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The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis
From one of the world's most celebrated moral philosophers comes a thorough examination of the current political crisis and recommendations for how to mend a divided country.For decades Martha C. Nussbaum has been an acclaimed scholar and humanist, earning dozens of honours for her books and essays. In The Monarchy of Fear she turns her attention to the current political crisis that has polarized America since the 2016 election.Although today's atmosphere is marked by partisanship, divisive rhetoric, and the inability of two halves of the country to communicate with one another, Nussbaum focuses on what so many pollsters and pundits have overlooked. She sees a simple truth at the heart of the the political is always emotional. Globalization has produced feelings of powerlessness in millions of people in the West. That sense of powerlessness bubbles into resentment and blame. Blame of immigrants. Blame ofMuslims. Blame of other races. Blame of cultural elites. While this politics of blame is exemplified by the election of Donald Trump and the vote for Brexit, Nussbaum argues it can be found on all sides of the political spectrum, left or right.Drawing on a mix of historical and contemporary examples, from classical Athens to the musical Hamilton, The Monarchy of Fear untangles this web of feelings and provides a roadmap of where to go next.
271 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 19, 2018
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2494 people want to read
About the author
Martha C. Nussbaum
173 books1,351 followersMartha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School and the Philosophy Department. Among her many awards are the 2018 Berggruen Prize, the 2017 Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the 2016 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 167 reviews
May 29, 2020
Let me just say at the start that if you're someone who hasn't read any Martha Nussbaum before, and are looking for some philosophical self-help material in what seems like a dark time, this is probably a pretty good book for you.
Unfortunately I don't quite fit that demographic, and despite loving Nussbaum (or rather, because) this book was a total disappointment for two reasons. The first is that there is no new content at all here, everything is just a copy-paste job of various books she's written before. The second is that while this work is supposed to be a political analysis of sorts, its naivete makes it pretty worthless in this regard because of its total insensitivity to power. I'm just going to expand of these two point below.
Criticism #1: Unoriginality
Admittedly the author is open about how she's bringing in ideas from her earlier work, but apart from one of two new examples, every approach, stance, argument, and example has just been lifted.
She starts off with a psychoanalytic approach of infantile fear, which was cool when she first introduced it in Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. She then applies this analysis to fear, to try to indicate how it propels people to irrationally fear certain people and practices, by comparing the burka with more accepted costumes like ski masks, as she did in The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age. She then talks about anger, using a fascinating reading of Aeschylus' Eumenides with which she starts off Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice. From this book she also borrows her close reading of Martin Luther King's iconic "I have a dream" speech to argue for the importance of not giving into hatred, and instead channeling the constructive "transitional anger". Then she quickly summarizes her work on disgust from Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, where she points out how bodies are always a problem from us, and how we project disgust onto different groups through imagining or focusing on bodily secretions. She then uses Kate Manne's framework (slightly tweaked and with credit) from Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny for understanding misogyny as opposition women face when they move away from male care to independence. She lists the 10 capabilities on her list of minimum human capabilities that people should be entitled to, as in Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. She ends with the argument from Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, according to which hope is important, and you should hold onto critical love, come what may.
I mention this in detail, because I think if you're going to phone it in and simply rehash your old ideas, you should state that on the cover of your book, instead of tricking (even if unintentionally) long-time readers into spending time and money working through material they've already seen.
Criticism #2: Bad political analysis
But let's for a moment ignore the repetition by accepting the not-terrible excuse that it might still be valuable for a prolific writer like Martha Nussbaum to write a book which summarizes and connects the different work she's produced.
The presence of a lot of disparate ideas does make you think about connections, except this isn't always a good thing here. Although a lot of ideas get thrown at you, in a lot of places it's entirely unclear why. For example, the psychoanalytic bits really are fascinating, but I really don't see what they add to an analysis of political fear that won't be captured by simply stating that "everyone feels fear, and this is deep and ineradicable". And some of the connections seems tenuous at best - for example, even if we were to accept the account of infantile fears, why think this somehow shapes all our adult psyches? There are some suggestive anecdotes and metaphors, but that's it.
But above all, the problem is that as a book that's supposed to show how "A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis", it provides incredibly little insight into anything political. All of her tools certainly make sense in their own domains, but they're not particularly useful for any kind of serious political analysis. I suspect that if anyone was asked about what exactly they learned after they reading this book, they would come up empty. This is because what Nussbaum is desperately defending is a stance or method of freely and respectfully exchanging ideas, without letting the more primitive and overbearing parts of us taking over. What she wants to defend then is Socratic philosophy:
Very nice and poetic, but this seems like a great example of the kind of philosophy that Raymond Geuss denounces in Philosophy and Real Politics, which is the kind of philosophy that tries to focus on some autonomous domain of ethics antecedent to, or at least independent from, political thought. The problem with this approach is that it becomes woefully blind to power and cares only about how people speak to and about each other.
For example, she rightly criticizes Donald Trump for this rhetoric about immigrants, Muslims, and non-white people. But then she turns around and praises George Bush for always being careful about pointing out that it wasn't all Muslims or Islam itself that America was warring with, saying "for me, this is how a responsible leader reacts in the face of widespread popular fear". Which is nice, except for the slightly inconvenient fact that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afgans died in wars that the responsible leader started. Of course, she isn't praising this aspect, but it is still jarring because it reveals a myopia to power and its effects in the real world.
It's also simply unclear why we should think that the norm of disinterested Socratic debate is that approach best suited to achieve political goals. While she obviously wants to both have deliberation and justice, it isn't Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech I kept hearing while reading her, but rather the "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" on the white moderate:
She might object to this, because she continuously insists on how injustices like racism are deeply wicked, but insisting on certain norms of action and exchange, which limit what you can do and feel, might plausibly slow down change. Simply mentioning the handful of successful non-violent leaders like Mandela and Gandhi isn't enough to make the case she needs.
This is particularly seen when she argues that both sides, the left and right, need to stop feeling angry if it's a kind of anger that's vindictive. Ok, this might not be terrible advise, but trying to parse the anger of the deeply disenfranchised and telling them they need to feel "transitional anger", which doesn't want payback but only constructive solutions, comes off like weirdly policing the oppressed since she doesn't offer any criticism of the deeply exploitative classes which everywhere wield material and political power. Plus, she also seems insufficiently tuned into the complexities of the reactions of oppressed people. She appears to take as axiomatic that well-being cannot consist in social put-downs of others, but it seems to me that when a racist is called out and punished, it might legitimately be helpful to the community's sense of justice. She might still insist that these actions, even if right, should be cleansed of certain vindictive intentions, but at that point she just seems to not have anything actually relevant to offer.
(I'll admit, the tools she uses here actually were successful in her analysis of the Indian religious-Right in The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future, but that was because in that case she actually did analyze the practices, beliefs, and the complex sociocultural and historical contexts in which it gained power. Without that kind of specific context here, her analysis just comes off as wispy liberal moralizing.)
She obviously has good intentions here too, but since its not even clear if her purified anger would be more politically efficacious, this all just looks like a privileged white woman randomly defending bankers against overly-vicious leftist attacks. She even offers a bizarre reading of the musical Hamilton, which she ends by saying:
since Alexander Hamilton was involved in setting up the central banks. Maybe she's just trying to be even-handed by criticizing the left and the right, but this urging for norms of civility needs to be argued for contextually and with an eye for actual consequences, not just assumed as axiomatic. Do bankers, with their hoarded wealth and power, really need another defender? And even if it isn't really about bankers but the health of the body politic, by lecturing about norms while ignoring all entrenched power, her "analysis" seems at best inappropriate, and at worst deeply pernicious. If all you have to offer is 272 pages of "don't treat the rich man badly, also racism is bad", maybe you shouldn't write that book.
In the end, stripped of any analysis of power, all she really offers people in this moment is a kind of "emotional sustenance" that is meant to keep them from despair and keep them hopeful about the possibility of change they can bring about. Which is something, but not much.
If this review seems rather negative, it's because I don't think I want to praise points which aren't new, and since this is a pretty useless book for actual political analysis, it's safe to say that you should read it only if its brand of navel-gazing obsession with your own emotions is what you want. Otherwise go read some other actually serious book, even one of Nussbaum's earlier books like the excellent The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, where she stays in her lane and doesn't claim to offer political analysis when she clearly isn't providing any.
Unfortunately I don't quite fit that demographic, and despite loving Nussbaum (or rather, because) this book was a total disappointment for two reasons. The first is that there is no new content at all here, everything is just a copy-paste job of various books she's written before. The second is that while this work is supposed to be a political analysis of sorts, its naivete makes it pretty worthless in this regard because of its total insensitivity to power. I'm just going to expand of these two point below.
Criticism #1: Unoriginality
Admittedly the author is open about how she's bringing in ideas from her earlier work, but apart from one of two new examples, every approach, stance, argument, and example has just been lifted.
