Reading Nussbaum
The library produced Nussbaum’s Liberty of Conscience for me yesterday so I’ve read some of it and I must say, I was surprised – it’s way worse than I expected. I think it’s terrible – and it’s also extremely irritating. Tooth-grindingly irritating.
We talked about an interview in which she discussed the book with Bill Moyers last April and then we discussed it some more a couple of days later. I was critical of what she’d said then but I also gave her the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things. My mistake. She does mean what I said I thought she didn’t mean. (I see that H E Baber commented on the second post, which is interesting because I was just reading The Enlightenment Project (Baber’s blog) to see if she had commented on Nussbaum’s book, having forgotten that she’d commented here. Baber is not a fan of Nussbaum’s work. I’m feeling pretty inclined to give up on Nussbaum myself now.
The wheels come off on the very first page, where she tells us about the Pilgrims in Massachusetts who faced all those dangers ‘in order to be able to worship God freely in their own way,’ and then says we rarely reflect on the ‘real meaning’ of that story: ‘that religious liberty is very important to people.’
Very pretty, but who says that is the real meaning of that story? I don’t think it is. I think what is very important to people is their own religious liberty, not religious liberty in general. But that’s not what Nussbaum wants us to think, so it’s not what she says, even though she does say on the very next page that the lesson of the pilgrims is easily forgotten and that ‘the early settlers themselves soon forgot it, establishing their own repressive orthodoxy which others fled in turn.’ Nonsense; they didn’t forget it; it was never what they meant; or at least there’s damn little reason to think it is what they meant and a lot of reason to think they meant what I said – their own religious liberty, but not everyone’s. How does Nussbaum know that’s not what they wanted all along? She doesn’t say. Maybe she learned the ‘religious liberty’ thing in the fourth grade and has never noticed how unlikely it is and how badly it fits the known facts.
And the whole damn book is like that, so far as I’ve read (and I’ve sampled as well as reading from the beginning). Pious, sentimental, evasive, and woefully incomplete – and that’s putting it politely. Nussbaum uses the word ‘deeply’ about once on every page, along with words like ‘precious’ and ‘profound’ and ‘meaning’ and ‘noble’ and other slushy emotive words, and she makes claims that are ‘deeply’ unconvincing. Her overall claim is that religious liberty is important because people value religion because it is how they ‘search for meaning.’ But is that why? It seems to be why for some people, but is it for all of them? Not as far as I know. I think lots of people value religion for other reasons. I also think the ‘search’ idea is terribly sentimental and incomplete and manipulative. Not all religious people are engaged in any ‘search,’ to put it mildly: a lot of them are quite convinced that there’s no need to search because they’ve already found, and they’re quite certain about what it is they’ve found, too. This ‘search for meaning’ gives a pretty picture of a lot of inquiring curious open-minded people rummaging around looking for meaning, but that simply ignores the importance of dogma and authority and orthodoxy and literalism and Absolute Truth.
Nussbaum keeps insisting on how respectful she is and how important it is to be respectful (that’s another word that crops up on just about every page), but she oozes condescension.
Martha Nussbaum has the most outrageous blind-spot-to-brilliance ratio I’ve ever encountered. She’s so damned critical and incisive and plain ol’ SMART about everything else, but when it comes to analyzing any aspect of religion and religiosity she’s about as sharp as a bag of wet mice. I agree with you 100%: On this issue, she really flattens my molars.
My diagnosis is perspectival blindness. She’s very much an ivory tower academic, so she’s very vulnerable to the academic theologian’s bait-and-switch about the meaning of “God” and the role of religion in life and all that rot. The overwhelming majority of actual religious believers in the real world aren’t wrestling with Kierkegaard and delving into Martin Buber – but all the religious believers Martha Nussbaum knows personally are exactly that sort. Consequently, she has this bizarre, idealized conception of the role of religion in life and the psychology of belief that’s based on the tiny fraction of a percent of believers she meets in the course of her days as a career upper-echelon tenured superstar academic.
But dammitall, she should be smart enough to think her way out of that flimsy box of delusion: You don’t have to be a damned genius to recognize and take precautions against sampling error, for cryin’ out loud!
