Martha Nussbaum and Politics PDF
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Martha Nussbaum and Politics 7880_Robshaw.indd 1 17/11/22 1:15 PM Thinking PoliTics series Editors: geoff M. Boucher and Matthew sharpe Published titles Agamben and Politics: A Critical Introduction Sergei Prozorov Foucault and Politics: A Critical Introduction Mark G.E. Kelly Taylor and Politics: A Critical Introduction Craig Browne and Andrew P. Lynch Habermas and Politics: A Critical Introduction Matheson Russell Irigaray and Politics: A Critical Introduction Laura Roberts Lyotard and Politics: A Critical Introduction Stuart Sim Hannah Arendt and Politics Maria Robaszkiewicz and Michael Weinman Martha Nussbaum and Politics Brandon Robshaw Forthcoming titles Nancy Fraser and Politics Marjan Ivković and Zona Zarić Judith Butler and Politics Adriana Zaharijević 7880_Robshaw.indd 2 17/11/22 1:15 PM MARTHA NUSSBAUM AND POLITICS Brandon Robshaw 7880_Robshaw.indd 3 17/11/22 1:15 PM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Brandon Robshaw, 2023 Cover illustration and design: Jonathan Williams Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Adobe Sabon by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-3995-0547-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-3995-0549-9 (webready PDF) ISBN 978-1-3995-0550-5 (epub) The right of Brandon Robshaw to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 7880_Robshaw.indd 4 08/12/22 10:59 AM contents Introduction: A Public Intellectual 1 1 Nussbaum and the Ancient Greeks: Tragedy, the Luck-Proofing of Life, and Practical Rationality 10 2 Nussbaum and Education: Socratic Scrutiny, World Citizenship and the Narrative Imagination 30 3 Nussbaum and Feminism: Liberal Feminism, Adaptive Preferences and FGM 51 4 Nussbaum and Capabilities: Human Nature, Human Flourishing and the Ten Capabilities 76 5 Nussbaum and Animal Rights: Capabilities for Animals 99 6 Nussbaum and Religion: Liberty of Conscience, Accommodation and Burqa Bans 117 7 Nussbaum and the Emotions: Emotions as Cognitive Judgements – and a Normative Critique of Anger 139 8 Nussbaum and Global Justice: Cosmopolitanism, Material Aid and Immigration 163 Conclusion: An Organic Whole 185 Bibliography 188 Index 194 7880_Robshaw.indd 5 17/11/22 1:15 PM 7880_Robshaw.indd 6 17/11/22 1:15 PM Introduction A Public intellectual I first encountered Martha Nussbaum in 1987. She appeared as a guest on Bryan Magee’s BBC television series The Great Philosophers. At that time I had not studied philosophy, but took a dilettante-ish interest in it. The format of each programme was that Magee would interview a leading contemporary philosopher about the ideas of some great philosopher of the past, just the two of them sitting on a sofa, debating; and Martha Nussbaum was brought in as the Aristotle specialist. Nussbaum would have been still in her thirties when the pro- gramme was recorded and was in fact the youngest contributor to the series (beating Peter Singer, who talked to Magee about Karl Marx, by one year). Magee introduced her by saying that she had ‘estab- lished a reputation very young in Aristotle scholarship’ (1988: 34). She had recently been made professor at Brown University and her book The Fragility of Goodness had been published the previous year. There were, no doubt, other, more senior Aristotelian scholars whom Magee could have chosen. But he could not have made a better choice. Magee stated that he employed two criteria in selecting which modern philosophers should discuss the philosophers of the past: they had to be experts in their subject, of course, but they also had to be skilled communicators (Magee 2004: 520). The second of these criteria was no less important than the first. And in Martha Nussbaum he found an expert communicator; a philosopher with the gift of making highly complex ideas seem lucid and comprehensible, to rival Magee’s own gift (which is saying a good deal). Nussbaum was the only woman guest over the whole series (there were twelve episodes), which in itself made her something of a trail- blazer. There were far fewer women philosophers then than there are now, and Nussbaum was one of the first to achieve a prominent public profile. But her contribution was notable not only because she was a young woman in a field of middle-aged men. Her exposition was sharp, smart and witty; she made ideas that were over two thousand years old spring to life. Despite finding much to disagree with in Aristotle’s 1 7880_Robshaw.indd 1 17/11/22 1:15 PM martha nussbaum and politics work – his dim view of women and his defence of slavery, for example – Nussbaum strongly endorses his approach to philosophy: the philosopher must be someone who’s attentive to and almost humble before the variety of human life and its great richness. But at the same time one who is committed to giving explanations, one who is committed to mapping that richness in a perspicuous way. In every area he strikes a kind of balance: between oversimplifying theorising that takes philoso- phy too far from the richness and complexity and even messiness of ordi- nary discourse and, on the other hand, a kind of negative or deflationary philosophising that says theorising is all a house of cards and there’s no point in asking for and giving explanations. I think Aristotle has found the right balance, and has probably the best conception of the philosophi- cal task that one can give to a student. (Nussbaum in Magee 1988: 54) This characterisation of how philosophy ought to be done is an accurate description of the way that Nussbaum herself does it. After this, Martha Nussbaum was on my radar, but for some time as a rather distant presence. She is a prolific author and every now and again I would read a review of one of her books and remem- ber her performance on The Great Philosophers. It was not until decades later that I began to study philosophy seriously myself; when I did, I found myself immersed in Nussbaum. My PhD thesis was in political philosophy – ‘Should a Liberal State Ban the Burqa?’ – and I soon discovered that Nussbaum had written extensively and perspicuously on every aspect of the topic. She had written about liberalism. She had written about feminism. She had written about personal autonomy. She had written about multiculturalism. She had written about religious freedom. She had even written, explicitly, about burqa-wearing. In the year 2012 I finally got to meet her, a quarter of a century after first seeing her on television. She gave a paper at a conference at Durham University which I attended. After her talk we had a brief conversation – fifteen minutes or so – about our views on the burqa, which did not entirely align. She was courteous, interested in what I had to say, and rapier-sharp in defending her own position. Nussbaum: An Overview Martha Nussbaum is one of the most important living philosophers, who has made influential contributions in many areas of moral and political philosophy. Her work has been widely reviewed and debated, 2 7880_Robshaw.indd 2 17/11/22 1:15 PM introduction: a public intellectual and has garnered many honours. The following list is far from exhaustive, a mere sprinkling of greatest hits: she has been awarded no fewer than sixty-four honorary degrees from universities around the world; several of her books have won awards, such as the 2000 Book Award of the Year bestowed by the North American Society for Social Philosophy, for Sex and Social Justice; she was listed among the world’s top 100 intellectuals by Prospect magazine in 2005 and made the same list in the American publication Foreign Policy not only in 2005 but in 2008 and 2010 as well; in 2016 she received the Kyoto Prize, which comes with an award of $500,000 and is ‘the most pres- tigious award offered in fields which are not eligible for a Nobel, joining a small group of philosophers that includes Karl Popper and Jurgen Habermas’ (Aviv 2016); most recently, in 2021 she received the Holberg Prize, an international award conferred by the Norwe- gian government, for her ‘groundbreaking contribution to research in philosophy, law and related fields’. Yet, to date, no synoptic account of her work has been published. That is a surprising fact, for which I canvas some possible explana- tions below. But first, a list of distinctive features of her approach which demonstrates that it’s high time her oeuvre received the book- length treatment it deserves: • For Nussbaum, philosophy’s purpose is to provide ideas and principles that can be applied in the real world. She is no ivory tower intellectual; ideas should inform public policy. (This might be traced to her intellectual debt to Aristotle, with his emphasis on practice, rather than Plato’s valorisation of timeless, absolute ideas.) • Nussbaum is a public intellectual. It is noteworthy that she pub- lishes not only for academic presses and journals, but also for newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, the New York Review of Books and the New Republic (and appears on TV shows like The Great Philosophers; she has also presented a pro- gramme on Plato on the Discovery Channel). She wants her ideas to have influence outside the academy. • Nussbaum is a superb communicator. She writes in lucid, acces- sible prose and her works can be read for sheer pleasure, which is certainly not something that could be said of all academic philoso- phers. She has the gift of making the reader feel intelligent (unlike certain theorists who use jargon, abstruse terminology and appeals to authority to baffle and bully the reader into acceptance). 3 7880_Robshaw.indd 3 17/11/22 1:15 PM martha nussbaum and politics • Her work is exceptionally wide-ranging, covering ethics, political philosophy, animal rights, personal autonomy and global justice, among many other areas. • Although Nussbaum’s work tackles contemporary issues, she is a scholar of the history of philosophy. Her books provide excel- lent introductions to such philosophical giants as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Mill and Rawls, relating their ideas to today’s world. • Nussbaum’s work is broadly in the tradition of analytic philosophy, but she is also a synthesiser. She brings together ideas and argu- ments from different centuries, relating them to one another and developing new theories from a synthesis of the old. • For Nussbaum, philosophy does not exist in isolation, but can and should be informed by other disciplines, including the study of liter- ature, psychology, economics, law, history and behavioural science. • Certain themes are consistent throughout Nussbaum’s long career: the Aristotelian concept of flourishing, the importance of the emo- tions, the principle of equal human worth and dignity. However, her work has never stood still and she often revisits, revises and reinvents positions. • Nussbaum is one of the most important exponents of the liberal tradition in political philosophy, which in recent years has (unde- servedly, in my view) fallen from fashion. • Nussbaum has the ability to find things of value even in philo- sophical views with which she disagrees. Thus, she has important reservations about both Stoicism and utilitarianism, but she also finds many valuable insights in those traditions. She is never guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. • Finally, her philosophy is rooted in an idea of what it means to be human (again, following Aristotle). It would, of course, be stretching matters to suggest Nussbaum’s work has been neglected, given her media presence, the recognition she has received and the awards she has won. Nevertheless, it does seem rather odd that no synoptic account of her work has been pub- lished. Why should this be? Nussbaum is an extremely prolific writer and among academ- ics there can be a distrust (and perhaps envy?) of those who write ‘too much’. A bizarrely hostile review of her work by Geoffrey Galt Harpham, ‘The Hunger of Martha Nussbaum’, appeared in the jour- nal Representations in 2002, suggesting that her productivity was the result of some kind of neurotic compulsion. Harpham’s theory is that 4 7880_Robshaw.indd 4 17/11/22 1:15 PM
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