She starts off with a psychoanalytic approach of infantile fear, which was cool when she first introduced it in Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. She then applies this analysis to fear, to try to indicate how it propels people to irrationally fear certain people and practices, by comparing the burka with more accepted costumes like ski masks, as she did in The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age. She then talks about anger, using a fascinating reading of Aeschylus' Eumenides with which she starts off Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice. From this book she also borrows her close reading of Martin Luther King's iconic "I have a dream" speech to argue for the importance of not giving into hatred, and instead channeling the constructive "transitional anger". Then she quickly summarizes her work on disgust from Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, where she points out how bodies are always a problem from us, and how we project disgust onto different groups through imagining or focusing on bodily secretions. She then uses Kate Manne's framework (slightly tweaked and with credit) from Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny for understanding misogyny as opposition women face when they move away from male care to independence. She lists the 10 capabilities on her list of minimum human capabilities that people should be entitled to, as in Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. She ends with the argument from Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, according to which hope is important, and you should hold onto critical love, come what may.
I mention this in detail, because I think if you're going to phone it in and simply rehash your old ideas, you should state that on the cover of your book, instead of tricking (even if unintentionally) long-time readers into spending time and money working through material they've already seen.
Criticism #2: Bad political analysis
But let's for a moment ignore the repetition by accepting the not-terrible excuse that it might still be valuable for a prolific writer like Martha Nussbaum to write a book which summarizes and connects the different work she's produced.
The presence of a lot of disparate ideas does make you think about connections, except this isn't always a good thing here. Although a lot of ideas get thrown at you, in a lot of places it's entirely unclear why. For example, the psychoanalytic bits really are fascinating, but I really don't see what they add to an analysis of political fear that won't be captured by simply stating that "everyone feels fear, and this is deep and ineradicable". And some of the connections seems tenuous at best - for example, even if we were to accept the account of infantile fears, why think this somehow shapes all our adult psyches? There are some suggestive anecdotes and metaphors, but that's it.
But above all, the problem is that as a book that's supposed to show how "A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis", it provides incredibly little insight into anything political. All of her tools certainly make sense in their own domains, but they're not particularly useful for any kind of serious political analysis. I suspect that if anyone was asked about what exactly they learned after they reading this book, they would come up empty. This is because what Nussbaum is desperately defending is a stance or method of freely and respectfully exchanging ideas, without letting the more primitive and overbearing parts of us taking over. What she wants to defend then is Socratic philosophy:
[Philosophy] is about leading the “examined life,” with humility about how little we really understand, with a commitment to arguments that are rigorous, reciprocal, and sincere, and with a willingness to listen to others as equal participants and to respond to what they offer. Philosophy in this Socratic conception does not compel, or threaten, or mock. It doesn’t make bare assertions, but, instead, sets up a structure of thought in which a conclusion follows from premises the listener is free to dispute.
Very nice and poetic, but this seems like a great example of the kind of philosophy that Raymond Geuss denounces in Philosophy and Real Politics, which is the kind of philosophy that tries to focus on some autonomous domain of ethics antecedent to, or at least independent from, political thought. The problem with this approach is that it becomes woefully blind to power and cares only about how people speak to and about each other.
For example, she rightly criticizes Donald Trump for this rhetoric about immigrants, Muslims, and non-white people. But then she turns around and praises George Bush for always being careful about pointing out that it wasn't all Muslims or Islam itself that America was warring with, saying "for me, this is how a responsible leader reacts in the face of widespread popular fear". Which is nice, except for the slightly inconvenient fact that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afgans died in wars that the responsible leader started. Of course, she isn't praising this aspect, but it is still jarring because it reveals a myopia to power and its effects in the real world.
It's also simply unclear why we should think that the norm of disinterested Socratic debate is that approach best suited to achieve political goals. While she obviously wants to both have deliberation and justice, it isn't Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech I kept hearing while reading her, but rather the "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" on the white moderate:
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.”
She might object to this, because she continuously insists on how injustices like racism are deeply wicked, but insisting on certain norms of action and exchange, which limit what you can do and feel, might plausibly slow down change. Simply mentioning the handful of successful non-violent leaders like Mandela and Gandhi isn't enough to make the case she needs.
This is particularly seen when she argues that both sides, the left and right, need to stop feeling angry if it's a kind of anger that's vindictive. Ok, this might not be terrible advise, but trying to parse the anger of the deeply disenfranchised and telling them they need to feel "transitional anger", which doesn't want payback but only constructive solutions, comes off like weirdly policing the oppressed since she doesn't offer any criticism of the deeply exploitative classes which everywhere wield material and political power. Plus, she also seems insufficiently tuned into the complexities of the reactions of oppressed people. She appears to take as axiomatic that well-being cannot consist in social put-downs of others, but it seems to me that when a racist is called out and punished, it might legitimately be helpful to the community's sense of justice. She might still insist that these actions, even if right, should be cleansed of certain vindictive intentions, but at that point she just seems to not have anything actually relevant to offer.
(I'll admit, the tools she uses here actually were successful in her analysis of the Indian religious-Right in The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future, but that was because in that case she actually did analyze the practices, beliefs, and the complex sociocultural and historical contexts in which it gained power. Without that kind of specific context here, her analysis just comes off as wispy liberal moralizing.)
She obviously has good intentions here too, but since its not even clear if her purified anger would be more politically efficacious, this all just looks like a privileged white woman randomly defending bankers against overly-vicious leftist attacks. She even offers a bizarre reading of the musical Hamilton, which she ends by saying:
It’s a jolt, but a salutary one, to see young people cheering for the banker, and we should applaud Miranda for, among other things, undercutting the politics of envy by his surprising choice of a hero
since Alexander Hamilton was involved in setting up the central banks. Maybe she's just trying to be even-handed by criticizing the left and the right, but this urging for norms of civility needs to be argued for contextually and with an eye for actual consequences, not just assumed as axiomatic. Do bankers, with their hoarded wealth and power, really need another defender? And even if it isn't really about bankers but the health of the body politic, by lecturing about norms while ignoring all entrenched power, her "analysis" seems at best inappropriate, and at worst deeply pernicious. If all you have to offer is 272 pages of "don't treat the rich man badly, also racism is bad", maybe you shouldn't write that book.
In the end, stripped of any analysis of power, all she really offers people in this moment is a kind of "emotional sustenance" that is meant to keep them from despair and keep them hopeful about the possibility of change they can bring about. Which is something, but not much.
If this review seems rather negative, it's because I don't think I want to praise points which aren't new, and since this is a pretty useless book for actual political analysis, it's safe to say that you should read it only if its brand of navel-gazing obsession with your own emotions is what you want. Otherwise go read some other actually serious book, even one of Nussbaum's earlier books like the excellent The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, where she stays in her lane and doesn't claim to offer political analysis when she clearly isn't providing any.
August 29, 2019
I was going to write a very long, and very scathing, review of this book. In fact, I did write much of it. But then I realized it was a pointless exercise, like shooting fish in a barrel, and nobody is listening. Suffice it to say that this book is a joke, a preaching to the leftist choir, in which the ends are decided on and laughable reasoning inserted to justify those ends. One can sum up the whole book in three words: Orange Man Bad!
May 12, 2024
Nussbaum conducts a fascinating inquiry into the nature and effect of fear in public life. She examines how our anger and resentment are rooted in fears, such as the fear that success or status for others must come at our expense. She considers our need to blame someone for difficulties, and to “solve” problems by inflicting punishment or pain. We tend to assume that if the blamed people are made to suffer, then the issue has been dealt with.
This book is a careful, probing look at our gut-level ethics. It directly builds on the philosophical classics of Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, or Cicero. The reflection turns to what happens when people question the reign of fear, with its usual logic of "justice = revenge." For example, in the aftermath of WWII, the victor nations helped the defeated nations of Germany and Japan to rebuild. At least temporarily, the desire for future mutual benefit displaced the demand for vengeance, or the desire for "safety" through keeping others down. Nussbaum's discussion branches out to consider constructive options for a resentful America, where people commonly assume that the only alternative to fear-filled anger is weakness.
This book is a careful, probing look at our gut-level ethics. It directly builds on the philosophical classics of Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, or Cicero. The reflection turns to what happens when people question the reign of fear, with its usual logic of "justice = revenge." For example, in the aftermath of WWII, the victor nations helped the defeated nations of Germany and Japan to rebuild. At least temporarily, the desire for future mutual benefit displaced the demand for vengeance, or the desire for "safety" through keeping others down. Nussbaum's discussion branches out to consider constructive options for a resentful America, where people commonly assume that the only alternative to fear-filled anger is weakness.
November 10, 2018
83rd book for 2018.
Full of seemingly superficial platitudes that fails, despite it's title, to engage in the current political crisis.
2-stars.
Full of seemingly superficial platitudes that fails, despite it's title, to engage in the current political crisis.
2-stars.
