TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY: Intellectual Heroes and Key Themes

1. TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY: Intellectual Heroes and Key Themes

2. LECTURES • The pariah as rebel. • The hope of the hopeless. • Message in a bottle. • Absolute free. • Human flourishing. • Genealogy as critique.

3. V. HUMAN FLOURISHING

4. 1. VIRTUES What about the good life? • CAPABILITIES How to conceive global justice? 3. COSMOPOLITANS Which attitude is appropriate to the deal with the big issues of the 21th century?

5. 1. VIRTUES

6. CLASSICAL ETHICS • The central question of classical ethics > how to live? • Many philosophers answered that question by underlining the importance of certain virtues (courage, honesty, decency, truthfulness etc.). • A virtues life is, according to classical philosophers, a good life. • However, they differ concerning the question which virtues are important and outweigh others. • Plato > virtues that are helpful to have the unstable aspects of life under control. • Aristoteles > virtues that are helpful to find the golden mean, because it is impossible to have the unstable aspects of life under control.

7. MODERN ETHICS • In modern ethics the question of the good life retreats into the background. • Respect for the plurality of lifestyles implies that it is impossible to prescribe what the just answer to this question is. • The answer is the concern of the individual. • Modern ethics restricts itself to normative issues that can be the object of a rational debate and will lead to generally accepted judgments. • All in all modern ethics is all about the traffic rules for people with different ideas about the good life.

8. THE RETURN OF VIRTUES • The eighties of the 20th century > a kind of rebirth of virtue ethics. • Philosophers place classical philosophy with its attention for the good life in the forefront. • There are mainly three philosophers who are responsible for the renewed reflection on virtues: 1. Alasdair MacIntyre > After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory (1981). 2. Bernard Williams > Moral Luck (1981). 2. Martha Nussbaum > The Fragility of Goodness. Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986).

9. MARTHA NUSSBAUM BIOGRAPHICAL DATA: • 1947: Born May 6, in New York. • 1969: Studies classics and theatre at New York University. • 1972: Studies philosophy at Harvard University. • 1978: PhD in philosophy at Harvard University. • 1986: involved in research on the quality of life at the World Institute for Development EconomicResearch (Wider) of the United Nations. • 1995: Professor in law and ethics at the University of Chicago.

10. MAJOR WORKS • The Fragility of Goodness (1986). • Loves knowledge (1990). • The Therapy of Desire (1994). • Poetic Justice (1995). • For Love of Country (1994/1997). • Cultivating Humanity (1997). • Sex and Social Justice (1998). • Women and Human Development (2000). • Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions (2001). • Frontiers of Justice (2006). • The Clash Within (2007). • Liberty of Conscience (2008). • Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010).

11. THE IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONS • Nussbaum combines classical with modern ethics. • She mobilizes especially the work of Aristotle to change modern ethics. • Like Aristotle one has to admit that emotions should be taken seriously. • Emotions don’t frustrate a rational view on reality. • For instance, anxiety is in most cases based on the correct view that there is a danger. • However, Nussbaum doesn’t think that every emotion is rational and from a moral perspective appropriate. • She criticizes the stoic vision that emotions should be under control in order to be independent of the unstable aspects of life. • A life without emotions is not only an illusion, but also poor.

12. PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE • Nussbaum underlines the importance of literature for the clarification of moral questions. • Literature is good for the ability to judge, because a reader of a novel will become acquainted with different perspectives on an issue. • Novels, poems and tragedies make an appeal to the intellectual capacity, the emotions and the imagination of the reader. • Without having the life of the characters of a novel, the reader can experience a lot and enrich his life. • Literature embodies a lot of wisdom that can be fruitful for philosophy.

13. THE WISDOM OF TRAGEDIES • Tragedies > stories with a dramatic end that give expression to practical wisdom and show that one cannot control everything. • They are dealing with the tension between will and fate. • Most often they present moral dilemmas > situations where it is impossible to determine which of the possible options is the best. • Tragedies give expression to contradictory norms. • Example: Agamemnon of Aeschylus.

14. A SACRIFICE • With his crew on the journey to Troy Agamemnon becomes punished by the revenge of the goddess Artemis. • Revenge: be becalmed. • Artemis is furious because so many young men will die if they are not in time in Troy. • A prophet gives the sign that Agamemnon and his crew will only survive when he sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to the gods. • Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia.

