Preciousssss
As you read further in Nussbaum’s Liberty of Conscience (or at least, as I do), it gets worse. It gets unendurable in places. Parts of it (yes like the curate’s egg) are good, and readable without too much irritation, but there are patches where it becomes simply maddening. I started counting words. On page 52 she uses the word ‘precious’ four times, and both ‘respect’ and ‘dignity’ more than that, along with ‘deep’ or ‘profound’. All five occur much too often, again, on 53-4. Look…even apart from the philosophical aspect, that’s just not a good way to write. If I’d been her editor I would have called her on it very early in the book. It’s not a good idea to repeat certain words in an obsessive way (apart from work horse words that one can’t help repeating, of course), and it’s doubly or triply not good when the words in question are highly emotive and manipulative and value-laden. The book becomes unendurable at those points because one feels nagged, bullied, yammered at. It’s too insistent. And since that which is being insisted on is so sentimental and saccharine and nursey, it’s all the more so.
And the thing is, she’s just wrong. She’s just flat wrong, and all this damp pious insistence doesn’t make her less wrong. The farther she gets into the book the clearer it becomes that her central claim that religion equals conscience equals the search for the ultimate meaning of life is just a pretty dream of hers that applies to some religious people but nowhere near all of them. Apart from anything else it simply ignores the fact that most people don’t choose a religion after or during a search, they have it handed to them in early childhood when they are maximally credulous. For most believers, religion is not a search at all, it’s a given. And it’s a particular kind of given: a special given, a sensitive given, a given that is easily offended – and Nussbaum herself is doing her best to enhance and justify that specialness. But the specialness works to prevent searching, not to encourage or foster it. She must know that – but she certainly avoids mentioning it. There’s something ‘deeply’ (to use one of her most ‘precious’ words) ironic in Nussbaum’s impassioned insistence on the importance and preciousness of this search while she is engaged in glorifying the very institutions and habits of mind that do most to block genuine searching. The result is that I’m becoming more and more deeply suspicious with every page.
I haven’t read this book by Nussbaum, but I recognise the cloying language from other things of hers I’ve read. But I wonder about this particular remark:
“The farther she gets into the book the clearer it becomes that her central claim that religion equals conscience equals the search for the ultimate meaning of life is just a pretty dream of hers that applies to some religious people but nowhere near all of them.”
I guess my point is that this is wrong. Religion=conscience=search for meaning is not simply something that applies to only a few religious people. It’s wrong. First, religion doesn’t equal conscience. Second, conscience doesn’t equal search for meaning. A lot of people make the claim that religion is necessary for conscience, but that’s false, as Austin Dacey makes abundantly clear. And it’s really hard to connect religion, conscience and search for meaning.
I know that a lot of liberal religious people made this excuse for religion. If it didn’t teach the truth, at least it provided a way of searching for the truth, or for meaning in life (whatever that means).
But it never really worked. And the evidence for that statement is how quickly religion reverts to its dogmatic mode, as soon as anyone raises any real questions. Religion always puts the searcher on the defensive. What is distinctive about religion is its refusal to search, because it’s already been found. (Hum ‘Amazing Grace’ to yourself and you’ll see the point). So, yes, the specialness of religion prevents searching, so it just won’t do to let Nussbaum off with ‘some religious people’ here. To the extent that they are religious, there is no search. To the extent that they are searching, they are not religious. I’ve been there. They may not see it yet, but if they keep searching, they will.
Nussbaum’s claim is so wide of the mark it amounts to a plain, garden variety whitewash. This shouldn’t make you suspicious. It should make you sick.
2 very small observations (never having read any of MN’s work – nor, frankly, having the time or any great inclination to do so)…
Perhaps her embracing of the ‘woolly’, the esoteric-‘intellectual’-supernaturalism, (and perhaps the Fraudianism [sic], despite its patent ludicrousness), at the expense of a consistent application of her reason, is because she is actually scared of where that consistent application might lead.
The very idea that we all just stop/end/cease to be/etc can be quite…overwhelming. Do your thang, leave whatever legacy you can, hope you’re remembered. “Ouch”, potentially, especially for someone who was brought up mainstream [i.e. non-barking-fundie] protestant, then actively embraced judaism in the early 1970’s…[yeah, I googled. It’s what I do…still a Wikidimpedimentia-free-zone, though! :-) ]
She’s also on record saying how much she dislikes “self-selecting elites” – as a reaction to her upbringing – which again could help in understanding her antipathy/prejudice filters when she’s dealing with folk like Dennett.
I mean, that brilliant old glutton David Hume argued that reason was ultimately subject to ‘passion’…
Not that I’m for a moment condoning her intellectual laxity… :-)
Well, I think some people at least think that a search for meaning is what they get from religion. That’s why I conceded that much – because she’s describing some people, and what they do.
But I agree about not searching because already found: I made the same point in the first post, and it reminded me too of good old Grace.
The Times review mentioned the anti-elitism thing – but also pointed out that for an anti-elitist she has a funny way of sneering at journalists with no ‘credentials’ in religion. Which is true.
She’s all mixed up.
But there is still much excellent stuff in Sex and Social Justice.
I think what G. said in the other thread is probably accurate: the only religious people Nussbaum knows are in it for the search for meaning, or because they think it’s necessary for conscience or enhances conscience or what-have-you. She seems so disinclined to acknowledge the fact that so many people are in it precisely to avoid having to search for meaning.
I myself know quite a few people who have gone religion-hopping to search for meaning, and there is beauty and a lot of real human heartbreak in that search, but it’s just one facet of “religion” as a whole. “Religion” is about everything from meaning to patriarchy to safety to comfort to familiarity, and much more besides. Nussbaum seems to need to glorify it in order to defend it, which suggests that she herself feels the defense to be specious on some level (though of course I’m not a mindreader).
Andy,
I don’t know why you’d have no inclination to read The Quality of Life…?
If we have to respect religious beliefs because religion = conscience, does that mean we also have to respect political ideologies? Or does it only apply to people who abandon rational inquiry as a method of their “search?”
Her argument seems to imply that would should respect any belief as long as it isn’t justified in any way.
DFG,
My available amount of ‘reading time’ is so microscopic on a daily basis, and the list of books I “ought to read” is so infinitely long, that MN – for all her alleged occasional brilliance – might get to the top of the list about 40 years after I’m dead. (Which’ll be relatively soon, if my kids & the school “holidays” keep going the way they are presently).
The fact she’s a Fraudian [sic] disqualifies her from any “cutsies”.
:-)
Just to show how far nehind the times I am, I finally managed to START on a copy of Francis Wheen’s “Mumbo Jumbo” book the other night, but I was so knackered I fell asleep on page 31 (not the book’s fault, I assure you).
Andy’s big tip for life – don’t be a single parent! :-))
“If we have to respect religious beliefs because religion = conscience, does that mean we also have to respect political ideologies?”
Well that’s one major problem of course. She does discuss the issue in terms of the law, but she doesn’t (that I’ve seen so far anyway) in terms of her basic definitions.
Ahh, I found Mumbo Jumbo a light and not very satisfying read, unfortunately.
Feel for you re: School Hols. Caffiene!