December 27, 2022
«Diríamos que la democracia seguramente conlleva cierta dosis de miedo y que el miedo puede ser una guía útil en muchas áreas de la vida democrática, siempre y cuando los datos y hechos en los que ese miedo se base sean correctos. El temor al terrorismo, el temor a unas autopistas y unos puentes inseguros, el temor a la pérdida de la libertad misma: todas esas formas de miedo pueden impulsarnos a tomar medidas protectoras útiles. Pero, cuando su objeto es el futuro mismo del proyecto democrático en sí, toda aproximación medrosa será probablemente peligrosa y conducirá a que los ciudadanos ansíen algún tipo de control autocrático o la protección de alguien que controle los resultados por ellos.»
Martha Nussbaum (mi filosofa favorita), escribió este libro tras las elecciones de 2016 que dejaron como Presidente de Estados Unidos a Donald J. Trump. Probablemente muchas cosas han cambiado desde entonces e incluso Trump salió de la Casa Blanca. No obstante, las democracias liberales de Occidente viven su momento más álgido y su crisis política más profunda. No cabe duda que muchas personas alrededor del planeta nos preguntamos incluso si antes de morir, veremos caer en pedazos el régimen político en el que nacimos.
El mundo actual, la locura de estos gobiernos populistas, el mundo post pandemia y esta crisis del capitalismo y en general del liberalismo, debe conducirnos al origen del conocimiento para encontrar respuestas. Y creo, personalmente, que es la filosofía el lugar de donde emana ese conocimiento. Y como la misma Nussbaum menciona, la filosofía lejos de entregar dictámenes de autoridad, es el camino para dibujar una vida examinada. Creo que ahí debe estar la manera individual en que cada uno halle respuestas y encuentre sus propias soluciones para estos convulsionados momentos históricos que vivimos.
February 23, 2019
Nussbaum is obviously a great thinker, but this book seemed an unfocused mishmash to me. I didn’t like the way she combined analytic psychiatric ideas with philosophy. There were definitely provocative and interesting ideas in there but I didn’t think the book as a whole was well done.
March 19, 2018
Martha C. Nussbaum is one of the great contemporary philosophers and this book an interesting application of her thoughts around emotion in relation to the recent political environment in the United States. Nussbaum analyses how a few primal emotions are having dramatic impact on the way society is developing and how this is influencing the way people vote. As you can probably tell from the title one of these emotions is fear; but Nussbaum also includes anger, envy, and hope. Each chapter starts off defining and contextualizing the emotion (or social construct) and then provides an analysis of how this is being demonstrated in society, what the impacts may be, and also some recommendations on how to address the challenges or harness the benefits of the emotion. If you've never read anything by Nussbaum before, or if you're interested in political/social philosophy, this is a fantastic book.
July 8, 2018
When I heard that Martha Nussbaum had published a new book on “our political crisis” - politics around and after Trump’s election - I had to read it, even though I suspected that there would be few pat answers or clear solutions to the issues that she raised. Nussbaum is a wide-ranging philosopher at the University of Chicago. She is know for a huge body of work among which are wonderful studies of classical political theory, virtue, human development, and the role of emotions in politics. It is impossible to neatly summarize all that she has done. It is, however, unfailingly thoughtful, readable, and insightful.
One of the more vexing aspects of the 2016 election is that while it cries out for careful and critical thinking, the American political scene on display in the election does not seem to be amenable to the careful thinking one has come to expect from someone like Professor Nussbaum. Phrases involving “rationality” or “reason” have not been critical parts of the explanations put on the market since the election. It often seemed more like the occasion for an anthropological expedition.
This is whether Professor Nussbaum enters. The book is a follow-up to her recent 2016 book on anger and forgiveness. Like the earlier book, this is an effort to subject the political emotions running rampant to some careful scrutiny - not to nullify the role of emotions but to clarify what they are and where they have come from. In any attempt to change policies or behaviors, careful understanding will still be needed, even in the midst of political emotions driving voters.
Without giving away much - the book is worth reading - the story line starts with fear, and a discussion of all the different reasons for fear in 2016. She makes some good comparisons to FDRs invocation of “the only thing we have to fear is fear, itself” at the start of his presidency. Then she discusses a series of related emotions - anger, disgust, envy, and related issues like sexism, misogyny, and antisemitism. The key to her argument is that it is the interaction of political fear with these other emotions that created such intensely negative dynamics and consequences in the context of the 2016 election.
In determining what to do, Nussbaum brings in hope and love and tries to offer some constructive suggestions for moving forward. There are no simple solutions. Simplifying emotions and hatred will prevail until people interact with those with whom they disagree and find out that they are human too and worthy of concern and respect. This is not a matter of arguing (or yelling) one’s way out of political disagreements but instead treating people with whom there are disagreements as worthy of the respect that one expects as a matter of course. The problems spurring troubling political emotions are real and persistent. Politics will not get better until enough people become convinced that better political life if worth the time and effort needed for improvements to happen.
Nussbaum brings in history in her account to show how despite current conflicts, there have been difficult political environments in the US before and that things may not be as bad as social media suggest. The world may not be on the brink of destruction. Perhaps things might improve with a little bit more constructive effort.
Nussbaum’s books are always thoughtful and this one is no exception. It is a quick read and well worth the effort.
One of the more vexing aspects of the 2016 election is that while it cries out for careful and critical thinking, the American political scene on display in the election does not seem to be amenable to the careful thinking one has come to expect from someone like Professor Nussbaum. Phrases involving “rationality” or “reason” have not been critical parts of the explanations put on the market since the election. It often seemed more like the occasion for an anthropological expedition.
This is whether Professor Nussbaum enters. The book is a follow-up to her recent 2016 book on anger and forgiveness. Like the earlier book, this is an effort to subject the political emotions running rampant to some careful scrutiny - not to nullify the role of emotions but to clarify what they are and where they have come from. In any attempt to change policies or behaviors, careful understanding will still be needed, even in the midst of political emotions driving voters.
Without giving away much - the book is worth reading - the story line starts with fear, and a discussion of all the different reasons for fear in 2016. She makes some good comparisons to FDRs invocation of “the only thing we have to fear is fear, itself” at the start of his presidency. Then she discusses a series of related emotions - anger, disgust, envy, and related issues like sexism, misogyny, and antisemitism. The key to her argument is that it is the interaction of political fear with these other emotions that created such intensely negative dynamics and consequences in the context of the 2016 election.
In determining what to do, Nussbaum brings in hope and love and tries to offer some constructive suggestions for moving forward. There are no simple solutions. Simplifying emotions and hatred will prevail until people interact with those with whom they disagree and find out that they are human too and worthy of concern and respect. This is not a matter of arguing (or yelling) one’s way out of political disagreements but instead treating people with whom there are disagreements as worthy of the respect that one expects as a matter of course. The problems spurring troubling political emotions are real and persistent. Politics will not get better until enough people become convinced that better political life if worth the time and effort needed for improvements to happen.
Nussbaum brings in history in her account to show how despite current conflicts, there have been difficult political environments in the US before and that things may not be as bad as social media suggest. The world may not be on the brink of destruction. Perhaps things might improve with a little bit more constructive effort.
Nussbaum’s books are always thoughtful and this one is no exception. It is a quick read and well worth the effort.
March 8, 2025
Für eine Hausarbeit gelesen. Ich schwanke zwischen 1 und 4 Sternen - ähnlich wie bei Politische Emotionen.
Sie stellt die These auf, dass Angst aus unterschiedlichen Gründen die primäre Emotion des Menschen ist, die uns evolutionär, in der frühen Kindheit und auch im restlichen Leben aufs engste begleitet. Sie lauert immer unter der Oberfläche (vor der Tür?) und hat eine bedeutende narzisstische und asoziale Komponente. Deswegen ist sie DIE Gefahr für Gegenseitigkeit und Liebe, zwei Eigenschaften, die sie quasi mit Demokratie gleichsetzt. Angst weckt Mechanismen, die zum zwanghaften kontrollieren und herrschen motivieren, weshalb sie Monarchie und Angst zusammenbringt.
Mit diesen Thesen interpretiert sie die Politik Trumps und deren Gefahr für die Demokratie und versucht den Rechtspopulismus, Frauenfeindlichkeit und Verwandtes zu entschlüsseln.
Und auch eine falsch geartete linke Antwort, die sich ähnlicher Mechanismen bedient.
Ein paar Sachen kann man hinterfragen, aber den Part fand ich interessant und teilweise sehr treffend.
Negativ:
- Wenn man schon mal Nussbaum gelesen hat, ist wirklich erstaunlich wenig Neues dabei!!!
- Sie schreibt zwar sehr zugänglich, aber ihre Beispiele und teilweise Perspektiven wirken immer wieder unangenehm elitär
- Ihr Lösungsansatz passt da auch rein. Hoffnung als Antwort ist quasi: Wir können jetzt nichts direkt an der Politik ändern, „aber man kann ja auch die Perspektive wechseln und dann ist das Glas halb voll“. Wenn man das macht, hat man die nötige Motivation, um sich für Gegenseitigkeit und Liebe einzusetzen. Das geht irgendwie nicht fit, wenn man so große Themen aufreißt und das Problem der Angst(politik) so schwarz und giftig herausstellt.
