A Martha Nussbaum quote

"To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it's based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility."

The book this is from is, unsurprisingly, named THE FRAGILITY OF GOODNESS. It's subtitle is perhaps a little less predictable: LUCK AND ETHICS IN GREEK TRAGEDY AND PHILOSOPHY.

Publication year, 1986.

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