Martha Nussbaum's cretinous Cosmpolitanism

The Literary Hub has published this excerpt from Nussbaum's latest book. Is there a single sentence in it which isn't foolish or mischievous? Let us see.

Human beings are social beings.

Actually, human beings have great plasticity in this respect. It may be that there is an archaic element in our gene pool which dictates for asociality- in other words some people may seek out emptier lands precisely because prefer isolation. Thus both sociability and unsociability are part of our overall evolutionarily stable strategy.

The fact that we are capable of

living in isolation just as we are capable of living sociably proves nothing at all.

interacting with one another through speech and reason, and that we are in a deep sense interdependent and interactive beings,

but, in an equally deep sense, we are completely independent and, as technology develops, require less and less 'interaction'

means

nothing at all.

that we are moral fellow citizens, in the sense that any world citizen’s harm can be grasped by any other, and can move another to appropriate action.

This is completely false. Mochizuki is a world citizen. It may be he is suffering harm because some Mathematicians doubt his proof of the abc conjecture. I can't grasp why- I'm too stupid- and I certainly can't take any appropriate action.

It is easy to say 'we are moral fellow citizens', but we may equally say 'we all participate in the World Soul which seeks salvation'. The thing is purely imperative. It has no alethic content.

Ignorance, distance, obtuseness, and various artificial distinctions separate us.

But, it is part of our species's evolutionarily stable strategy to separate for purely regret minimizing reasons. It is a good idea if our spet split off to go in separate directions. Our genes are now more likely to survive.

But our human capacities are such as to make us members, in principle, of a global moral community.

Only in the sense that, in principle, our human capacities are such as to make us one composite 'global soul' whose salvation can only occur collectively. This is why we must all seek out the Nicaraguan horcrux of my neighbor's cat so that our species can be teleported to the paradisal planet of Arcturus Prime where clouds are made of cotton candy.

Any child might have been born in any nation and spoken any language.

In the sense that my Mummy could be Beyonce and my Daddy could be Chairman Mao.

Events in other nations are comprehensible to us as human events, affecting members of our species.

Nonsense! Events in Russia are not comprehensible to me at all. That is why I have to find reliable authorities on that subject. The proof of lack of it of the abc conjecture is a 'human event'. It affects some very smart members of our species. But the thing is wholly incomprehensible to me coz I iz as stupid as shit.

Our moral concern, our enthusiasm, and our compassion are frequently, if unevenly, aroused by events in other regions.

Coz we might read the newspapers or watch the TV news from time to time. If we are stupid or suggestible we might end up being manipulated in a mischievous manner.

Each child who is born, is, as Kant says, therefore not just a little worldly being, but also a little world citizen (Weltbürger).

So what? Others were saying, 'every child is born is damned to Hell unless such and such ritual is performed'. Gobshites we shall always have with us, because- as Pascal says- there are more monks than Reason.

But if this was so in Cicero’s time,

It wasn't. Plenty of people paid good money to get Roman citizenship. As for 'cosmopolitanism', Cicero himself had spent a lot on instruction in that shite.

it is true in our time in a much more urgent sense.

the same urgent sense in which we must find the Nicaraguan horcrux of my neighbor's cat or else forfeit our chance of being teleportation to the paradisal world of Arcturus Prime.

In our time, the peoples of the world have both communicative and causal links that are far tighter than any even Kant could have imagined.

So what? We are still living in fear of COVID.

We can be in touch with people in India, Africa, and China at the press of a button.

But we don't press that button once the novelty has worn off and we've shagged a couple of crushes from High School or Facebook whom we found on Facebook.

Networks such as the international women’s movement may forge closer and more intimate links than many people have with their own relatives, and certainly their fellow citizens.

But the 'international women's movement' turned to shit long ago.

Nor can we comfort ourselves with the thought that our actions have consequences only in a narrow sphere.

