SOURCE: McInerny, Daniel. “‘Divinity Must Live within Herself’: Nussbaum and Aquinas on Transcending the Human.” International Philosophical Quarterly 37, no. 1 (March 1997): 65-82.

In the following essay, McInerny examines Nussbaum's thinking on transcendence and “virtue-ethics,” as expressed in her essay “Transcending Humanity.”

Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams? Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else In any balm or beauty of the earth, Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The bough of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul. 

Wallace Stevens, “Sunday...