- Ihr weirder Patriotismus scheint immer wieder durch und sie stellt Personen als Helden dar, die es nicht unbedingt verdienen.
Aber irgendwie war’s auch teilweise spaßig zu lesen.
Wenn man schon was von Nussbaum gelesen hat, auf gar keinen Fall lesen!! Wenn nicht und man einen sehr anwendungsreichen Einblick bekommen will, vielleicht cool!
Sie stellt die These auf, dass Angst aus unterschiedlichen Gründen die primäre Emotion des Menschen ist, die uns evolutionär, in der frühen Kindheit und auch im restlichen Leben aufs engste begleitet. Sie lauert immer unter der Oberfläche (vor der Tür?) und hat eine bedeutende narzisstische und asoziale Komponente. Deswegen ist sie DIE Gefahr für Gegenseitigkeit und Liebe, zwei Eigenschaften, die sie quasi mit Demokratie gleichsetzt. Angst weckt Mechanismen, die zum zwanghaften kontrollieren und herrschen motivieren, weshalb sie Monarchie und Angst zusammenbringt.
Mit diesen Thesen interpretiert sie die Politik Trumps und deren Gefahr für die Demokratie und versucht den Rechtspopulismus, Frauenfeindlichkeit und Verwandtes zu entschlüsseln.
Und auch eine falsch geartete linke Antwort, die sich ähnlicher Mechanismen bedient.
Ein paar Sachen kann man hinterfragen, aber den Part fand ich interessant und teilweise sehr treffend.
Negativ:
- Wenn man schon mal Nussbaum gelesen hat, ist wirklich erstaunlich wenig Neues dabei!!!
- Sie schreibt zwar sehr zugänglich, aber ihre Beispiele und teilweise Perspektiven wirken immer wieder unangenehm elitär
- Ihr Lösungsansatz passt da auch rein. Hoffnung als Antwort ist quasi: Wir können jetzt nichts direkt an der Politik ändern, „aber man kann ja auch die Perspektive wechseln und dann ist das Glas halb voll“. Wenn man das macht, hat man die nötige Motivation, um sich für Gegenseitigkeit und Liebe einzusetzen. Das geht irgendwie nicht fit, wenn man so große Themen aufreißt und das Problem der Angst(politik) so schwarz und giftig herausstellt.
- Ihr weirder Patriotismus scheint immer wieder durch und sie stellt Personen als Helden dar, die es nicht unbedingt verdienen.
Aber irgendwie war’s auch teilweise spaßig zu lesen.
Wenn man schon was von Nussbaum gelesen hat, auf gar keinen Fall lesen!! Wenn nicht und man einen sehr anwendungsreichen Einblick bekommen will, vielleicht cool!
Read
April 10, 2022This book is a mixed bag. There are a lot of great comments, especially on the psychology of fear, and fascinating examples from history. Her remarks on the relationship between fear and anger, and the correct use of anger (i.e. righteous anger) are absolutely on point.
However, she draws heavily from her previous works, making this more of an “Intro to Martha Nussbaum” than anything else. It’s a very disjointed reading experience. She also hails from the left, but seems to want to appeal to people of all political stripes, from words of praise for Bush to the chapters on sexism. The work is far too short to do this well, with too many contemporary examples, where feelings are too fresh, that will put off one side or another. It isn’t that she should not have tried, but it simply needed to be longer, I suppose, with room for more nuance, in order to even get close to achieving all of these goals.
In short, there are some gems here and the work is brief enough that it is worth the perusal.
However, she draws heavily from her previous works, making this more of an “Intro to Martha Nussbaum” than anything else. It’s a very disjointed reading experience. She also hails from the left, but seems to want to appeal to people of all political stripes, from words of praise for Bush to the chapters on sexism. The work is far too short to do this well, with too many contemporary examples, where feelings are too fresh, that will put off one side or another. It isn’t that she should not have tried, but it simply needed to be longer, I suppose, with room for more nuance, in order to even get close to achieving all of these goals.
In short, there are some gems here and the work is brief enough that it is worth the perusal.
April 17, 2025
Immensely readable and often insightful, but perhaps too light and poppy for its ambitious subject matter.
August 1, 2025
What to say - that when your denunciation of hate and fear accommodates the likes of Goldwater and Bush, you clearly have some work left to do? That individualistic ethics as political stances are inherently daft as they ignore the core reality of politics as an interpersonal sphere with impersonal actors? That supporting 'disadvantaged groups' rhetorically, and overtly refusing to address the actual systems of oppression is hypocritical bullshit? That "the politics of envy" is a lazy misdirection from the actual moral concern "Can the existence of a billionaire be both justified and good?" That this is a hell of a lot of privileged, elite and elitist bullshit that almost makes we want to pull out the word bourgeois? That this is just self-indulgent masturbation? That the words you're looking for in your own context, Nussbaum, are horror and dread?
Frankly, what I really want to say here are all non-verbal expressions - drag my hand down my face, sigh, look up, roll my eyes, and throw the book in the bin.
You construct your castles in the air about the inherent fear that sticks with people from being a helpless, tyrannical, infant. The rest of us have work to do.
Edit: Of course she's University of Chicago.
Frankly, what I really want to say here are all non-verbal expressions - drag my hand down my face, sigh, look up, roll my eyes, and throw the book in the bin.
You construct your castles in the air about the inherent fear that sticks with people from being a helpless, tyrannical, infant. The rest of us have work to do.
Edit: Of course she's University of Chicago.
March 12, 2024
I think more than anything else I've read recently, this book simultaneously intrigued and frustrated me.
There are some extremely fascinating chapters on the distinctions between fear and hope, as well as sexism and misogyny. In particular how the subtle distinctions between the former two so deeply impact how we relate to our social interactions and our worldview. It's at times, deeply compelling.
I however had a more difficult time with perhaps some of the examples she used to support her arguments in that many of them seemed to revolve around either humble bragging (I lost track of how many times an example was wrapped around her receiving an important award or how she believed her theory eclipsed that of another well known philosopher), or what seemed to be throw away sentences that lacked either factual basis or simply a lack of curiosity about what she had just referenced.
To name a few:
-"The Salem witch trials were once thought to be the result of group hysteria among adolescent girls. But now we know that a preponderant number of the witch blamers were young men entering adulthood, afflicted by the usual woes of an insecure colony in a new world: economic uncertainty, a harsh climate, political instability."
"We now know" is not backed up by any footnotes or references, leaving me to wonder who this "we" is. I'm certainly no expert on the subject like Nussbaum apparently is, but I have read a few books on the topic, most recently, Stacy Schiff's meticulously researched book on the trials. Schiff, and nearly everyone else who has studied it from what I can gather cite the teenage girls as the cause of the hysteria. Yes, some adult men with scores to settle jumped on the bandwagon later, but refuting what seems to be the the dominant theory using authoritative terms like "we now know" and "preponderant" without any documentation seems...bold?
-"Philosophers sometimes show contempt for religion and religious people. That is one reason they have little public influence in our nation, a deeply religious nation. Our fellow citizens are not stupid or base to embrace religion. We must wish, and this seems as likely as anything good is likely, that each person who embraces religion will find there the ingredients of a hope that is inclusive and loving, rather than divisive and retributive. Philosophy by itself shows how we can respect our enemies; it does not show us how to love them. For that we need the arts, and many of us need religion."
Many of us need religion? Admittedly, this is one of my bugaboos but this idea that you need to have some foundation in religious faith to be "loving and inclusive" is deeply flawed and the fact that there are countless selfless men and women throughout history to illustrate this, makes arguing against it almost superfluous. Somehow, many people have lived fulfilling lives that have not been "divisive and retributive" despite not being religious. If religion works for you that's fine, but it's not a prerequisite to living a good life.
-"As King knew well, movements come in many forms. His own hopeful nonviolent movement contended against the retributive and potentially violent movement of Malcolm X. Gandhi, similarly, contended against ideas of violent retribution advocated by the Hindu Right. He was assassinated by a member of that movement who believed that Gandhi had emasculated Hindu men by his opposition to retributive violence. Similar struggles have occurred in most large protest movements. As with religion, then, so here: we should endorse not the genus but the hope-oriented and reconciliation-oriented species. I think for the most part the Black Lives Matter movement has followed King, but there are segments that tend in the Malcolm X direction, and those do not foster hope or reconciliation."
This one was just lazy. If Nussbaum had done any research on Malcolm X at all she would have realized that Malcolm dedicated the final years of his life to the unity and reconciliation she references here. Yes he used violent imagery in his early public life, but he also evolved as a thinker and a human being, as one would hope we all would.
