Martha C. Nussbaum's "Cultivating Humanity"
Subtitled "A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education," the book presents a philosophical argument for world citizenship, and the relevant educational reform, as well as a descriptive picture of what is actually happening in American campuses. The argument enlists Socrates and the Stoics, in the main, to argue for thinking of ourselves as inquiring world citizens. The description of college reform relies on information gathering and hundreds of interviews from a "core" group of 15 institutions chosen to represent different types of colleges and universities. The combination of philosophical and empirical approaches achieves what many polemics on higher education don't: a coherent and reasonable argument backed up by a rich picture of actual reality. The world citizen, which American universities should produce, is characterized by three traits: Socratic self-examination, understanding of different cultures, and narrative imagination, the last of which...