Why don't Government's abolish death and give us the capability to live for ever? The answer is that many governments did do so. They fostered a particular religion which promised all its adherents eternal life. Heretics and blasphemers were killed. But this was bad for business and bad for national defence because smart people ran away and technology stagnated. It was better to separate Church and State as the Americans had done.
When professors could no longer gas on about God and how they knew better than anyone else what God required of Humanity, some of the more useless ones, the atheists, started to gas on about the capabilities people have. Apparently, only professors of shit subjects know what those capabilities are or ought to be. Could they pretty please be paid a little money to sit on bureaucratic committees gassing on about the capability of senior citizens to develop the capability to take it up the arse? Should there not be a Government Department providing very elderly and feeble people special training in sodomy? Would it not be homophobic to oppose this laudable plan to waste the tax-payer's money and cause great indignation and annoyance to our grandfathers?
Brandon Robshaw writes in Aeon of the 'Necessity of Nussbaum'.
...the capabilities approach (CA) ...says that it is the task of governments (or other bodies that make policy and distribute resources) to provide all citizens equally with the capabilities needed to lead a flourishing life.
Governments have no power to provide capabilities- even the capability to keep living!- to even one of their citizens. It simply isn't true that abilities or capabilities can be equally distributed. It is a different matter that a 'polity'- i.e. the whole of Society- can encourage people to develop their capabilities. But Society can't make everybody equally good at maths or athletics.
(The goal of flourishing, of course, reflects the influence of Aristotle, who held that it’s the primary goal of all organisms to flourish according to their nature.)
Slaves should be slaves because they have a slavish nature. Barbarians have a barbarian nature and so forth.
The CA could be described as the outcome of three propositions:
All human beings have the right to flourish.
Death should be abolished.
Human flourishing can be broadly defined in universal terms.
No. It can't be defined at all. It is a Tarskian primitive. It is obvious that what Aristotle considered to be 'flourishing' we would consider living a short, nasty, brutish life. It is likely that our remote descendants would consider our lives to have been miserably impoverished. Indeed, it may be that true human flourishing will involve having different sorts of bodies and living in different galaxies.
It is the task of governments to provide citizens with capabilities to flourish.
No. It is their task to govern- i.e. ensure the administration is efficient and that defence and diplomacy is properly conducted. It is utterly foolish to suggest that Governments should first take money away from the people and then use that money to enable them to 'flourish'.
Let’s specify what the CA is not. It is not a call for governments to give citizens what they say they need.
So, it is not democratic.
For citizens may not know what they need.
If the governors are citizens they would be equally in the dark. The plain fact is, I know when my arse needs wiping, the Government does not. Wherever this type of information asymmetry obtains, the Government should not intervene. However, there are 'collective action problems' where the Government can pay for and obtain superior information. Where 'market failure' obtains, Government's can play a helpful role though there are non-State alternatives.
The CA arose in part as a response to the problem of adaptive preferences.
Which has never been a problem in economics save for some repugnant, addictive, goods.
well-known example is the sour grapes phenomenon. The fox claims he didn’t want the grapes because they were green and unripe; but only because he couldn’t reach them.
Foxes can't speak. This is not adaptive preferences. It is substitution of a feasible commodity bundle for an unfeasible one.
In the same way, people who lead deprived or impoverished lives may suffer from deformation of their preferences.
They don't. This is some stupid shit Amartya Sen kept repeating. What had happened was this- reported morbidity was lower in places where those doing the survey just filled in anything they liked. It was higher where surveyors actually talked to people before filling out the form. Thus more prosperous areas reported higher morbidity but that also has to do with the high income elasticity of demand for health-care. You might wrongly conclude that a place with a lot of doctors has a lot of people who think they are sick whereas a place where there are no doctors is a place where people are unaware that they are as sick as fuck. Economist rejected Sen's stupidity. Nussbaum bought into it because she has a low IQ.
It’s therefore up to governments (or other appropriate bodies) to put capabilities in place.
Because a guy who is blind doesn't get that he is blind. A government officer must explain to him that he can't see. Otherwise the dude will be all like 'I got 20/20 vision mate. I've never had an accident driving my Maserati even at top speed.' This is why Capability theorists need to explain to starving blind peeps that they can't see and don't drive a Maserati. Indeed, they don't have a car. They are just sitting in the dirt going 'vroom, vroom!'
