TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY: Intellectual Heroes and Key Themes

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TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY Intellectual
Heroes and Key Themes

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LECTURES

1. The pariah as rebel.
2. The hope of the hopeless.
3. Message in a bottle.
4. Absolute free.
5. Human flourishing.
6. Genealogy as critique.

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V. HUMAN FLOURISHING
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• 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?

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1. VIRTUES
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CLASSICAL ETHICS

• The central question of classical ethics gt 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 gt virtues that are helpful to have the
  unstable aspects of life under control.
• Aristoteles gt virtues that are helpful to find
  the golden mean, because it is impossible to have
  the unstable aspects of life under control.

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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.

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THE RETURN OF VIRTUES

• The eighties of the 20th century gt 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 gt After Virtue. A Study
  in Moral Theory (1981).
• 2. Bernard Williams gt Moral Luck (1981).
• 2. Martha Nussbaum gt The Fragility of
  Goodness. Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and
  Philosophy (1986).

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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 Economic
  Research (Wider) of the United Nations.
• 1995 Professor in law and ethics at the
  University of Chicago.

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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).

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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 dont 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 doesnt 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.

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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.

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THE WISDOM OF TRAGEDIES

• Tragedies gt 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 gt
  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.

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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.

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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
  doesnt only depend on the arguments pro and con,
  but also on the emotions one shows.

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2. CAPABILITIES
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HOW TO FLOURISH, THATS 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.

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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.

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CENTRAL HUMAN CAPABILITIES

1. Life gt being able to live to the end of a human
   life of normal length.
2. Bodily Health gt being able to have a good health.
3. Bodily integrity gt being able to move freely from
   place to place.
4. Senses, Imagination, and Thought gt being able to
   use the senses.
5. Emotions gt being able to have attachments to
   things and people.
6. Practical reason gt being able to form a
   conception of the good life and to engage in
   critical reflection.
7. Affiliation gt being able to live with and toward
   others and having the social bases of
   self-respect.
8. Other species gt being able to live with concern
   for and in relation to animals, plants, and the
   world of nature.
9. Play gt being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy
   recreational activities.
10. Control over Ones Environment gt being able to
    participate in the political sphere and hold
    property.

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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 gt 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 gt a question of translation.

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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.

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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 gt 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.

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3. COSMOPOLITANS
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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 gt 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.

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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.

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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 gt
  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.

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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.

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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.