This is true. I know full well that I sometimes get ginormous erections when I am sleeping. Sooner or later, a boner of mine is gonna knock the moon out of its orbit. Women refuse to comfort me when I bring up my fears in this regard.

The gasoline we use affects the common atmosphere;

So do our farts. That's methane dude! It contributes to Global Warming. Enough with the Mexican food already. Have a fucking salad.

our decisions about childbirth affect global population;

mine don't- unless a woman at least twenty years younger than me decides to provide me some comfort.

our domestic health policies influence the global spread of AIDS and other deadly diseases.

Sadly, such policies seem to have had little impact on COVID.

Moreover, national sovereignty around the world is increasingly being eroded

increasingly? Has this woman never heard of the East India Company or the United Fruit Company? What about Coca Cola toppling Allende? Still, it's good to know that Nussbaum agrees with Trump about Huawei.

by the growing global power of multinational private institutions—especially corporations and nongovernmental organizations

it seems she also agrees with Narendra Modi about NGOs.

—to which we contribute in countless ways through our daily choices as consumers. When I drink a Pepsi, I have an impact, however slight, on the living conditions of workers in Mumbai.

No you don't. Don't be silly.

When I buy a pair of running shoes, I support factories in other nations that are likely to use child labor.

So, go barefoot. Also be naked at all times. Don't buy anything ever. Either you are supporting child labor, or you are causing child unemployment. This is because factories which are not employing kids compete with those that do employ kids.

Countless choices I make as a consumer support dictators who get rich from rare natural resources and use their global advantage to tyrannize their people.

But your being shit poor and not being able to make those choices is even better for Dictators.

In this world of constant and complex, frequently hidden, causal interactions, there is no posture of moral safety.

Nonsense! Morality is about actively doing good or a type which clearly exceeds the average amount of bad our existence imposes upon the world.

Even by boycotting all businesses that are involved in child labor abroad (a stratagem that has always seemed to me morally smug and ultimately quite unhelpful), I am having some kind of an impact on the lives of those children.

No you are not. Stop virtue signalling and send them all your money. That's what I did. It is not the case that I am a sad fat loser. I was like this billionaire inventor who gave away all my money to very poor little kiddies

Most often, given the diversity and complexity of corporations and their subdivisions, I will not even see the connections in which I am implicated, and thus I will not be able to steer clear of moral connection even were I to try.

This is irrelevant. If you are a moral person you are maximizing the direct first order good that you do.

Even by taking up a rural life of self-sufficiency and domestic production of all necessities, I would really not be failing to interact with people in other parts of the world.

Yes you would. Similarly, when you climb into a coffin and get yourself buried 6 feet under the ground, you will be failing to interact with goatherds in Guatemala. On the other hand, the local worms will have themselves a feast.

(Had Gandhi’s khadi movement had widespread success,

It did. But it was a money pit. India would have better off if that stupid fad had never got of the ground.

it would have greatly influenced the Indian economy, and, through that, all of India’s trading partners and foreign investors.)

This is nonsense. Suppose khaddar had been financially viable- which it was during the War and which it still is if it focuses on the designer end of the market- it would still have had little impact on India and the World.

As citizens we participate in the making of policies that affect migrants’ lives, welcoming them or turning them away.

No we don't. Not all citizens are voters and not all voters vote and not all votes have any impact on anything. Migration is about Economics. Countries with similar Economies but different migration policies nevertheless come to have similar outcomes in this respect. The difference is that a selective policy means migrants add more value to the Economy.

Our connectedness becomes deeper when we consider migration: the floods of people seeking asylum from political disasters in Syria and Latin America, and from human rights violations in many parts of the world; the more chronic flights from poverty and crime in Latin America and Africa.

This shows people don't want connectedness. They want to get the fuck away from shitholes even if this means being parted from Mummy and Daddy and that idiot sister who used to masturbate at the dinner table but now is Professor of I.R at the National University.