She does a similar thing with another historical figure when she calls Aaron Burr "charismatic and immensely able but unwilling to take a stand". In fairness, she seems to be referencing the character in the play Hamilton (lots of references to that play here) rather than the real life Burr who was for sure a schemer but did in fact have things he cared deeply about such as women rights. Again, a little research here would've been appreciated.
Which brings us to the solutions.
Nussbaum lists several, most of them pretty boilerplate such as talking to each other and listening more. I did however chuckle at her suggestion of national service. Not because it's a bad idea, or even a particularly unique one (she seems to be under the odd impression that she'll excoriated for even bringing it up or that nobody talks about it. Bill Maher alone on his show brings it up constantly), but rather because she doesn't really have...a plan?
"I believe that a mandatory program of youth national civil service addresses both of these problems in an attractive and indeed necessary way. Modeled on the civil service arm of Germany's former national service requirement, but entirely civil and for all young people, my program would enroll young people preferably for three years and send them to do work that urgently needs doing all over America: elder care, child care, infrastructure work, but always sending people into different regions, both geographically and economically. I don't have a detailed plan. Some suitable entrepreneur needs to do it...People usually don't talk about national service because they assume it is politically impossible. But if people don't talk about it, it certainly won't be possible. So, I put my cards on the table."
I also am going to put my cards on the table. I think we should end world hunger, stop all wars, and live in blissful peace sometime in the next ten years. Maybe tell people to stop fighting, hand out chocolates to everyone, something like that.
I don't have a detailed plan, so someone out there drop me a DM. I know I'm gonna get killed for saying it but at least I have the courage to put it out there. Give me my flowers.
There are some extremely fascinating chapters on the distinctions between fear and hope, as well as sexism and misogyny. In particular how the subtle distinctions between the former two so deeply impact how we relate to our social interactions and our worldview. It's at times, deeply compelling.
I however had a more difficult time with perhaps some of the examples she used to support her arguments in that many of them seemed to revolve around either humble bragging (I lost track of how many times an example was wrapped around her receiving an important award or how she believed her theory eclipsed that of another well known philosopher), or what seemed to be throw away sentences that lacked either factual basis or simply a lack of curiosity about what she had just referenced.
To name a few:
-"The Salem witch trials were once thought to be the result of group hysteria among adolescent girls. But now we know that a preponderant number of the witch blamers were young men entering adulthood, afflicted by the usual woes of an insecure colony in a new world: economic uncertainty, a harsh climate, political instability."
"We now know" is not backed up by any footnotes or references, leaving me to wonder who this "we" is. I'm certainly no expert on the subject like Nussbaum apparently is, but I have read a few books on the topic, most recently, Stacy Schiff's meticulously researched book on the trials. Schiff, and nearly everyone else who has studied it from what I can gather cite the teenage girls as the cause of the hysteria. Yes, some adult men with scores to settle jumped on the bandwagon later, but refuting what seems to be the the dominant theory using authoritative terms like "we now know" and "preponderant" without any documentation seems...bold?
-"Philosophers sometimes show contempt for religion and religious people. That is one reason they have little public influence in our nation, a deeply religious nation. Our fellow citizens are not stupid or base to embrace religion. We must wish, and this seems as likely as anything good is likely, that each person who embraces religion will find there the ingredients of a hope that is inclusive and loving, rather than divisive and retributive. Philosophy by itself shows how we can respect our enemies; it does not show us how to love them. For that we need the arts, and many of us need religion."
Many of us need religion? Admittedly, this is one of my bugaboos but this idea that you need to have some foundation in religious faith to be "loving and inclusive" is deeply flawed and the fact that there are countless selfless men and women throughout history to illustrate this, makes arguing against it almost superfluous. Somehow, many people have lived fulfilling lives that have not been "divisive and retributive" despite not being religious. If religion works for you that's fine, but it's not a prerequisite to living a good life.
-"As King knew well, movements come in many forms. His own hopeful nonviolent movement contended against the retributive and potentially violent movement of Malcolm X. Gandhi, similarly, contended against ideas of violent retribution advocated by the Hindu Right. He was assassinated by a member of that movement who believed that Gandhi had emasculated Hindu men by his opposition to retributive violence. Similar struggles have occurred in most large protest movements. As with religion, then, so here: we should endorse not the genus but the hope-oriented and reconciliation-oriented species. I think for the most part the Black Lives Matter movement has followed King, but there are segments that tend in the Malcolm X direction, and those do not foster hope or reconciliation."
This one was just lazy. If Nussbaum had done any research on Malcolm X at all she would have realized that Malcolm dedicated the final years of his life to the unity and reconciliation she references here. Yes he used violent imagery in his early public life, but he also evolved as a thinker and a human being, as one would hope we all would.
She does a similar thing with another historical figure when she calls Aaron Burr "charismatic and immensely able but unwilling to take a stand". In fairness, she seems to be referencing the character in the play Hamilton (lots of references to that play here) rather than the real life Burr who was for sure a schemer but did in fact have things he cared deeply about such as women rights. Again, a little research here would've been appreciated.
Which brings us to the solutions.
Nussbaum lists several, most of them pretty boilerplate such as talking to each other and listening more. I did however chuckle at her suggestion of national service. Not because it's a bad idea, or even a particularly unique one (she seems to be under the odd impression that she'll excoriated for even bringing it up or that nobody talks about it. Bill Maher alone on his show brings it up constantly), but rather because she doesn't really have...a plan?
"I believe that a mandatory program of youth national civil service addresses both of these problems in an attractive and indeed necessary way. Modeled on the civil service arm of Germany's former national service requirement, but entirely civil and for all young people, my program would enroll young people preferably for three years and send them to do work that urgently needs doing all over America: elder care, child care, infrastructure work, but always sending people into different regions, both geographically and economically. I don't have a detailed plan. Some suitable entrepreneur needs to do it...People usually don't talk about national service because they assume it is politically impossible. But if people don't talk about it, it certainly won't be possible. So, I put my cards on the table."
I also am going to put my cards on the table. I think we should end world hunger, stop all wars, and live in blissful peace sometime in the next ten years. Maybe tell people to stop fighting, hand out chocolates to everyone, something like that.
I don't have a detailed plan, so someone out there drop me a DM. I know I'm gonna get killed for saying it but at least I have the courage to put it out there. Give me my flowers.
November 25, 2019
As I work my way through the collected works of Martha Nussbaum I am always impressed by her ability to turn out works of great erudition and examination at such an incredible pace. This book, however, is not quite what it purports to be. Though likely a great introduction to many of Nussbaum's concepts for those unfamiliar with her work, frequent readers and admirers will likely have heard much of this before, and be disappointed that politics is never really examined or connected to the perspicacious dealings with emotions that form the start of the book.
The insidious nature of fear and its manifestations in our evermore hostile arenas of discourse is a subject which nearly everyone of every political stripe acknowledges, though none seem too keen on any work in solving this problem. Thus, much of the material with which Nussbaum opens this work is a quick and lucid outline that shows the many different types of fear, the connection between fear and forms of anger, and how prejudice and bigotry have roots in very primal notions of disgust. This complicated web of emotions is delivered with great clarity though as many have noted, these analyses of hers have already appeared in several earlier works.
The main issue with this book is that there is very little political analysis at all. The connection (if there is one) between the emotional examination described above and the actual workings of our political systems is never made, at least here. As a result the discussion of hope at the end of the work sounds like deliberate naiveté and the single policy suggestion she gives in the span of less than a page at the end of the book seems whimsical and deliberately unsupported, even though I happen to agree with it.
While there is much to enjoy in this book, it really feels like it could have been a final chapter/section in her previous, and brilliant, work, "Anger and Forgiveness," as it uses many of the same examples (from Ghandi, Mandela, and King), puts forth very few genuinely new ideas regarding the human side of this issue, and never actually attempts to generate or even adumbrate political discussion/examination.
The insidious nature of fear and its manifestations in our evermore hostile arenas of discourse is a subject which nearly everyone of every political stripe acknowledges, though none seem too keen on any work in solving this problem. Thus, much of the material with which Nussbaum opens this work is a quick and lucid outline that shows the many different types of fear, the connection between fear and forms of anger, and how prejudice and bigotry have roots in very primal notions of disgust. This complicated web of emotions is delivered with great clarity though as many have noted, these analyses of hers have already appeared in several earlier works.
The main issue with this book is that there is very little political analysis at all. The connection (if there is one) between the emotional examination described above and the actual workings of our political systems is never made, at least here. As a result the discussion of hope at the end of the work sounds like deliberate naiveté and the single policy suggestion she gives in the span of less than a page at the end of the book seems whimsical and deliberately unsupported, even though I happen to agree with it.
While there is much to enjoy in this book, it really feels like it could have been a final chapter/section in her previous, and brilliant, work, "Anger and Forgiveness," as it uses many of the same examples (from Ghandi, Mandela, and King), puts forth very few genuinely new ideas regarding the human side of this issue, and never actually attempts to generate or even adumbrate political discussion/examination.
