Mengatasi "Politik Ketakutan" Intoleransi Beragama

"My mother was a very unhappy woman. She had given up a career as an interior decorator and she was very bored and unhappy. She was a very loving woman and I feel that she was a great source of love and emotion. In fact, once I wrote a philosophical dialogue that my parents figure in, and she's the one who speaks for the emotions. But I also learned that women who are forced to give up their careers don't always have happy lives, and that was important to me." (http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Nussbaum/nussbaum-con1.html)

Setelah menamatkan pendidikan di Baldwin School Bryn Mawr, Nussbaum melanjutkan studinya dalam bidang drama dan kesusasteraan klasik di New York University. Ia berhasil menamatkan pendidikan S1 pada tahun 1969. Ia melanjutkan studi filsafat di Harvard University dimana ia menyelesaikan program masteral tahun 1972 dan Ph.D tahun 1975 dibawah bimbingan G.E.L. Owen. Nussbaum mengakui bahwa sejak awal ia tidak tertarik pada filsafat. Situasi berubah ketika ia mengenyam pendidikan masteral, katanya: 

"I went to this intense feminist school where we fought a lot about ideas, and I had great, great teachers. I didn't call it philosophy at the time. I thought about literature, but I wrote about Dostoevsky, I wrote about Shakespeare, I was thinking about a lot of the same issues that I think about now, about emotions and vulnerability. I was also reading Greek tragedies. So, it was very continuous with what I'm doing now, but I didn't hear the word "philosophy" very much for a long time because I first went to graduate school in classical literature and I switched to philosophy only during graduate school." (http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Nussbaum/nussbaum-con1.html)

Situasi kehidupan pribadi Nussbaum ternyata tidak secemerlang karier intelektualnya. Pernikahannya dengan Alan Nusbaum tahun 1969 berakhir tahun 1976. Periode ini juga menandai kepindahannya ke Yudaisme dan kelahiran putrinya Rachel Nusbbaum. 

Setelah menyelesaikan kuliahnya, sejak tahun 1980-1982 Nussbaum mengajar filsafat dan kesusastraan klasik di Havard University. Ia kemudian pindah ke Brown University dan menggajar di sana hingga tahun 1994 dan bergabung dengan University of Chicago Law School faculty.  Pada tahun 1986, ia mempublikasikan karyanya The Fragility of Goodness yang berbicara mengenai etika Yunani Kuno dan tragedi Yunani. Buku ini berhasil melambungkan namanya sebagai seorang intelektual dalam bidang humaniora.

Sebagai seorang filsuf wanita, Nussbaum juga memperhatikan ketidaksetaraan hak kaum perempuan dalam masyarakat. Melalui karyanya Sex and Social Justice (1999), ia menunjukkan bahwa sex dan seksualitas merupakan sebuah pembedaan yang secara moral tidak relevan. 

Pembedaan ini secara artificial telah dipaksakan sebagai sumber dari hirarki sosial. Maka feminisme dan keadilan sosial memiliki komiten yang sama, yaitu memperjuangkan kebebasan atau kemampuan-kemampuan sentral manusa sebagai sebuah dasar bagi keadilan sosial terhadap kaum perempuan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Nussbaum)

Selain memperhatikan moralitas emosi manusia sebagaimana dituangkan dalam karyanya Hiding from Humanity (2004), Nussbaum juga dikenal sebagai seorang pemikir mengenai keadilan politik sebagaimana tercermin melalui karyanya From Disgust to Humanity (2010). Ia juga memberikan perhatian yang besar kepada masalah keagamaan.  Salah satu buku yang terkenal dan menjadi perhatian tulisan ini adalah The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in An Anxious Age (2012). 

Sederetan karya dapat disebutkan antara lain Aristotle's De Motu Animalium (1978), The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986, updated edition 2000), Love's Knowledge (1990), The Therapy of Desire (1994, updated edition 2009), Poetic Justice (1996), For Love of Country (1996), Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (1997), Sex and Social Justice (1998), Women and Human Development (2000), Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001), 

Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (2004), Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (2006), The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future (2007), Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality (2008), From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law (2010), Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010), Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (2011), The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age (2012), Philosophical Interventions: Book Reviews 1985-2011 (2012), Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (2013), and Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice (2016). Aging Thoughtfully, co-authored with Saul Levmore, will appear in 2017.  She has also edited twenty-one books. (https://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/nussbaum).

Nussbaum menerima berbagai penghargaan atas karya intelektualnya antara lain "the Grawemeyer Award in Education (2002), the Centennial Medal of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University (2010), the Prince of Asturias Prize in the Social Sciences (2012), the American Philosophical Association's Philip Quinn Prize (2015), and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy (2016)." Dan sat ini ia mnnjabat sebagai Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics" di Universitas Chicago. (https://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/nussbaum).