(Nussbaum has tended to focus on the need to do this for women in particular
because women are stupid. I often go up to them and say 'did you know you needn't be so fat, ugly, and mentally retarded? The Government could enhance your capabilities.' They kick me in the bollocks. This is because I iz bleck.
– not because women are more deserving but because, in many parts of the world, for women the capabilities are in shorter supply.)
because they are stupid, ugly and are mentally retarded. Gayatri Spivak has written a lot about this. This her description of women in Bangladesh- 'In reproductive culture, these girls' knees scissor in at adolescence and slowly open wider and wider as the rhythm of childbearing in the rhythm of tide and wind is seen as the definitive predication of gendering'. Women really hate their own kind.
But what are capabilities? I give Nussbaum’s full list below, but to put the point in general terms, a capability is the opportunity (a genuine, realisable opportunity, not just a formal permission in a published document) to achieve a function required for wellbeing – such as the capability to be adequately nourished,
which does not exist where there is a food availability defict
or to be educated,
which does not exist if there is no money for teachers or there are no teachers
or to choose one’s own partner,
Nussbaum will invade Saudi Arabia
or follow the religion of one’s choice.
and Iran. She will lead millions of Arab and Persian homosexual couples to Christ.
Nussbaum wants to establish the capabilities as rights to which citizens, in all nations, are entitled
Why not demand the abolition of death, instead?
Once the capabilities are known, preferences are likely to change in response.
You have the capability to suck off hobos. I tell you this. You now prefer to suck off hobos though previously you only liked vaginas.
After all, you are more likely to prefer a good you know you can get than one that is out of reach.
No. You are more likely to get stuff you can get while preferring stuff which you can't.
But in avoiding the Scylla of taking citizens’ preferences at face value,
in other words doing what market researchers do- which is useful
the CA does not veer towards the Charybdis of making their choices for them.
It just talks endless virtue signalling bollocks.
This cannot be over-emphasised: the CA does not aim to provide functions that people are required to perform, or goods that they are required to accept. It aims to provide capabilities of which each individual may avail themselves to the extent they see fit.
With what money? That of the tax-payer? Fuck off!
It’s a non-paternalist approach that respects individual autonomy.
What about their autonomy in not having to pay for stupid bureaucratic shite?
As Nussbaum puts it in Women and Human Development (2000):
[F]or political purposes it is appropriate that we shoot for capabilities, and those alone.
Politicians know what it is appropriate to shoot for- stuff like lower taxes, better public services thanks to efficiency audits, reducing the regulatory burden and pointless red-tape, etc. etc.
Citizens must be left free to determine their own course after that. The person with plenty of food may always choose to fast, but there is a great difference between fasting and starving, and it is this difference that I wish to capture.
Nussbaum is channeling a great discovery by Amartya Sen. Did you know that a person on a diet isn't starving? Has someone informed the authorities? Maybe, when millions of Bengalis starved in 1943 or 1974, they were just dieting or fasting? Yet my Uncle Binoy Ranjan Sen, Director of F.A.O, thinks more food should be grown! Would it not be easier to persuade people to have a bit of nosh instead of obstinately starving to death.
Nussbaum developed the CA in conjunction with the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen. She and Sen had a romantic relationship for several years, and worked on the theory during this period. This is not the only time Nussbaum’s partner has also been her intellectual collaborator; later, when she was in a relationship with Cass Sunstein, they co-edited and both contributed essays to the book Animal Rights (2004). It was, in fact, Sen who originally pioneered the CA. In his book Commodities and Capabilities (1985), he argued that neither opulence nor utility were suitable ways of measuring outcomes. Instead, governments should aim to provide citizens with opportunities to pursue the kind of life they choose.
Sen ran off with his best friend's wife to pursue the kind of life he preferred. Government should give more opportunities for adultery or affairs. Capability to fuck should be enhanced by Government.
Unlike Sen, who is wary of being ‘canonical’ about capabilities,
because it is impossible. Nobody knows their own, let alone any body else's, capabilities.
Nussbaum fleshes out the detail of the CA by listing 10 specific ones. They are (my parenthetical explanations are summaries of Nussbaum’s):
Life (being able to live a normal human lifespan). Wife- specifically being able to run away with your best friend's spouse if she can help your career more than your own wife.