August 1, 2018
I always welcomed the opportunity to introduce my students to great ideas and great thinkers. The works of Martha Nussbaum have always been sterling examples of both. I was anticipating (as a child anticipates Christmas) her latest work since learning of the working title, Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis, a few months ago. I believed it would both salve and inspire. Unfortunately, it does neither. It would be simply a disappointment if that is all it fails to do, but she does something in this text and in her promoting of the book (I have watched her discussing the book on PBS Newhour and on BookTV) that she has never done before—she attacks her students who fervently oppose T***p and his agenda with the same vigor that she addresses T***p advocates.
Nussbaum claims both sides are motivated by unwarranted and irrational fears. Not so. The current political crisis is not the result of the entire country panicking. One side, not both sides, is subject to: “Amorphous fear generated in a climate of ignorance and fed by imprecise and alarmist rhetoric, [which] is the enemy of any sane dialogue about our future” (59). She writes about fear: “The horrible darkness of early fear is always beneath the surface, easily awakened into nightmare by any destabilizing new development” (35). It is clear what the “destabilizing new development” is—T***p. He and his enablers are playing to the most atavistic and foul fears of his constituency: race, religion, sexual and gender anxiety, status, and terror of the future.
Nussbaum fails to make the connection to one side of the political divide while observing that: “Our culture of fleeting celebrity and social media narcissism contributes to an envy culture. We need, instead, a culture of virtue and a conception of citizenship focused on virtue in the Hamilton sense: a high-minded yet realistic search for political solutions that unite” (161). My only explanation for Nussbaum not making the obvious connection is that she does not want to offend the side that this observation most readily describes. Just think of the past two administrations: Objectively, which one would you describe as being engaged in a “high-minded yet realistic search for political solutions that unite” and which one embraces a cult of celebrity, narcissism, and envy? Honestly, which one?
If the answer is not clear enough consider this: “I call it the internal Furies that inhabit us all and that are not securely linked to real justice. The infants’ idea looks like a version of lex talionis: an eye for an eye, pain for pain. It is likely that this crude idea of proportional payback has an evolutionary origin. It is a leap to call this an idea of justice, and I think we should not make this leap” (71). I think we have all become too familiar with this infantile code of justice coming from our president and his enablers.
Keeping in mind that most T***p supporters are affluent and secure, consider the following excerpt: “Lucretius was probably right to think that the fear of death ‘suffuses’ our lives with ‘the blackness of death,’ even if there is plenty of light and happiness around” (44).
Of course, Trumpism did not happen overnight. Let’s remember that evangelicals supported him overwhelmingly (+80%). Which makes the following assertion pertinent to our political crisis: “Emotions can destabilize a community and fragment it, or they can produce better cooperation and more energetic striving toward justice. Emotions are not hardwired from birth, but are shaped in countless ways by social contexts and norms” (12).
Nussbaum claims that: “Hope is the opposite of fear” (211). But is it? Actually (here I will use one of Nussbaum’s own citations): The Greeks and Romans said that hope was the “flip side of fear”. Both involve evaluating an outcome as very important, both involve great uncertainty about the outcome, and both involve a good measure of passivity or lack of control. They therefore did not like hope, pleasant though they granted it was: hope betrays a mind too dependent on fortune. ‘You will cease to fear, if you cease to hope,’ writes Seneca. ‘Both belong to a soul that is hanging in suspense, to a soul that is made anxious by concern with the future’" (Moral Epistles, 5.7-80) (204).
I found Nussbaum’s assertion that “hope is the opposite of fear” peculiar in light of Seneca’s elucidation of the concept. When I think of the concept of “flip side” I think of two sides of the same coin—not opposites. And, it seems Seneca is of the same opinion. Interestingly, I recently read John Fea’s Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Trump (review coming soon) and he has an entire section asserting the same concept—that hope is the opposite of fear. Neither author mentioned the other in their texts. Hope is a fine thing as long as it doesn’t inhibit action.
Nussbaum concludes with some words of wisdom and caution from Cicero. Cicero “records in his letters his profound upset and grief about what he sees happening to the Roman Republic. The life of detachment is ‘easier and safer.’ All the same, Cicero says, such people are guilty of what might be called ‘passive injustice’: the injustice that consists in not energetically enough pursuing justice, even when that is very difficult. They also lack in generosity and greatness of spirit” (244).
The problem is Nussbaum is calling on the victims of the political crisis to refrain from vigorously opposing policies and actions that have already taken health care away from over a million people, denied citizens their civil rights, traumatized children, exacerbated racial prejudice and religious animosities, undermined our democratic institutions and values, increased wealth and income inequality, promoted unequal educational opportunities, abrogated indigenous people’s right to their land, opened public lands to exploitation, undermined US relations with our historic allies, abetted foreign interference in our democracy, . . . etc. Again, the problem is not that those who are desperately trying to save lives, end suffering and humiliation, and preserve our democracy are not civil enough—the problem is that too many are, as Cicero writes of his fellow citizens, guilty of passive injustice. Nussbaum’s book simply fails to inspire action or comfort those discomforted by the current political crisis.
For inspiration and direction please review Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach to justice on pages 236-9 (or Google it!).
Nussbaum claims both sides are motivated by unwarranted and irrational fears. Not so. The current political crisis is not the result of the entire country panicking. One side, not both sides, is subject to: “Amorphous fear generated in a climate of ignorance and fed by imprecise and alarmist rhetoric, [which] is the enemy of any sane dialogue about our future” (59). She writes about fear: “The horrible darkness of early fear is always beneath the surface, easily awakened into nightmare by any destabilizing new development” (35). It is clear what the “destabilizing new development” is—T***p. He and his enablers are playing to the most atavistic and foul fears of his constituency: race, religion, sexual and gender anxiety, status, and terror of the future.
Nussbaum fails to make the connection to one side of the political divide while observing that: “Our culture of fleeting celebrity and social media narcissism contributes to an envy culture. We need, instead, a culture of virtue and a conception of citizenship focused on virtue in the Hamilton sense: a high-minded yet realistic search for political solutions that unite” (161). My only explanation for Nussbaum not making the obvious connection is that she does not want to offend the side that this observation most readily describes. Just think of the past two administrations: Objectively, which one would you describe as being engaged in a “high-minded yet realistic search for political solutions that unite” and which one embraces a cult of celebrity, narcissism, and envy? Honestly, which one?
If the answer is not clear enough consider this: “I call it the internal Furies that inhabit us all and that are not securely linked to real justice. The infants’ idea looks like a version of lex talionis: an eye for an eye, pain for pain. It is likely that this crude idea of proportional payback has an evolutionary origin. It is a leap to call this an idea of justice, and I think we should not make this leap” (71). I think we have all become too familiar with this infantile code of justice coming from our president and his enablers.
Keeping in mind that most T***p supporters are affluent and secure, consider the following excerpt: “Lucretius was probably right to think that the fear of death ‘suffuses’ our lives with ‘the blackness of death,’ even if there is plenty of light and happiness around” (44).
Of course, Trumpism did not happen overnight. Let’s remember that evangelicals supported him overwhelmingly (+80%). Which makes the following assertion pertinent to our political crisis: “Emotions can destabilize a community and fragment it, or they can produce better cooperation and more energetic striving toward justice. Emotions are not hardwired from birth, but are shaped in countless ways by social contexts and norms” (12).
Nussbaum claims that: “Hope is the opposite of fear” (211). But is it? Actually (here I will use one of Nussbaum’s own citations): The Greeks and Romans said that hope was the “flip side of fear”. Both involve evaluating an outcome as very important, both involve great uncertainty about the outcome, and both involve a good measure of passivity or lack of control. They therefore did not like hope, pleasant though they granted it was: hope betrays a mind too dependent on fortune. ‘You will cease to fear, if you cease to hope,’ writes Seneca. ‘Both belong to a soul that is hanging in suspense, to a soul that is made anxious by concern with the future’" (Moral Epistles, 5.7-80) (204).
I found Nussbaum’s assertion that “hope is the opposite of fear” peculiar in light of Seneca’s elucidation of the concept. When I think of the concept of “flip side” I think of two sides of the same coin—not opposites. And, it seems Seneca is of the same opinion. Interestingly, I recently read John Fea’s Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Trump (review coming soon) and he has an entire section asserting the same concept—that hope is the opposite of fear. Neither author mentioned the other in their texts. Hope is a fine thing as long as it doesn’t inhibit action.
Nussbaum concludes with some words of wisdom and caution from Cicero. Cicero “records in his letters his profound upset and grief about what he sees happening to the Roman Republic. The life of detachment is ‘easier and safer.’ All the same, Cicero says, such people are guilty of what might be called ‘passive injustice’: the injustice that consists in not energetically enough pursuing justice, even when that is very difficult. They also lack in generosity and greatness of spirit” (244).
