical thinking in a postmodern world.
Review: "Cultivating Humanity" is one of the most thoughtful examinations of the concept of a liberal education that I've read in a long time. Nussbaum tell us that Socratic questioning is still on trial, that becoming a citizen of the world is a lonely business, and that a visceral and intellectual understanding of compassion is a key requisite. This book amounts to classical thought applied to the dilemmas of postmodernism. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Classical thinking in a postmodern world.
Review: "Cultivating Humanity" is one of the most thoughtful examinations of the concept of a liberal education that I've read in a long time. Nussbaum tell us that Socratic questioning is still on trial, that becoming a citizen of the world is a lonely business, and that a visceral and intellectual understanding of compassion is a key requisite. This book amounts to classical thought applied to the dilemmas of postmodernism. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: How Can She Teach Us?.....
Review: As an author trying to get us to open our minds to other cultures of the world, Nussbaum falls well short. She is horribly closed-minded in the fact that she force feeds her beliefs, denying other views without showing why they are wrong. Her overly documented lessons on Socrates are redundant and verbose. The whole book is the mindless drivel of an author trying to tell us how to live our lives. I am more open to other cultures than you are open to other arguments Ms. Nussbaum.
Rating:
Summary: How to Become a Citizen of the World
Review: I have had the privelige of studying and discussing Matha Nussbaum's work for the past several years at the Thomas More Institute in Montreal, a wonderful little think-tank dedicated to education and learning by the Socratic Questioning method; after learning a lifetime's worth from this one small volume, I wish that the title of my review could be the sub-title of this book. Questioning this book has answered many a question on many levels allowing colleagues and I to piece together answers to life's most important questions on education, world citizenship and what it really means to be cosmopolitan.This book has been especially important as reading and discussing it has answered any question or doubt that I might have had about the liberal arts education - experience. Through discussion this text has been brought to life and my choice of education thus makes more sense to me today than it did when the experience was begun several years ago. I wish that there could be a way for every educator, legislator, parent and student to be exposed to this book and the philosophy behind it; anyone who picks it up, regardless of background, will find it enriching if not enlightening. One cannot read this work without wanting to strive towards becoming a true citizen of the world.
Rating:
Summary: Nussbaum is not reliable
Review: I have seen the disagreements among reviewers of Nussbaum's books, and I think that those who are wary of her are better readers both of her work and of the works she discusses. She simply is not reliable in her accounts of what anyone says, ancient, modern, or anything else. On the very first page of this book she makes mistakes as she summarizes the plot of Aristophanes' "Clouds." And she's a classicist? But for real laughs in "Cultivating Humanity" read her way over-simplified explanation of compassion in Rousseau and others. Honestly, she doesn't have a clue about what makes that such a complex passion or what Rousseau thought its purpose should be. In recent years she has embarrassed herself repeatedly on the "Letters to the Editor" page of The New Republic by angrily attacking people for things they never said. That is in keeping with what she does in this book. No, she is not even open-minded enough to fairly represent what other people say and think, never mind to learn from them. And from her we're to learn to live together in harmony with everyone as world citizens? OK.
Rating: 
Summary: Problematic, but still will still provoke...
