Martha Nussbaum: Anger and Revolutionary Justice
2017, Equity + Justice
Anger is not just ubiquitous, it is also popular, even though its damages are so clear. Many people think it is impossible to care sufficiently for justice without anger at injustice. Many also believe that it is impossible for individuals to vindicate their own self-respect adequately without anger.
The lecture will argue that anger is conceptually confused and normatively pernicious. It is neither normatively appropriate nor productive in either the personal or the political life. Nussbaum will make the case in a general way, then turn to revolutionary justice, examining the thought and practice of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela.
This event will be moderated by SFU President Emeritus Andrew Petter and will include a keynote presentation, followed by moderated Q & A.
7:00 p.m. (PT)
Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema
Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
149 West Hastings St.
On this Page
Martha C. Nussbaum received her BA from NYU and her MA and PhD from Harvard. She has taught at Harvard University, Brown University, and Oxford University. From 1986 to 1993, while teaching at Brown, Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on International Cooperation, the Committee on the Status of Women, and the Committee for Public Philosophy. From 1999 to 2000, she was one of the three Presidents of the Association, delivering the Presidential Address in the Central Division.
She has received honorary degrees from fifty-six colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, including Lawrence University, Williams College, the University of Athens (Greece), the University of St. Andrews (Scotland), the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), the University of Toronto, the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris), the University of Haifa (Israel), Emory University, the University of Bielefeld (Germany), Ohio State University, Georgetown University, the University of the Free State (South Africa), the university of Jyväskylä (Finland), and the Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico).
She is an Academician in the Academy of Finland, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Among her awards are the Grawemeyer Award in Education (2002), the Centennial Medal of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University (2010), the Prince of Asturias Prize in the Social Sciences (2012), the American Philosophical Association's Philip Quinn Prize (2015), and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy (2016).
Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School and Philosophy Department. She is an Associate in the Classics Department, the Divinity School, and the Political Science Department, a Member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a Board Member of the Human Rights Program.
