The Philosopher of Feelings [SLNewYorker]
July 19, 2016 8:21 AM Subscribe
A New Yorker profile by Rachel Aviv: Martha Nussbaum’s far-reaching ideas illuminate the often ignored elements of human life—aging, inequality, and emotion.
Be they philosophers, writers, doctors, they all turn to what it means to be old as they get on in years.
posted by Postroad at 10:11 AM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Postroad at 10:11 AM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
I just want to pull this bit out, because it's the only place in the piece where it speaks to why Nussbaum is a problematic figure for feminists and feminism:
In the sixties, Nussbaum had been too busy for feminist consciousness-raising—she said that she cultivated an image of “Doris Day respectability”—and she was suspicious of left-wing groupthink. Once she began studying the lives of women in non-Western countries, she identified as a feminist but of the unfashionable kind: a traditional liberal who believed in the power of reason at a time when postmodern scholars viewed it as an instrument or a disguise for oppression. She argued that the well-being of women around the world could be improved through universal norms—an international system of distributive justice. She was impatient with feminist theory that was so relativistic that it assumed that, in the name of respecting other cultures, women should stand by while other women were beaten or genitally mutilated. In “Sex and Social Justice,” published in 1999, she wrote that the approach resembles the “sort of moral collapse depicted by Dante, when he describes the crowd of souls who mill around in the vestibule of hell, dragging their banner now one way now another, never willing to set it down and take a definite stand on any moral or political question. Such people, he implies, are the most despicable of all. They can’t even get into hell because they have not been willing to stand for anything in life.”
In 1999, in a now canonical essay for The New Republic, she wrote that academic feminism spoke only to the élite. It had become untethered from the practical struggle to achieve equality for women. She scolded Judith Butler and postmodern feminists for “turning away from the material side of life, towards a type of verbal and symbolic politics that makes only the flimsiest connections with the real situations of real women.” These radical thinkers, she felt, were focussing more on problems of representation than on the immediate needs of women in other classes and cultures. The stance, she wrote, “looks very much like quietism,” a word she often uses when she disapproves of projects and ideas.
In letters responding to the essay, the feminist critic Gayatri Spivak denounced Nussbaum’s “civilizing mission.” Joan Scott, a historian of gender, wrote that Nussbaum had “constructed a self-serving morality tale.”
posted by migrantology at 12:06 PM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
In the sixties, Nussbaum had been too busy for feminist consciousness-raising—she said that she cultivated an image of “Doris Day respectability”—and she was suspicious of left-wing groupthink. Once she began studying the lives of women in non-Western countries, she identified as a feminist but of the unfashionable kind: a traditional liberal who believed in the power of reason at a time when postmodern scholars viewed it as an instrument or a disguise for oppression. She argued that the well-being of women around the world could be improved through universal norms—an international system of distributive justice. She was impatient with feminist theory that was so relativistic that it assumed that, in the name of respecting other cultures, women should stand by while other women were beaten or genitally mutilated. In “Sex and Social Justice,” published in 1999, she wrote that the approach resembles the “sort of moral collapse depicted by Dante, when he describes the crowd of souls who mill around in the vestibule of hell, dragging their banner now one way now another, never willing to set it down and take a definite stand on any moral or political question. Such people, he implies, are the most despicable of all. They can’t even get into hell because they have not been willing to stand for anything in life.”
In 1999, in a now canonical essay for The New Republic, she wrote that academic feminism spoke only to the élite. It had become untethered from the practical struggle to achieve equality for women. She scolded Judith Butler and postmodern feminists for “turning away from the material side of life, towards a type of verbal and symbolic politics that makes only the flimsiest connections with the real situations of real women.” These radical thinkers, she felt, were focussing more on problems of representation than on the immediate needs of women in other classes and cultures. The stance, she wrote, “looks very much like quietism,” a word she often uses when she disapproves of projects and ideas.
In letters responding to the essay, the feminist critic Gayatri Spivak denounced Nussbaum’s “civilizing mission.” Joan Scott, a historian of gender, wrote that Nussbaum had “constructed a self-serving morality tale.”
posted by migrantology at 12:06 PM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
This Butlerian polemic[pdf] is, I think, the "now canonical essay" mentioned in migrantology's quote.
posted by thelonius at 12:28 PM on July 19, 2016
posted by thelonius at 12:28 PM on July 19, 2016
Some context on Nussbaum as a philosopher of emotions: She holds an extreme 'cognitivist' position according to which emotions are essentially evaluative judgements- no bodily feelings necessary. In introductory books on the emotions, this is usually mentioned as the initial, obviously wrong, position to disregard before moving on to more plausible views. I would add that this very bloodless view seems to align with her personality- as is apparent in the article.
Other than that, she's a marvellous philosopher.
posted by leibniz at 12:29 PM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
Other than that, she's a marvellous philosopher.
posted by leibniz at 12:29 PM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
it's the only place in the piece
well, it was the right place in the piece for it, i think, and also sufficient. the subject isn't "the trouble with martha nussbaum's feminism"—which is just to say that i wouldn't read "the only place in the piece" as "leaves something important unaddressed."
posted by listen, lady at 1:21 PM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
well, it was the right place in the piece for it, i think, and also sufficient. the subject isn't "the trouble with martha nussbaum's feminism"—which is just to say that i wouldn't read "the only place in the piece" as "leaves something important unaddressed."
posted by listen, lady at 1:21 PM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
like reading it alongside the new york profile of judith butler is a really rich experience, and each piece also meets its own aims.
posted by listen, lady at 1:23 PM on July 19, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by listen, lady at 1:23 PM on July 19, 2016 [4 favorites]
im really interested in her work on disgust for a variety of reasons, as a queer thoelogian but in a lot of ways, because her unique position on a non bodily non maateral disgust.
posted by PinkMoose at 5:22 PM on July 19, 2016
posted by PinkMoose at 5:22 PM on July 19, 2016
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