The therapy of desire by Martha Nussbaum(book review)

In case of depression, unhappiness, grief, heartbreak, spleen or any other trouble of the soul, who would have the idea today to consult a philosopher? Probably not so many people. Yet, in ancient times, philosophers were considered to be doctors of the soul, just as doctors are considered to be doctors of the body. In her dense and complete work The Therapy of Desire, Martha Nussbaum thus rightly points out that the philosophical systems were all based on a therapeutic ambition: that of curing human beings of the things that trouble them. At that time, far removed from the elucubrations of contemporary philosophy, theory almost never detached itself from practice, which is also an ethic. Within this framework, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, Scepticism and Stoicism all propose their own definitions of the good as happiness (eudaimonia) and the methods to be adopted to achieve it.

A little like Jean-Jacques Rousseau with his Emile (Emile, or On education), Martha Nussbaum creates her own protagonist to review the different systems of antiquity: Nikidion. She is a female disciple who will successively integrate each of the four great schools mentioned above to see what they can bring her as a human being in search of the good life. This writing process keeps a common thread in the development and makes the reading more enjoyable. Nikidion is an…