Bodily health (being able to have good health, including reproductive health, and adequate nourishment and shelter). All animals and plants are responsible for their own health. You create moral hazard if you take on that responsibility for others. To maintain reproductive health, you need to be a bit choosy about whom you fuck.
Bodily integrity (being able to move freely without risk of assault; making one’s own sexual and reproductive choices). This just means providing a good enough Army and Police force.
Senses, imagination and thought (being able to use the senses, imagination and thought in a ‘truly human’ way, cultivated by education, and having opportunities to use these powers). Stupidity of Nussbaum's sort must be subsidized.
Emotions (being able to have healthy attachments to things and people, to love, to grieve and to feel justified anger). Dreams. Being able to have good dreams. Bowel Motions. Being able to have an enjoyable shit.
Practical reason (forming one’s own conception of the good, including liberty of conscience). Gaining the power to levitate by practicing Transcendental Meditation.
Affiliation (A: capability for social interaction, friendship and freedom of assembly; and B: protection against discrimination on grounds of sex, race, caste etc). Joining the Nazi party and gaining 'Strength through Joy'.
Other species (being able to live in relation to the world of nature). Charlie Brown should be allowed to marry Snoopy the dog. They will have beautiful puppies together.
Play (being able to enjoy recreational activities). Masturbation.
Control over one’s environment (A: political – being able to make political choices, including freedom of association and of speech; B: material – being able to hold property). Government should promote Donald Trump's capability to run the country.
The list is intended to be universal (the capabilities are appropriate for all human beings) and provisional (in principle, the list could always be amended and updated, perhaps as technology changes our lives, or as we discover more about human needs and psychology).
This is a school girl's list. Not a bright school girl. A stupid one. I suppose people who study Artistotle at Uni, but don't learn ancient Greek because they are too lazy and stupid, have to put up with this sort of puerile instruction in order to get a sheepskin.
There are other differences between Sen’s and Nussbaum’s versions of the CA. For Sen, the primary use of the CA is to offer a standard of comparison of quality of life between nations.
Plenty of such indices exist. What matters is in which direction people migrate. This indicates what they truly value.
Nussbaum agrees: but she wants to go further and establish the capabilities as rights to which citizens, in all nations, are entitled.
Again this had already been done. The ideology of the 'Welfare State' gained practical application during the Great Wars and the period of reconstruction. Rationing was done on the basis of what people needed to do different things. Thus pregnant women and nursing mothers got more of certain commodities as did those doing arduous manual labor.
Is the CA, then, basically the same as a human rights approach?
It is antithetical to the most important human right- which is to dispose of one's own property and to choose what one wants to consume for oneself.
Certainly, it is compatible with a human rights approach. One might say it is a form of human rights approach. What distinguishes the CA, though, is that it aims not just to be a formal statement of rights and freedoms, but to provide real opportunities to do or be what one desires.
It is concerned with 'positive freedoms'- just like Totalitarian societies.
It is also more specific about the actual activities that each person should have the capability to pursue than the abstract claims of human rights declarations.
In a Command economy, the State decides what job you should do. If you don't like it, you may be killed.
Another difference between Sen and Nussbaum is that for Nussbaum the notion of reaching a threshold is more important than full capability.
It is a case of 'leveling down' not 'leveling up'.
The pressing goal is to get each person to a level where they can access the capabilities to at least some extent. For now, there will continue to be inequalities between nation-states. Let’s say that women in the United States have 100 per cent of all the capabilities. (They almost certainly haven’t, but let’s just say.) And let’s say that in Afghanistan they have 0 per cent of the capabilities. (Again, I exaggerate.) For Nussbaum, the task would be to get that Afghan figure moving up towards 10 or 20 per cent – a threshold where women can begin to exercise some of the capabilities.
Sadly, this involves killing lots of Afghan people. The problem is, they may kill our soldiers thus causing our leaders to decide to run the fuck away.
Equality of capabilities with the US would be a far longer-term goal. Sen does not use the notion of a threshold. However, as Nussbaum has pointed out, he also has not explicitly committed to the goal of complete capability equality, so, Nussbaum said, ‘to the extent that his proposal is open-ended on this point, he and I may be in substantial agreement.’
