“Hope really is a choice and a practical habit,” says Martha Nussbaum in her new book The Monarchy of Fear – an x-ray of Trump America’s emotions. Building on political theory, psychoanalysis, psychological studies and classics, the philosopher argues that fear, disgust and envy undermine democracy, while Martin-Luther-King-Jr-style-love and ‘practical hope’  offer answers to our current political crises. 

Dubbed as ‘The Philosopher of Feelings’ by The New Yorker, Nussbaum is at her twenty-third book. Currently a professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, she has previously taught at Harvard, Brown and Oxford. In November 2016, Nussbaum was awarded the Kyoto Prize – the equivalent of the Nobel in fields that are non-eligible for the European prize – and thus joined a short list of philosophers including Karl Popper and Jürgen Habermas. Election Day caught the thinker at the award ceremony in Japan. As she was battling her own political anxiety far away from home, Nussbaum then thought her work on emotions “hadn’t gone deep enough” and decided to go deeper by writing The Monarchy of Fear. She discusses divisions, fairy tales, logical fallacies and how we can stop being part of the problem in the interview below.