15. THE DISGRACE OF AGAMEMNON • Nussbaum raises the question why Agamemnon is wrong. • Answer: not because he sacrifices his daughter, but because of his “inappropriate attitude towards the conflict, killing a human child with no more agony, no more revulsion of feeling”. • Agamemnon can be criticized because of is inadequate emotions (not mournful, etc.). • The point of Nussbaum: the rightness of an action doesn’t only depend on the arguments pro and con, but also on the emotions one shows.

16. 2. CAPABILITIES

17. HOW TO FLOURISH, THAT’S THE QUESTION • In contrast to the philosophy of Kant, Nussbaum is not in search of universal principles, but in search of ideas that contribute to human flourishing (eudaimonia). • She distances herself form the dominant cognitivism within ethics. • Cognitivism emphasizes the importance of rationally acquired knowledge and conceives emotions most often as irrational. • Emotions are not irrational, but deliver on several issues a specific perspective. • A pure cognitive ethics is according to Nussbaum wrong.

18. A NEW APPROACH • The issue of development (i.e. worldwide human flourishing) is not only a question of the redistribution of scarce goods. • Against that background Nussbaum developed with Amartya Sen the so-called capability approach. • Development is an issue that is mainly about the development of the opportunities that people have to develop their capabilities. • Governments have the duty to give citizens the opportunities to develop ten capabilities.

19. CENTRAL HUMAN CAPABILITIES: • Life > being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length. • Bodily Health > being able to have a good health. • Bodily integrity > being able to move freely from place to place. • Senses, Imagination, and Thought > being able to use the senses. • Emotions > being able to have attachments to things and people. • Practical reason > being able to form a conception of the good life and to engage in critical reflection. • Affiliation > being able to live with and toward others and having the social bases of self-respect. • Other species > being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature. • Play > being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities. • Control over One’s Environment > being able to participate in the political sphere and hold property.

20. CONTRA RELATIVISM • Nussbaum refutes relativism, i.e. the standpoint that human capabilities are not transhistorical and transcultural. • She argues that the ten capabilities are transhistorical and transcultural > the are essential for every single individual. • The ten capabilities are universal. • Nevertheless they are abstract enough to give space to do justice to differences between contexts > a question of translation.

21. THE GOOD LIFE • Just like Aristotle Nussbaum thinks that the human being is a political animal (zoon politikon) that wants to have a good life. • The ten capabilities are minimal but crucial elements of the good life. • Contexts that do not justice to these capabilities frustrate the good life of an individual. • For a flourishing life it is important that an individual has the opportunities to develop the ten capabilities. • This is an issue of global justice.

22. GLOBAL JUSTICE • Development should not be stuck on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), i.e. the value that all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country have on the market in a specific period of time, but on the opportunities for people to develop the ten capabilities. • The capabilities approach of Nussbaum and Sen has a practical spin-off > the Human Development Report of the UNDP. • Global justice implies that all human beings have de facto the necessary opportunities to develop the ten capabilities: “a world in which people have all the capabilities on the list is a minimally just and decent world.”

23. 3. COSMOPOLITANS

24. BEYOND THE CONCENTRIC CIRCLES • Nussbaum resists stubbornly the worldwide rise of nationalism. • The patriotism that is inherent to nationalism is based upon the model of concentric circles. • The basic thought of patriotism > people feel themselves in first instance responsible for the people who are next to them. • Nussbaum presents a cosmopolitan model that is based upon her capabilities approach.

25. HUMAN DIGNITY • The cosmopolitanism of Nussbaum is based on a specific idea of human dignity. • She argues that the ten capabilities are essential for a decent life. • They correspond to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. • In order to do justice to these rights, collective action is indispensible. • That implies that transnational institutions should be revised or established that garantee compliance with human rights.

26. NO WORLD STATE • Global justice cannot be attained with a world state. • A world state would lead to a political system that will give an elite to much power > despotism. • A world state is a threat to cultural diversity. • Cosmopolitanism implies that human rights should be implemented on the level of the nation state. • That implies that nation states are also responsible for the quality of life of ‘strangers’. • Affluent states have the responsibility to give up – to a certain degree - their wealth. • Besides nation states transnational corporations and transnational organisations (World Bank, WTO, etc.) and NGOs are responsible to establish global justice.

27. CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION • In times of globalisation education should not be fixed on the nation state. • Citizenship education should also be focused on the education of world citizens. • That implies that kids should learn a lot about other cultures, life-styles. • Art and literature are important for the education of world citizens, because it is helpful to become acquainted with other perspectives on issues and opens the door for intercultural dialogues.

28. RECOMMENDED • Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness[translations in several languages]. • Martha Nussbaum, Loves knowledge[translations in several languages]. • Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice[translations in several languages].