Upheavals of Thought

Part I. Need and Recognition: 1. Emotions as judgments of value; 2. Humans and other animals: the neo-stoic view revised; 3. Emotions and human societies; 4. Emotions and infancy; Interlude: 'things such as might happen'; 5. Music and emotion; Part II. Compassion: 6. Tragic predicaments; 7. Compassion: the philosophical debate; 8. Compassion and public life; Part III. Ascents of Love: 9. Ladders of love: an introduction; 10. Contemplative creativity: Plato, Spinoza, Proust; 11. The Christian ascent: Augustine; 12. The Christian ascent: Dante; 13. The Romantic ascent: Emily Brontë; 14. The Romantic ascent: Mahler; 15. Democratic desire: Walt Whitman; 16. The transfiguration of everyday life: Joyce.

Martha C. Nussbaum, geboren 1947, ist Ernst Freud Professor of Law and Ethics an der University of Chicago. An derselben Universität lehrt sie außerdem in den Fächern Rechtswissenschaft, Theologie und Klassische Philologie. Neben zahlreichen Schriften zur Philosophie der Antike hat sie vor allem Arbeiten über moralphilosophische Themen veröffentlicht. Dabei behandelt sie oft Fragen am Schnittpunkt zwischen Ethik, öffentlicher Moral, Literatur und Problemen des Feminismus. 1993 hielt sie die renommierten Gifford Lectures über Themen der Moralphilosophie und der Philosophie der Psychologie.

'... a staggering feat of synthesis...creates an argument for the dignity and moral efficacy of emotion that is not only an intellectual tour de force but a moving triumph of humanistic thinking.' New York Times Book Review '... united in an original and altogether personal way the philosophy of the emotions with the texture of life and the experience of art ... Upheavals of Thought is what Henry James, one of Nussbaum's favorite authors, would have called a 'great, glittering thing'.' Los Angeles Times Book Review '... a philosophical milestone. Few books of our time make one feel so privileged to enter into them ... A generation may pass before anyone gives an account of thinking about emotion and its human stakes as deep as Upheavals of Thought.' San Francisco Chronicle '... In this massive study Nussbaum takes the perennial boxing match between thought and perception to a brilliant new register ... it has the feel of a major achievement.' Publishers Weekly '... a brave and civilized book. And at a time when we need above all an understanding of political emotions its subject could not be more welcome.' The New Republic '... unites in an original and altogether personal way the philosophy of the emotions with the texture of life and the experience of art ... The book shows an impressive familiarity with the classics, with psychology, with anthropology, with the law and with its own version of psychoanalysis.' Los Angeles Times Book Review '[Nussbaum] is among America's most prolific and prominent public intellectuals, with many causes to her credit, to all of which she brings extraordinary scholarly and liberal credentials ... it is a brave and civilized book. And at a time when we need above all an understanding of political emotions, its subject could not be more welcome.' The New Republic 'It is an awesomely ambitious and unabashedly personal book. It contains ... three elegant studies of the role of the emotions in human flourishing ... this is a magnificent