Martha Nussbaum Love's Knowledge Summary

In Love’s Knowledge Martha Nussbaum argues that literary work, in the form of novels, plays an important role in ethical education. Nussbaum explains that the content of the novels she has chosen to examine provide answers to the question, “How should one live?” Nussbaum examines the texts using characteristics that are part of an Aristotelian position on ethics. Reading a novel takes an individual on a journey that allows that to grow ethically because they come engaged in the subject matter. Novels ask that the reader leave behind the present moment to become a part of a story that is being told in another dimension. This commitment to the text integrates the lessons of the story into the reader’s way of thinking, which influences how they behave as a moral agent.
In philosophical treatises philosophers of times construct complex examples to support their claims. These examples are not expressive in the same way that literary works are which is why Nussbaum holds that novels are a fitting form for philosophical content. Schematic examples do not allow the reader to deeply connect with the content because they do not have “good fiction’s way of making the reader a participant and a friend”. Becoming a moral agent requires that an individual works at and is actively engaged in the development of their moral education. Nussbaum further argues that presenting schematic examples takes the work out of developing one’s own moral character. Examples used in philosophical writings are “ethically salient” meaning that they make obvious to the reader what is significant. By presenting such a concise example reader is not able to find the important details themselves, which Nussbaum argues is crucial to developing