Review: I'm not enough of a scholar to evaluate Nussbaums's treatment of "The Clouds" or Rousseau (are you?) but her treatment of the major topics are thought provoking -- and thus the book is well worth reading. The only significant flaws I stumbled upon were her dismissal of the paradox of Democratic change, and of the objections of ideology. The former: when is a minority (perhaps 'elite') position a legimate corrective/adjustment to a democracy, and when is it an extemist and illegitimate distraction? The astonishing fact is that the problem in distinguishing one from the other interferes greatly with Nussbaum's laudatory depictions of "diversity" education, without providing even a hint of the underlying dilemma. For instance, arguments against racial bigotry are implicity conflated, in Nussbaum's book, with arguments against homosexuality. Personally, I agree with this... but how is a *democracy* to arrive at such a conculsion? Any controversy must, inevitably, be advocated at first by a minority. When is such a minority to be granted the academic privilege (as Gender Studies have, in todays University) and when not (as the 'pro-life' or 'creationist' perspectives)? Nussbaum completely ignores the problem, treating the liberal perspective as the only rational one. This is related to the latter problematique: sometime a "received" doctrine (i.e., conservative Christian dogma) discerns a threat in the argument for "diversity". To a liberal, this perspective seems absurd. But where is the line to be drawn? If an alien culture (or domestic minority) were to advocate something extreme -- perhaps human sacrifice or infant euthanasia? How are 'believers' to discern which moral positions are too extreme to be defenced (bias against miscegenation; homosexual behavior) and which are defensible? (suttee? abortion?) Nussbaum provides no guidance; nor -- more importantly -- does she elaborate on how the academy is to respond to questions regarding such a deliniation.
Rating:
Summary: A Sober Defense of Open-Mindedness
Review: Inasmuch as this book is an account of Nussbaum's research on the success of muticultural education at a few dozen American universities, it will be read as a challenge to the doom-saying conservatives who argue that education has gone to Hell since we abandoned the Great Books tradition of the Fifties. And it works rather well as such: as well as she can while writing for a lay audience, she confronts the likes of Alan Bloom on their own terms, demonstrating that there's a lot to be said for seeing muticultural education as an extension, rather than a betrayal, of the Western Philosophical Tradition. But what's interesting is her intolerance of hypocrisy on the Left as well as the Right: she denounces the excesses of Afrocentrism and the self-validating fantasies of academic feminism as well as any conservative editorialist. She's very much her own woman, and a public moralist in the best sense.
Rating:
Summary: Flaws in the Details
Review: No one can doubt the good intentions and noble sentiments of Nussbaum. But I have gone through this book very carefully, looking up her references (and noting the lack of references in critical places), and I have found its arguments to be on very shaky ground. Just take the example of her use of Plato. She says he was an elitist but that Socrates was a democrat. But she gives no quotes or citations to show that Socrates was a democrat. She admires him in the Republic for being open to other "cultures," but that she doesn't note that the philosopher-king alone philosophizes in the city of that dialogue. (She says there's a difference between Plato and Socrates and that the Republic presents the views of Socrates--though she never explains how she can tell the difference or how she knows the Republic presents Socrates' views.) She distorts Plato by claiming he shows Socrates saying philosophy is for everyone. She misunderstands Socrates' assertion in the Apology that no one in the jury will believe him if he says the best way to live is to philosophize. (N. insists Socrates thinks philosophy is for everyone, while he plainly says no ordinary Athenian values philosophy or--even after his long life--can be convinced by him of its value.) Many such flaws in her discussion of other philosophers can be found. But even more striking is that she herself is very closed-minded she deals with her opponents. She tends to be very unfair in characterizing their positions. I think it's critical that someone who insists the world needs more openness should demonstrate openness. Nussbaum doesn't.
Rating:
Summary: A Sober Defense of Open-Mindedness
Review: Nussbaum makes several good points in her critique of the liberal education in her book Cultivating Humanity. She brings under the microscope such ideals as examing our own beliefs and how we must be world citizens in order to fully understand humanity. An overall excellent book, Nussbaum makes many good points and supports her idea well. Occasionally, we are lost in the wordiness of it. I feel that some of what she had to say could have been condensed, but it detracts nothing from the book.
Rating:
Summary: Nussbaum's Defesnse of the Liberal Eduacation~My Opinion
Review: Nussbaum makes several good points in her critique of the liberal education in her book Cultivating Humanity. She brings under the microscope such ideals as examing our own beliefs and how we must be world citizens in order to fully understand humanity. An overall excellent book, Nussbaum makes many good points and supports her idea well. Occasionally, we are lost in the wordiness of it. I feel that some of what she had to say could have been condensed, but it detracts nothing from the book.
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