Monthly Archives: October 2013

Martha Nussbaum’s Democratic Citizenship and the Narrative Imagination and Willie van Peer’s Literature, Imagination and Human Rights invite us to explore the idea of literature and its effects on our outlook on the world. According to both writers, literature develops our imagination, and through imagination, we can picture the perspectives of others. Allowing our imaginations to run free and change perspectives  change our thoughts and actions in the world. In short, literature yields imagination, imagination yields empathy, and empathy yields change in our […]

The past week, we were to read and analyze Martha Nussbaum’s “Democratic Citizenship and the Narrative Imagination” in our course package and it immediately sparked faint interest in me. Nussbaum argues that the arts, more specifically, literature, has the ability of “cultivating powers of imagination.” In turn, imagination yields compassion, and compassion is a necessary requirement to become a responsible citizen. Furthermore, compassion helps us  recognize the suffering and misfortunes of others, and ultimately, we relate to their misfortunes. Apparently, we […]