Lost Arts?

It is interesting to librarians, and readers in general, how people come across their reading. So I will tell you how I came across mine:  my own children were making university decisions, a discussion arose in our city over the value of public libraries, an article on the front page of the Globe and Mail questioned the financial value of an undergraduate degree in Canada, and, some weeks ago, there was speculation about the roots of vandalism and yobbery in London.  Then Martha Nussbaum’s short book called Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities crossed my desk.  It efficiently argues for a renewal of confidence in the value of a liberal humanities education – one that prepares a citizenry for a full life and the ability to participate effectively in a democratic society.

This topic has preoccupied Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics in the departments of Law, Philosophy, and Divinity at the University of Chicago, for the better part of her career.  The breadth of her facility across this spectrum in the liberal arts enables nimble use of Aristotle, Dewey, Tagore and others to illustrate her essential point: that our exclusive focus on education for profit – individual income, or, in the larger arena, gross national product – is leading us down the wrong path.

Nussbaum’s book is right in swing with the spirit of the time, or so it would seem. The Occupy Wall Street protests are spreading. The protesters’ concerns are relevant to the discussion . . . as are the concerns of the unemployed and under-employed. I was chatting with a friend about this, and the friend directed me to a related CBC interview with Eleanor Wachtel, Nussbaum and Uma Dasgupta about Tagore (another scholar and humanities polymath). Not for Profit is a great place from which to continue the discussion.