Maybe that’s the problem: She *is* a genius, so she doesn’t think she *needs* to take basic precautions against universal human psychological biases like wishful thinking and unwarranted generalizations. Very smart people can be very poor critical thinkers for precisely that reason.
Are they smart then G. or just good at passing exams ect, surely if they lack the ability to think criticaly are they that smart?
I don’t buy the genius thing: Nussbaum is not only delusional about religious believers (and dogmatic about respecting religious beliefs), she is also a Freudian. She believes, for example, that mental illness is a product of “birth-trauma” or some such, and if you ask her how she then explains that there seems to be a lot of genetic correlation when it comes to mental illness, she answers with “well, if you don’t believe me, I can’t convince you”. What a great answer for a genius philosopher.
Freudian? Really? I’ve never encountered any of that in her work. Then again, I’ve hardly done a comprehensive reading of her work. And here’s yet another reason why I won’t get around to doing so.
Anyone who takes Freud seriously is at best one (smallish) step above someone who takes astrology seriously. But “birth trauma,” fer cryin’ out loud?!? I can see birth being a source of psychological trauma for MOTHERS – like my friend who suffered pre-eclampsia and went into a coma and almost died when her son was born. But the theory that the trauma of being born is a major source of mental illness is both ludicrous on the face of it AND contrary to all evidence about early neurological development. No one who isn’t already a true believer in it can be convinced because there’s no convincing evidence for it – and mountains of convincing evidence against it.
The thing is, I’ve heard Nussbaum speak and I’ve read some of her papers, and she can be brilliant and sharply analytical. I guess it’s not that rare for someone to be very sharp in some areas and a complete dullard in others – but it always puzzles me when I’m confronted with it directly.
Yes, Freudian: that was one thing that disappointed me about her disgust book (Hiding From Humanity – I reviewed it for TPM): she based a huge amount of her argument on Winnicott, as if he were some kind of oracle.
But yeah, she can be brilliant and sharply analytical; certainly a lot more brilliant than I can be. That’s one reason the slushy stuff is so disconcerting. The brilliance-to-blind-spot ratio is exactly right, I think.
I like the part where she snobbishly dismisses the work of Jon Krakauer in Under the Banner of Heaven because he’d previously done sports journalism, and that he exxagerated the problems of Mormon fundamentalism and what not.
How’s that claim working out for her in light of the last few months?
I know, I know – that’s one of the bits I sampled. The snottiness about Krakauer is quite typical, which is odd given how much she talks about respect. The NY Times book review (by Emily Bazelon I think) picked up on that too. And yes, she brushes aside the FLDS as unimportant because there are so few of them. Huh. Tell that to Carolyn Jessop.
I haven’t read Nussbaum; I assume you represent her accurately. In that case, you are both wrong about the Pilgrims. What’s interesting about them for this discussion is that, in consequence of their dogmatic belief in the fallen nature of mankind, they explicitly recognized that their own beliefs must be flawed, and that their perception of what was correct theology must be inherently flawed. They tried to solve this through syllogistic reasoning. The consequence drawn from that belief in universal imperfection is that they could not be sure that their judgement of other, different beliefs was accurate. And they put this into practice. They refused to demand adherence to the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession (two Calvinist dogmatic formulations) when their London investors wanted them to do so. They responded by pointing out that all churches could and did err, so that their own church must also err even though they were unaware of it. They instituted separation of church and state, giving no role to clergy in their civil government, and requiring that the laws be enforced equally on church members and non-members. Church membership was not a requirement for voting or land tenure. Finally, in 1645 the majority of the magistrates were in favor of complete religious toleration. Unfortunately, the motion was not allowed by the governor to be voted on. Nonetheless, the majority of Plymouth’s court favored religious toleration.
The idea that the Pilgrims were interested only in toleration for their own peculiar views is a common misperception. Perhaps my book, Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojourners – Leiden and the Foundations of Plymouth Plantation (expected to be out this year or early next year – the writing is finished) will have some success in shifting the discussion.
Thanks, Jeremy, that is very interesting. Also (as you hint) highly unusual – at a time when Calvin-type dogmatism was the norm.
If Nussbaum is aware of that though, she certainly neglected to mention it.