As citizens we participate in the making of policies that affect these people’s lives, welcoming them or turning them away.

Welcomes don't matter. Economics does. People will slip past the most unwelcoming of barriers, if it pays them to do so.

Grotius’s radical idea of the earth as common property

Wasn't radical. If land is not scarce there are no property rights in it. However, Grotius' worked for a Company which was grabbing as much of it as possible. They were also big on slavery.

is not accepted today (even he did not articulate it with any precision),

because land is scarce.

and migration is the source of some of our fiercest political struggles.

because not just land, 'public goods' are actually 'club goods' and are rival and congestible.

Since all this is true, we have far more immediate and compelling moral reasons than Cicero’s readers had to endorse his moral starting point:

Only if we are as stupid and ignorant as Nussbaum.

we are fellow citizens, bound by a common set of moral concerns.

In the same sense that we participate in a Global Soul which must quickly locate the Nicaraguan horcrux of my neighbor's cat so as to teleport to the paradisal world of Arcturus Prime.

For it seems that a sufficient condition of moral concern is causal impact: if what I do to B materially affects B, I must consider the morality of these actions.

Nonsense! Moral Concern uses up cognitive resources which are scarce. Thus there is a first order criteria- viz. does the benefit outweigh the cost- which must be met before the thing is done. Since worthless cretins like Nussbaum and Sen don't produce any benefit by telling stupid lies, they should not express moral concern at all- save when on the toilet, to show it is occupied.

Thus the Ciceronian / Grotian tradition, radical and highly controversial in its own time,

Nobody gave a shit about Cicero's or Grotius's views. They were lawyers who specialized in talking high minded shite. They got in trouble for backing the wrong horse. Cicero fell out with Anthony and was slaughtered. Grotius pissed off the Prince of Nassau but managed to escape from prison.

has now become the necessary starting point for all reflection about morality in an era of rapid globalization.

Nussbaum starting point did not determine her trajectory of stupidity. Why? Because she is stupid and ignorant and can't stop telling absurd lies.

The tradition

of Grotius & Cicero who supported slavery

has left us with some deep insights about human dignity and equality, and about the connection between dignity and a policy of treating human beings as ends.

No. We gain insights about human dignity by being humans and seeking to behave in a dignified fashion by imitating those who have that quality in a more abundant fashion. Reading worthless shite by stupid pedants, on the other hand, causes us to gain a new insight into what William Blake meant when he said

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer;
For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars,
And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power

 Nussbaum and Sen are shite at their subjects because they think that they have some 'Rational Power' to Generalize about the Good. But they are both stupid, ignorant, prejudiced liars of a shameful type.

The term “cosmopolitanism” is now too vague to be useful.

Yet this silly woman has written a book about it.

This tradition has left us the very general idea that in our dealings with human beings anywhere we may not exploit them or use them as mere tools, and we must not even allow them to be so exploited or violated if it is in our power to help them.

This is simply untrue. On the other hand, nowhere in the world can we find any living moral or spiritual tradition which says 'fuck up people. Use them as furniture.'

These vague ideas need to be much more fully specified;

for sociopaths alone

but the tradition does further specify them, and by now we have, as I’ve argued, a good set of alternatives, at any rate, in the area of aggression, torture, and other violations of humanity.

No. Technology and 'Mechanism Design' have shown a better way forward. Political Philosophy had contributed nothing.

But, as I have also argued, the tradition has left us with some profound problems, both in the area of moral psychology and in the area of normative thought about material aid.

In both cases, only technology and mechanism design matter. Nussbaum is speaking of the pseudo problems of a degenerate academic availability cascade.

The Stoics had trouble motivating real human beings to care about global justice.

They had little conception of the globe. Thus they couldn't get anyone worked up about the plight of the indigenous people of Amazonia or the Kalahari.

At best they could conceive of local and familial attachments as delegations from a general duty of respect for humanity, chosen for efficiency reasons.

