Hello everyone I'm Stephen West. This is philosophize this.

Thanks for supporting on Patreon. So today we're talking about the philosopher Martha Newsbaum.

She's one of the names that often comes up in conversations about the greatest living philosophers. We did an episode on some of her work,

episode 190, and for whatever it's worth that episode has become the most listen to episode in the last year of the show,

which is pretty nifty. I'm sure she cares a lot about

that whole title but if you don't remember the episode we talked about her concept of

neo stoicism we talked about how to Martha Neusbaum the history of Western thought

has been filled with this mistaken way of thinking

about the emotions. But when we're trying to learn more about the world around us, people typically

just assume that there's two ways you could be looking at it. You got clear thinking on the one hand, that is rational thinking, where we use logic and deduction to figure things out.

And then on the other hand, we have unclear ways of thinking that are more emotional, more irrational. The assumption by so many over the years

has been that to base your understanding of something on an emotional response you have to it, well, that

just makes you a moron. Emotions are irrational things. For the love of Christ man,

pull yourself together and start thinking more rationally and logically about stuff.

That's what a lot of people would say here. But as we laid out on episode 190 to Martha Newsbaum, this is the wrong way

to be thinking about it.

That in reality to her, when you pay attention to what the emotions are, when emotions are properly

examined, they are actually extremely valuable. are properly examined.

They are actually extremely valuable appraisals of our reality,

and people are always making these sorts of appraisals about the things that matter to them.

So as she says, if we don't pay close enough

attention to these emotions, we run the risk of completely missing huge pieces of

...