Benjamin Kilborne: A theme of your many books (see Nussbaum, below and references) is the need to include the emotions in our ideals of judgment and rationality. Can you comment on how ideals of rationality have often not only been unreasonable and unrealistic but also intolerant (and self-serving)?

Martha Nussbaum: The word “rational” is ambiguous. Used descriptively, it means “containing thought” or “responsive to thought.” Used normatively, it means “containing good, sound thought.” To focus first on the descriptive sense, I argue, along with most contemporary philosophers and cognitive psychologists, that emotions contain thoughts: embedded in them are what psychologists call “appraisals,” value-laden ways of seeing the world. Grief perceives the lost person as both valuable and gone; it has a thought-content, and is quite different from the pain of indigestion. So