They are both useless. That is what we can all agree about. Still, there used to be 'capability based' assessments of our interventions in places like Afghanistan- till Biden decided to run away.
One final difference lies in their presentation of the CA. Like Nussbaum, Sen writes with clarity, but Nussbaum has a warmer, more human style,
she is a chatty Cathy.
and in Women and Human Development she includes case studies describing the lives of actual individuals, whom she met while working with development projects in India.
Her 'work' was useless. Still, she said 'boo!' to Modi. That must count for something- right?
This makes the ideas much more accessible, and Nussbaum may be fairly said to have popularised the capabilities approach as well as developing it.
She showed you didn't need to pretend to know Economics in order to talk bollocks about it.
Nussbaum’s universalism has its critics. Mary Beard,
who is a much better Classics scholar
in a negative review of Women and Human Development in the Times Literary Supplement, claimed that Nusbaum’s capabilities are in fact based on culturally specific values: they are ‘a set of criteria impossible to frame in anything other than a Western language – and probably in anything other than American English.’
Beard is wrong. Any school girl anywhere can write what Nussbaum has written. Government should give everyone the capability to go to Mars and become a Super-Model. Also, I want a pony.
Nussbaum, however, anticipated such criticism and pre-emptively answered it. She made three points. First, the CA does not rule out people choosing local or traditional norms if that’s what they want.
Taliban is welcome to stop women coming out of their homes. Also, they should not sit in rooms with windows facing the street. Finally, they should not talk so loudly that men can hear their voices.
Second, she discussed the problem of adaptive preferences: it may well be that some people, especially women, appear to be satisfied with traditional norms, but only because they fear reprisals if they challenge them.
In which case they are obviously not satisfied at all.
If new alternatives become available, attitudes can quickly change. And thirdly, Nussbaum points out that cultures are neither unchanging nor monolithic. It simply is not true that only Westerners value life, or bodily integrity, or liberty of conscience. There are protests against unfair treatment throughout India just as there are in the US.
In India, leading a protest can gain you power and money. That's why there are so many protests.
In short, I think Nussbaum must be absolved of the charge of being too Western in her values,
What the West values is smart peeps who contribute to STEM subjects. But, that is also true of the East and the North and the South.
or too paternalist, or too perfectionist. Because her capabilities are at a high level of generality, and because it is optional whether or to what degree one translates them into functioning, and lastly because they seem (to me, at any rate) to form a highly plausible account of basic goods that are widely valued, I contend that their universality holds up. These are worthwhile goals to aim for.
In the sense that it is worthwhile to stay in bed watching Netflix while aiming to become an immortal angel able to fly to other Galaxies.
It’s often assumed that the emotions and the intellect are two separate though interacting systems.
Because they are.
Sometimes they are thought to be opposed, with emotions clouding rational judgments. Another view is that emotions tell us what we want, and the intellect tells us how to get it: ‘Reason is and ought only to be the Slave of the Passions,’ as David Hume put it in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739). Nussbaum, however, rejects the dichotomy on which both those views are based. For her, the emotions are inseparable from ethical judgments. Her first book on the subject, Upheavals of Thought (2001), builds and defends a theory in which the emotions play a vital role in moral and political philosophy.
Why stop there? Why not say farts play an equally vital role? The fact is people avoid you if you keep wailing or screaming just as they avoid you if you keep farting.
The title is taken from Marcel Proust’s novel Remembrance of Things Past (1913) – one of many instances where Nussbaum’s knowledge and love of literature informs her philosophy (it is worth noting that her first degree, from New York University, was in Classics). In a passage used by Nussbaum as an epigraph, Proust writes that M de Charlus falling in love with Charlie Morel produces ‘real geological upheavals of thought’, causing a sudden mountain landscape of ‘Rage, Jealousy, Curiosity, Envy, Hate, Suffering, Pride, Astonishment, and Love.’
Charlus may have been intelligent but he achieved nothing. Morel made money out of him. The Great War showed that 'upheavals of thought' didn't matter. Planes and Tanks and Submarines did. The Germans had a 'hymn of hate' against England, but England prevailed because it figured out ways to sink submarines and shoot down Zeppelins and send tanks into battle.
