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Inclinations SQUARE ONE First-Order Questions in the Humanities PAUL A. KOTTMAN, Series Editor INCLINATIONS A Critique of Rectitude Adriana Cavarero Translated by Amanda Minervini and Adam Sitze STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA Stanford University Press Stanford, California English translation ©2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. Foreword ©2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude was originally published in Italian under the title Inclinazioni: Critica della rettitudine © 2014, Rafaello Cortina Editore. This book has been published with the support of the Department of Philosophy, Education, and Psychology, University of Verona. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress isbn 9780804792189 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 9781503600409 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn 9781503600416 (electronic) Cover art: Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. Wikimedia Commons Cover design: Rob Ehle Text design: Bruce Lundquist Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/14 Minion Pro Contents Foreword vii Introduction 1 1 Barnett Newman: Adam’s Line 17 2 Kant and the Newborn 25 3 Virginia Woolf and the Shadow of the “I” 35 4 Plato Erectus Sed . . . 45 5 Men and Trees 57 6 We Are Not Monkeys: On Erect Posture 65 7 Hobbes and the Macroanthropos 71 8 Elias Canetti: Upright Before the Dead 81 9 Artemisia: The Allegory of Inclination 89 10 Leonardo and Maternal Inclination 97 11 Hannah Arendt: “A Child Has Been Born unto Us” 107 12 Schemata for a Postural Ethics 121 Coda: Adieu to Lévinas 133 Notes 177 Foreword Paul A. Kottman Adriana Cavarero’s Inclinations is not just a “correction” of rectitude, but a critique of rectitude. That is, this book investigates the discursive conditions of possibility for the characterization of the human being as upright, erect. Cavarero proposes inclination not simply as the “real” nature of the human being, by unmasking uprightness as a wrong characterization of our true essence. Instead, Cavarero investigates the way in which human beings have been figured or depicted as upright, in philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropological writings, literature and artworks. Cavarero aims to shed light, in particular, on the effects of this figuration, the “truths” and “power relations” that these discursive or artistic figurations produce and install. Given the long-standing depiction of human (in particular, male) uprightness and rectitude, it seems less fruitful to ask whether these figurations were “correct” depictions of human beings. (An emphasis on “correctness” could itself be seen as one of the effects under investigation.) Cavarero is inter- ested, rather, in tallying the costs of depicting the human being as upright when it comes to our view of women, our overall understanding and collective self-conception. One effect of the figuration of the human being as “upright,” Cavarero suggests, has been to obscure another, perhaps more natu- ral, figuration for people in their relation to one another: inclination. Cavarero returns to themes she has discussed thoughtfully in other viii Foreword writings over the course of her career: maternity, love, representations of women. She “distills,” as she puts it, a “rhetoric of inclination,” in order to superimpose it “like a transparent screen, over the rhetoric of the philosophical subject, to highlight the differences between the two ontological, ethical, and political models.” For Cavarero, artworks, literary texts, and philosophical dis- courses are not just passive “reflections” of social realities. Nor do art and philosophy simply mirror the prejudices or belief systems of a historical era—such as patriarchy, or Christian morality. Instead, she treats art and philosophy as a matrix for the understanding of our cul- tural heritage. Cavarero interprets philosophical texts and artworks in order to see how human lives and interactions have been understood—and, thus, how they might be understood differently. It is in this sense that Cavarero’s work is concerned with first-order questions in the humanities. At a certain point in Inclinations, for instance, Cavarero interprets the significance of Leonardo da Vinci’s depiction of Mary in his painting The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. She contrasts Mary’s inclined body and outstretched arms, in the Leonardo painting, to the immo- bility of the Byzantine Theotokos, which presents the upright Christ figure to the viewer. Although Cavarero does not mention Hegel in this regard, I could not help but recall the way in which Hegel, too— in his Lectures on Fine Art—saw in Italian painting an emancipation from the understanding of human beings presented in late Byzan- tine icons. Like Cavarero, Hegel even singles out Leonardo for praise in this regard. Hegel, moreover, agrees with Cavarero regarding the world-historical significance of these painterly depictions of maternity and maternal love, which expand our understanding of what it is to be human. In Cavarero’s hands, artworks and philosophical texts shed light on our fundamental self-conceptions—as mothers, chil- dren, lovers—and how these change over time. Inclinations