The problem is Nussbaum is calling on the victims of the political crisis to refrain from vigorously opposing policies and actions that have already taken health care away from over a million people, denied citizens their civil rights, traumatized children, exacerbated racial prejudice and religious animosities, undermined our democratic institutions and values, increased wealth and income inequality, promoted unequal educational opportunities, abrogated indigenous people’s right to their land, opened public lands to exploitation, undermined US relations with our historic allies, abetted foreign interference in our democracy, . . . etc. Again, the problem is not that those who are desperately trying to save lives, end suffering and humiliation, and preserve our democracy are not civil enough—the problem is that too many are, as Cicero writes of his fellow citizens, guilty of passive injustice. Nussbaum’s book simply fails to inspire action or comfort those discomforted by the current political crisis.
For inspiration and direction please review Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach to justice on pages 236-9 (or Google it!).
August 18, 2018
I can't decide if Nussbaum is too naively optimistic or if she's right. I might go with the former in this book. I loved her book Anger and Resentment. This one seemed more like a pep talk peppered with some ancient Greek history. Don't let anger and jealousy ruin the political discourse. Fine. But, she at times equates anger at the 1% with anger at immigrants. To me, those seem like different drives altogether. One rooted in disgust (which she covers at length in this book) and the other motivated by well, something else, which she doesn't fully explore here.
April 26, 2019
Using a blend of Ancient Greek philosophy and theories of psychology and neuroscience, Martha Nussbaum lays the case for the eternal dilemma of human “nature”, power seeking, giving up some of your will for the sake of the community, the origins and historic uses of fear by despots and how we might escape the cycle of primitive reactions and attempt to contribute to escape the “errors” of fear and anger.
September 4, 2021
Her main idea is that fear and insecurity undercuts democracy. She doesn't want to dismantle the Master's House or do away with the status quo, but rather her recommendation is that we keep in check our tendencies toward fear-blame, envy that is entitled and doesn't wish well, and disgust of bodies/the urge to transcend our mortal, animal nature. She wants to tweak what is already present in terms of government and leadership and institutions, not make some huge overhaul. . . except for some occasional mandates to generally "make people better human beings."
What I found troubling was her rhetoric, saying repeatedly that X philosopher or Y writer was "wrong." Typically, it is more generous to explain why something is problematic or lacking. She also has her own utopian/authoritarian bent by suggesting a mandated 3 years for all young persons in civil service and has an affection for German democratic socialism. These do seem quite lovely, and I myself might have been for such left-leanings up until quite recently (say 2020-2021), but something doesn't sit quite right with me in her parental tone about mandates and prioritizing "the common good" over individual freedom. Her belief is that we need to be kinder people, but overall, her perspective is that nothing is really wrong with America or the American government: for example, in contrasting the U.S. with Israel and India, she says, "If my own corner of America is still healthy (not without issues, but basically), that counts for something" (199).
I like that this is quite accessible to the public; it is not overly intellectually challenging, and I don't think it was intended to be. It does date itself by focusing on the prejudiced rhetoric of Trump, and so, while the general message is universal enough, it doesn't feel timeless the way philosophy, even as it all is embedded within its own historical moment, should and often does to me. The content and writing style feels a bit like a speech or something one would find in a well-researched blog with interesting references. There were quite a few statements to underline on each page with some gems in various paragraphs. I think the least compelling chapter for me was the one on Sexism and Misogyny, but perhaps that is because my Ph.D. is based in Women's Studies and I've read a great deal of feminist theology; it just fell a bit flat for me.
Her final emphasis on faith, hope, and love (unfortunately, a bit unfairly but also understandably perhaps to a degree, discounting and disparaging Stoicism) makes sense and is something I myself have recently chosen.
I think overall, I felt her book was a bit too general and political for me. It is possible, as I know how well-loved and esteemed she is, that this was simply not the best choice for me. She is quite prolific and perhaps I need to do some research to see if her other books are more challenging, nuanced, and timeless. I'm open to suggestions.
What I found troubling was her rhetoric, saying repeatedly that X philosopher or Y writer was "wrong." Typically, it is more generous to explain why something is problematic or lacking. She also has her own utopian/authoritarian bent by suggesting a mandated 3 years for all young persons in civil service and has an affection for German democratic socialism. These do seem quite lovely, and I myself might have been for such left-leanings up until quite recently (say 2020-2021), but something doesn't sit quite right with me in her parental tone about mandates and prioritizing "the common good" over individual freedom. Her belief is that we need to be kinder people, but overall, her perspective is that nothing is really wrong with America or the American government: for example, in contrasting the U.S. with Israel and India, she says, "If my own corner of America is still healthy (not without issues, but basically), that counts for something" (199).
I like that this is quite accessible to the public; it is not overly intellectually challenging, and I don't think it was intended to be. It does date itself by focusing on the prejudiced rhetoric of Trump, and so, while the general message is universal enough, it doesn't feel timeless the way philosophy, even as it all is embedded within its own historical moment, should and often does to me. The content and writing style feels a bit like a speech or something one would find in a well-researched blog with interesting references. There were quite a few statements to underline on each page with some gems in various paragraphs. I think the least compelling chapter for me was the one on Sexism and Misogyny, but perhaps that is because my Ph.D. is based in Women's Studies and I've read a great deal of feminist theology; it just fell a bit flat for me.
Her final emphasis on faith, hope, and love (unfortunately, a bit unfairly but also understandably perhaps to a degree, discounting and disparaging Stoicism) makes sense and is something I myself have recently chosen.
I think overall, I felt her book was a bit too general and political for me. It is possible, as I know how well-loved and esteemed she is, that this was simply not the best choice for me. She is quite prolific and perhaps I need to do some research to see if her other books are more challenging, nuanced, and timeless. I'm open to suggestions.
July 27, 2018
Nussbaum is one of the relatively few bona fide philosophers (i.e., not popularizers of philosophy, but people who actually make contributions to the field) I feel safe recommending to non-experts. A few thoughts:
1. While the book was, by Nussbaum's own account, inspired by the election of Trump (and it includes a number of Trumpian examples), it's not really *about* Trump. Instead, it's an analysis of the emotion of fear, and the negative effects that this emotion can have in democratic societies. Nussbaum clearly believes that fear plays a role in right-wing populism (and in particular in the way it reacts to immigrants, women, etc.), but she doesn't think it's negative effects are limited to conservatives (and the book begins with the idea that liberals' fearful response to Trump voters may be part of the problem).
2. With some notable exceptions, Nussbaum's examples are generally *not* drawn from contemporary politics, but instead from a variety of areas in which she has particular expertise: classical Greece/Rome, the history of psychoanalysis, the early American Republic (especially as depicted in Hamilton, the musical), and even her own life. The book is well-written, but the examples are unapologetically those of an elite academic trained in the liberal arts. I found this to a refreshing change from the narrow focus of many "political" books, though I also suspect this might turn off some readers. (And I think the reaction of these readers is part of the problem that Nussbaum is concerned about.)
3. I generally agree with Nussbaum's analysis here (though I'm probably just as prone to political fear as anyone else), and I actually think she provides a pretty convincing argument for her view. That being said, there are plenty of things in here which don't fit well with the way many/most politically engaged people on the left (and the right) want to approach political conflict (and, in fact, on Nussbaum's analysis, indulging the sort of fear/rage that makes up a lot of contemporary political discourse is morally questionable). While reading this book, I often had the thought "Wow, there are some people who are really going to hate this analysis (and who frankly are going to dismiss it out of hand since it doesn't use their preferred language/conceptual framework)."
4. Nussbaum's positive proposals near the end--required service for young people, a refocusing of life-long education on liberal arts, an expanded role for poetry in our personal lives--seem promising (if politically untenable, at least right now).
1. While the book was, by Nussbaum's own account, inspired by the election of Trump (and it includes a number of Trumpian examples), it's not really *about* Trump. Instead, it's an analysis of the emotion of fear, and the negative effects that this emotion can have in democratic societies. Nussbaum clearly believes that fear plays a role in right-wing populism (and in particular in the way it reacts to immigrants, women, etc.), but she doesn't think it's negative effects are limited to conservatives (and the book begins with the idea that liberals' fearful response to Trump voters may be part of the problem).
2. With some notable exceptions, Nussbaum's examples are generally *not* drawn from contemporary politics, but instead from a variety of areas in which she has particular expertise: classical Greece/Rome, the history of psychoanalysis, the early American Republic (especially as depicted in Hamilton, the musical), and even her own life. The book is well-written, but the examples are unapologetically those of an elite academic trained in the liberal arts. I found this to a refreshing change from the narrow focus of many "political" books, though I also suspect this might turn off some readers. (And I think the reaction of these readers is part of the problem that Nussbaum is concerned about.)