This is not true. They conceived of the Sage as belonging to 'the cosmic city' acting in perfect obedience to the Right, the Natural, the Divine, Law. Stoics were not concerned with the economic notion of efficiency. They did, however, share certain meditative practice with the Pythagoreans. There was also an ancient theurgic tradition such that aiming for 'henosis' was itself supposed to contribute to cosmic harmony and justice. Nussbaum chooses to remain ignorant of the Catholic and other Religious development of the Cosmopolitan tradition.

And given their worries about the divisive impact of partiality, they often discouraged even this sort of local love.

The more charitable view is that they considered excessive or obsessive love of a partial kind to damage its object.

Cicero offers a better model,

No. He explicitly states that he is not concerned with the higher katorthōmata which involves having the motivation of the Sage. Cicero is confines himself to kathekonta of a conventional, defeasible, type. This does not mean Cicero was unaware that 'a better model' existed. It just wasn't for him or his son who, he hoped, would have an equal political success.

showing how concern for basic principles of respect for human dignity gets sustenance and depth from a variety of more particular attachments, which are also intrinsically valuable—particularly those to family, to friends, and to one’s own republic.

This is not true. Cicero was not concerned with affronts to human dignity like the existence of slavery. He emphasizes the importance of social duties because they end up helping the family. His opposition to Caesar was perfectly rational. His own family and class would have been safer under a Republic with effective Rule of Law.

Those attachments can certainly give rise to tensions with one’s pursuit of justice, as Cicero frequently notes in his treatise on friendship and elsewhere.

Cicero says the equitable course is always self-evident. No 'pursuit' is required because Cicero is affirming conventional morality or Justice as a sort of conditioned reflex.

But on balance it seems a risk worth running, since a pursuit of justice denuded of love is pallid and unable to sustain people.

Cicero says this is unnatural. Obviously, unnatural ways of life can sustain themselves here and there, but the community as a whole can't survive in an unnatural manner.

Justice is difficult, and to pursue it in a world that is in many respects hostile to our strivings requires sources of energy, attachment, and pleasure that the Stoics rejected.

This is not Cicero's view. It may be that the Stoic Sage creates energy of a positive kind which is helpful, in some occult manner, to all beings. But, as a matter of common observation, any sort of striving is sustained simply by eating well and living in a healthy manner. Nussbaum is trying to torture Cicero into saying 'Our capability to pursue Justice depends on our capability to have family life and good nutrition and housing and a liberal education. Thus fuckers wot cut funding to Liberal Arts Departments are guilty of mutilating human beings and rendering them incapable of pursuing Justice. This means everybody will degenerate into cannibalism. They will shit on your porch.' True, I too shat on your porch but it was because Trump tweeted some shite and this caused my conniptions in my tum tum and explosive diarrhea to explode from my bum bum.

So we must bring them back in,

i.e. repackage and sell the Capabilities approach, now it has failed in Econ & Jurisprudence, as having to do with Classical Studies or some other such Liberal Arts waste of time

not only urging people to cultivate particularistic attachments

in other words, we have to tell people to make friends and have sex and look after baby instead of dumping it in the garbage

but also fashioning a politics that cultivates particularistic love.

which means having the sort of politics we already do such that the Government is concerned to promote the prosperity and security of the population which pays its salary

These attachments help us pursue larger concerns, but they are also valuable in themselves, and a large source of the value of our lives

Did you know that kissing Mummy, hugging Daddy, cuddling with your spouse and playing with baby or going for a pint with your mates is 'valuable in itself'? Furthermore, they are a large source of the value in your life. Aren't you glad you read Martha Nussbaum's book? You used to think it was your aversion to friends, family, neighbors and your Nation which was valuable in your life. Your idea of a good time was to starve to death on a mountain top. Now you know you should kiss Mummy, hug Daddy, have a drink with your mates and cheer when your country wins at the Olympics. Reading Nussbaum hasn't been a waste of your time at all.