In the Proustian view, then, as in Nussbaum’s, emotions are not separate from thought but are a form of thought, which projects outwards to objects in the world.
Proust was influenced by Bergson. But Einstein took down Bergson's pants and made fun of his puny genitals. Vitalism is an empty slogan clutched at by stupid people.
Nussbaum states in her introduction that emotions are ‘intelligent responses to the perception of value’.
No. They are signaling devices which may, in their origin, be 'Darwinian algorithms'. But ignoring them leads to better outcomes. In any case, they are plastic. It is easy to turn them in a direction favorable to you.
And this has consequences for ethics:
Instead of viewing morality as a system of principles to be grasped by the detached intellect, and emotions as motivations that either support or subvert our choice to act according to principle, we will have to consider emotions as part and parcel of the system of ethical reasoning.
After which we can consider farts and burps and poking people with a sharp stick.
Emotions therefore have an essential cognitive element.
Not if what you are doing is important. Only if the thing doesn't matter in the slightest- e.g. who wins which sporting tournament- do we let emotions run riot in the arena.
But, Nussbaum says, we need a broad definition of ‘cognitive’ that does not entail that the emotion be formulated as a linguistic proposition by the entity experiencing it.
All emotions have been so formulated long long ago.
That would rule out babies and nonhuman animals as having emotions, when plainly they do have them.
Both make noises which are linguistic or which we can interpret linguistically easily enough.
To have an emotion, in Nussbaum’s theory, entails ‘thought of an object combined with thought of the object’s salience or importance’, even where this isn’t or cannot be put into words by the thinker.
You can have emotions which aren't linked to any object. Also the object may be of no importance or salience. As Hamlet says of actor weeping on the stage- "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?"
Some might perhaps find it hard to accept that emotions have a cognitive component. It might seem as if an emotion as primal as, say, grief has nothing to do with cognition.
It may have a neuro-chemical cause. There are pills for that.
After all, a cow separated from her calf feels grief; are we to ascribe a cognitive component to her moos of distress?
Sure. The cow may take certain actions after having uttered those moos. The cow-herder may be beforehand in this.
Nussbaum would simply answer yes. The cow cannot of course express her grief in the form of a proposition. Nevertheless, her grief arises from knowledge. She knows her calf is important to her, she knows her calf is missing, and she knows this is outside her control (that is why she grieves).
Is alarmed. Some animals, e.g. elephants, grieve collectively. A Darwinian explanation can be given for this.
The traditional split between reason and emotion has no place in Nussbaum’s account.
But not in the account of a savant doing useful stuff- i.e. working in STEM subjects.
She emphasises, too, that there is a continuum, not a cleavage, between the emotions of humans and nonhuman animals, and between childhood emotions and adult emotions.
But emotions are excluded from 'mission critical' tasks- or even those useful tasks we are paid to perform.
But the fact that emotions have deep roots does not mean we are at their mercy:
we may be. There are techniques for controlling them but we can recuse ourselves if we feel they would be overmastering. A surgeon is not expected to operate on his wife. A judge is not expected to sentence his own son to death.
‘cognitive views of emotion entail that emotions can be modified by a change in the way one evaluates objects.’
No. The evaluation remains the same. I am angry with the man who killed my son. That is why I am recused from passing sentence on him. Another judge may be equally angry with the murderer but is better able to act in a dispassionate manner by strictly observing relevant protocols. It is not that the emotion is modified but that it is quarantined and thus can't affect proceedings.
Instead of the Kantian story of a rational will forcibly suppressing unruly passions,
there is no such story. Force is not required. Dispassion- i.e. disintermediating the emotion- merely means following objective rules which have no emotional valency.
‘we can imagine reason extending all the way down into the personality, enlightening it through and through.’ So emotions such as anger and hatred can be changed through changes in thought – which has consequences for both morality and politics.
This is not the case. Our shit continues to stink and our emotions remain emotions however rational we become. It is just that we ignore that shite.
Nussbaum’s thought is dynamic
it is puerile. Why re-invent the wheel only to end up with a watermelon?
– constantly developing throughout her career. Nowhere is this better evinced than in her views on the emotion of anger. In her first version of the 10 capabilities above, the capability of experiencing emotions included as an example justified anger.
This is some silly story about how all Bleck peeps should be constantly seething with rage about Slavery and Jim Crow while all Wimmin should be utterly furious that they have to sit down to pee.
This reflects the conventional view that anger is a response to unjust treatment and fits in well with Nussbaum’s cognitive account.
It fits in well with the utter puerility of non-STEM subject instruction at the College level.
But later she began to question the conventional view. In her book Anger and Forgiveness (2016), she develops an extraordinarily subtle psychological account of anger, and concludes that it is ‘normatively problematic’.
only in so far as farting is. The fact is norms have a representation as a deontic logic in which neither emotions nor farts feature though both may be termed permissible in some but not other circumstances.
In fact, she wrote an essay for Aeon, ‘Beyond Anger’ (2016),
which I have discussed in detail here
outlining with her customary clarity just why anger is an unreliable guide to action in both private and public realms.
Both that essay and Anger and Forgiveness draw on the Stoic philosopher Seneca’s arguments against anger in his De Ira (On Anger).
But Europe chose to turn Christian. Christianity has a Day of Wrath.
Nussbaum recognises that Seneca has many good arguments against anger – it is often the result of oversensitivity and self-importance, it puts too much value on rank and status, it is the sign of a weak character, it is not efficacious in deterring bad behaviour in others, and so on. But Nussbaum does not follow Seneca’s Stoic indifference all the way. Some things do matter; some of the things we get angry about do need to be remedied, and we can take steps in that direction. But anger itself should not be involved in the remedy.
If that remedy is provided in a protocol bound manner. Otherwise it may be permissible or 'righteous'.
Anger, Nussbaum argues (following Aristotle), is Janus-faced: it looks backwards to the injury received, and it looks forwards to retaliation, or the Road of Payback as Nussbaum terms it.
This may or may not be the case. However, any reaction to any stimulus could be said to be Janus faced. But so can farting. The fart looks back to the shit in the colon from which it escaped. It looks forward to stinking up the room. Hopefully, the farter will take the hint and go to the toilet before he fudges his pants.
The problem is that payback either involves false or incoherent ideas, or it commits us to an unwise, immoral and ultimately unhelpful worldview.
It may do. It may not.
Suppose, in the first place, one takes the view that payback – making the offender suffer – somehow annuls the original offence. On this reading, payback leads to justice. It wipes the slate clean. The trouble is that such a reading is rooted in a fundamental error. Causing the offender to suffer does not really wipe the slate clean. The original injury is not thereby removed. Executing a murderer does not resurrect their victim. Torturing a torturer does not remove the pain and scars of those who suffered at their hands. The idea that we can somehow reach into the past via retribution and make it as though the original offence never occurred is a false and incoherent belief.
But it is a belief nobody has ever had! Why not write a book about how it is a false and incoherent belief that taking a shit will permanently remove all shit from the colon? Why do people cheerfully quit the toilet after having dropped their load? Don't they understand that they will have to return to that very toilet and drop another load the very next morning? Aristotle explained this to Alexander. The young Macedonian said 'I will invade India! In that magical country, everybody just takes one shit in their whole lifetime. The turd they produce is called Amartya Sen'.
So that’s one justification for payback eliminated. But Nussbaum considers another: the road of status. Suppose we think of injury in terms of personal status (as indeed many people do). Somebody does me an injury. I feel humiliated, downgraded. I have lost status. But if I can retaliate, injuring my aggressor as severely as or, better, more severely than they injured me, now their status is lowered and mine is back up where it was, or even a little higher. As Nussbaum emphasises, this does actually work. Unlike the road of payback, the road of status does take me where I want to go.
It is likely that primitive Societies retaliated against those who failed to exact Tit for Tat vengeance. In other words, the penalty for failing to get payback is that you become a 'broken man' who has to seek a protector. But this means losing freedom and becoming a servile creature.
But am I right to want to go there? Nussbaum sees this as morally problematic.
We have courts which either approve or punish 'payback'. This is a problem we know how to solve.
A person who sees her relationship to others in terms of competitive prestige has a ‘normative focus [that] is self-centred and objectionably narrow’, as she put it in her Aeon essay.
We may say this of anyone we dislike. Martha thought she had the right to censure the Gujarati voter for electing Modi. But Modi is a great man welcomed by Heads of States which are opposed to each other. Sen & Nussbaum are useless tossers whose ideas have been rejected by electorates in their own countries.
We will not achieve justice nor ameliorate society by thinking in this way.
Useless tossers don't achieve anything.
Hence Nussbaum’s position that anger – where this is construed as involving a thirst for retribution – is normatively problematic.
Those capable of retribution who actually achieve it may be judged to have acted commendably or criminally. We have had Courts for a very long time. Psilosophers are too stupid to relitigate the matter at this late hour.
And that is why more recent versions of her capabilities list leave out righteous anger.
what about smelly farts?
There is, however, a third way: what Nussbaum terms ‘the Transition’. Like the roads of payback and status, this is also forward-looking, but in a more constructive sense. Transition-Anger takes the form of thinking ‘How outrageous! Something must be done about this!’ It pivots swiftly from the painful feeling of anger to practical planning to make things better.
What 'practical plan' have Sen & Nussbaum come up with? The fact is rights are ineffective or meaningless save if linked to incentive compatible remedies under a bond of law. Incentive compatibility is about the reverse game-theory that is mechanism design. More generally, raising 'general purpose' productivity is what raises 'capabilities'. School-girlish or Sen-tentious prattle is a waste of time.
It is welfarist. Securing improved welfare
involves raising productivity
may indeed happen to involve punishment for reasons of deterrence, or to incapacitate dangerous people and keep the public safe, or to reform offenders – but the goal is not to make offenders suffer, nor should harsher suffering be inflicted than is necessary to achieve deterrence, incapacitation or rehabilitation.
The fact is primitive societies can't afford to punish those on whom they depend for survival. That is why punishment is left to the after-life.
Nussbaum allows that the emotion of anger can have some limited utility – as a signal that something is wrong, as motivation to put things right, and as a deterrent to warn others not to overstep the mark. But ‘beneficent forward-looking systems of justice have to a great extent made this emotion unnecessary, and we are free to attend to its irrationality and destructiveness.’
This happened long, long, ago. On the other hand, if you live in a rough neighborhood, being known to have a short fuse has survival value.
Moreover, Nussbaum argues that ‘noble anger’ is an unreliable guide to action.
Which is why nobody predicted that America would launch a War on Terror or that Obama would have Osama kidnapped and killed.
And here she hints at an important psychological truth, in my view insufficiently remarked upon: that feeling angry usually makes one feel righteous. (Indeed, people who have an uneasy sense that they might be in the wrong often get angry – at times, it seems, on purpose – and then their doubts disappear.) It is therefore not a good idea to pursue justice under the influence of anger, because the measures one takes – however unwise, disproportionate or violent – will feel justified.
Nussbaum hasn't noticed that whatever decision we take seems justified to us.
Perhaps the most important reason for reading Nussbaum is that
if you are really stupid and did badly at skool, you feel happy that you have found a Professor who is stupider than you
her philosophy is never divorced from the messy, complex and sometimes painful stuff of real life.
True. It is thoroughly mixed with her own feces. Still, it warms the cockles of our heart to think of Grad Students having to digest that turd sandwich.
This is certainly true of her latest book, Justice for Animals (2023), written in honour of her daughter Rachel Nussbaum Wichert, who
was a cat?
worked for Friends of Animals and who died in 2019;
she developed a drug-resistant infection after a transplant operation. Guys working on better drugs are doing useful work. Nussbaum isn't doing useful work.
and it is true of her forthcoming book. Nussbaum and her daughter had co-authored papers on animal rights; while in hospital, Rachel had read draft chapters of the new book, which applies the CA to the lives of animals.
Her next book is on plants. Many rocks are wondering when she will get round to them.
Nussbaum is currently working on a book that will weave together reflections of philosophers on Greek tragedy with the real-life tragedy of her daughter’s death.
She will manage to get us to laugh heartily at her daughter's misfortune.
As in much of her work, the personal, emotional and philosophical strands are intertwined, and her writing is all the more powerful for that.
Not powerful enough to keep her daughter alive. The fact is, if you shut down useless University departments and refused to give sheepskins to kids who study puerile tosh, you will have more money and talent for STEM subject research. That means stuff like finding better drugs to help people fight infections after transplant surgery. Scientific research raises general purpose productivity and hence capabilities. Gassing on about norms is a waste of resources.
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