3. I generally agree with Nussbaum's analysis here (though I'm probably just as prone to political fear as anyone else), and I actually think she provides a pretty convincing argument for her view. That being said, there are plenty of things in here which don't fit well with the way many/most politically engaged people on the left (and the right) want to approach political conflict (and, in fact, on Nussbaum's analysis, indulging the sort of fear/rage that makes up a lot of contemporary political discourse is morally questionable). While reading this book, I often had the thought "Wow, there are some people who are really going to hate this analysis (and who frankly are going to dismiss it out of hand since it doesn't use their preferred language/conceptual framework)."
4. Nussbaum's positive proposals near the end--required service for young people, a refocusing of life-long education on liberal arts, an expanded role for poetry in our personal lives--seem promising (if politically untenable, at least right now).
September 15, 2023
در طول تاریخ فلاسفه در بحران فیلسوف بودن خودشون رو نشون میدادن. برج عاج نشینی که در دقائق متافیزیک ارسطو تأمل کنه در بهترین حالت شارح خوبی باشه. اما این فلاسفهاند که وقتی بحرانی بر «جهان»شون واقع میشه، مثل جغد مینروا پرواز میکنند و از منظرگاه خدایان به امورات جاری مینگرند.
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از این منظر نویسنده این کتاب واقعا فیلسوفه. نوسبام وقتی با بحران انتخاب ترامپ به عنوان رئیسجمهور یکی از دموکراتیکترین کشورهای جهان مواجه میشه، به دنبال ریشه این اتفاق میگرده و سعی میکنه که جهانش رو فیلسوفوار عقلانی کنه. این یعنی فلسفه.
ولی ایراد کتاب از نظر من اینه که (البته به اقتضای زمانه) نوسبام خیلی به متافیزیک تکیه نمیکنه و سعی میکنه بینارشتهای مسئله رو حل کنه. از این جهت من با کتاب حال نکردم گر چه ممکنه دقیقا حسن کتاب همین باشه.
از طرف دیگه کتاب مثل یه اثر فلسفی منظم نیست. کار فیلسوف مثل کار ریاضیدانه. سیر استدلال باید کاملا مثل سیر اثبات ریاضیاتی روشن و منظم باشه ولی به دلیل ارجاع به علوم مختلف این کتاب اونقدر منظم نیست.
شاید این جمله بهترین تعریف برای کتاب باشه که؛ آره! فلسفهست، ولی خیلی قرن بیست و یکمی!
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در آخر هم باید اذعان کنم که نقل است فلاسفه خیلی خوشگل نیستن ولی بانو نوسبام هم زیباست و هم فیلسوف...
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از این منظر نویسنده این کتاب واقعا فیلسوفه. نوسبام وقتی با بحران انتخاب ترامپ به عنوان رئیسجمهور یکی از دموکراتیکترین کشورهای جهان مواجه میشه، به دنبال ریشه این اتفاق میگرده و سعی میکنه که جهانش رو فیلسوفوار عقلانی کنه. این یعنی فلسفه.
ولی ایراد کتاب از نظر من اینه که (البته به اقتضای زمانه) نوسبام خیلی به متافیزیک تکیه نمیکنه و سعی میکنه بینارشتهای مسئله رو حل کنه. از این جهت من با کتاب حال نکردم گر چه ممکنه دقیقا حسن کتاب همین باشه.
از طرف دیگه کتاب مثل یه اثر فلسفی منظم نیست. کار فیلسوف مثل کار ریاضیدانه. سیر استدلال باید کاملا مثل سیر اثبات ریاضیاتی روشن و منظم باشه ولی به دلیل ارجاع به علوم مختلف این کتاب اونقدر منظم نیست.
شاید این جمله بهترین تعریف برای کتاب باشه که؛ آره! فلسفهست، ولی خیلی قرن بیست و یکمی!
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در آخر هم باید اذعان کنم که نقل است فلاسفه خیلی خوشگل نیستن ولی بانو نوسبام هم زیباست و هم فیلسوف...
July 26, 2023
so much of nussbaum’s focus is on the innermost of the inner - the psychology of the individual - that her advice tends to ring hollow when applied outwardly, to systemic adversity. i can’t imagine touting her maxim of hope (seeing the glass half-full, as she defines it) over fear (seeing it half-empty) to those facing attacks on their dignity and existence.
also had to wince at the sheer idealism of her lofty appeals to brotherhood and loving your nation, plus effusive praise for questionable reasons: the founding fathers for their commitment to cherished democratic values; president bush for claiming not to be at war with islam (she only cursorily notes his many instances of demonizing it); walt whitman as ‘our national poet’ (loaded claim).
and i have yet to see the utility of the volume of portmanteau-adjacents she defined for us. hope-probability? fear-blame? her central argument about fear is that it’s debilitating for democracy, and i think she could have just said that without losing any meaning encapsulated by those unwieldy hybrid phrases.
also had to wince at the sheer idealism of her lofty appeals to brotherhood and loving your nation, plus effusive praise for questionable reasons: the founding fathers for their commitment to cherished democratic values; president bush for claiming not to be at war with islam (she only cursorily notes his many instances of demonizing it); walt whitman as ‘our national poet’ (loaded claim).
and i have yet to see the utility of the volume of portmanteau-adjacents she defined for us. hope-probability? fear-blame? her central argument about fear is that it’s debilitating for democracy, and i think she could have just said that without losing any meaning encapsulated by those unwieldy hybrid phrases.
November 29, 2024
Filosofie biedt ideeën aan. En dat doet dit boek tot op zekere hoogte. Het gaf me wel een paar nieuwe inzichten.
Ik heb me toch wel geërgerd aan het feit dat ze stelt dat Bush de aanslag van 11 september goed heeft aangepakt. Hij zou ontschuldigend (naar de moslimbevolking) en angstverlagend hebben gehandeld. Hallo? Irak werd door hem als de baarlijke duivel voorgesteld dat met (niet bestaande) massavernietingswapens de wereld bedreigde en werd daarom, om een leugen, naar de middeleeuwen gebombardeerd. Verder zijn haar oplossingen op het eind van het boek verschrikkelijk naïef. In deze wereld, die alsmaar meer naar barbarij afglijdt, hebben we heel wat meer nodig dan kunst of literatuur. En met hoop komen we ook al nergens. Teruggrijpen naar religie om de wereld te redden, is al helemaal niet meer van deze tijd.
Ik heb me toch wel geërgerd aan het feit dat ze stelt dat Bush de aanslag van 11 september goed heeft aangepakt. Hij zou ontschuldigend (naar de moslimbevolking) en angstverlagend hebben gehandeld. Hallo? Irak werd door hem als de baarlijke duivel voorgesteld dat met (niet bestaande) massavernietingswapens de wereld bedreigde en werd daarom, om een leugen, naar de middeleeuwen gebombardeerd. Verder zijn haar oplossingen op het eind van het boek verschrikkelijk naïef. In deze wereld, die alsmaar meer naar barbarij afglijdt, hebben we heel wat meer nodig dan kunst of literatuur. En met hoop komen we ook al nergens. Teruggrijpen naar religie om de wereld te redden, is al helemaal niet meer van deze tijd.
October 25, 2021
Philosophy as related to beliefs and values definitely influences what political party we side with. This. book is not so much about that. It is about fear leading to the demonization of the other side in our society. The author picks apart fear into various pieces. In the end she leads us to alternate approaches to politics not using fear but hope to promote action.
Unfortunately, she also dumped me, the reader back into Trump's "style", a style which failed to lead me to the deal to benefit all. It lead me to the table to an axe to destroy table. I don't want to live within that anger anymore. I agree with her thinking about Trump, but it is too close in time to the trauma of his abuse. I am trying to heal.
3 star minus a few tenths due to my own state of mind
Unfortunately, she also dumped me, the reader back into Trump's "style", a style which failed to lead me to the deal to benefit all. It lead me to the table to an axe to destroy table. I don't want to live within that anger anymore. I agree with her thinking about Trump, but it is too close in time to the trauma of his abuse. I am trying to heal.
3 star minus a few tenths due to my own state of mind
July 29, 2018
I got ~2/3 through this and gave up. I'm not sure what idea to draw here, aside from a reminder that much of our political motivations come from a position of fear and insecurity, and that overcoming these feelings through compassion could result in more political compromise.
The "Monarchy" idea is due to fear being a very selfish emotion.
There is some cool detail on Aeschylus's Eumenides, and an explanation for how the furies changed role at the conclusion of the play are an apt metaphor for how society harnesses our emotions to drive legislation. The other examples (MLK, etc) were less intersting.
The "Monarchy" idea is due to fear being a very selfish emotion.
There is some cool detail on Aeschylus's Eumenides, and an explanation for how the furies changed role at the conclusion of the play are an apt metaphor for how society harnesses our emotions to drive legislation. The other examples (MLK, etc) were less intersting.
August 4, 2018
A fine view on the resistance necessary to push back at fear’s aim to dominate and control and manipulate the self as an engaged public citizen. She relates fear to disgust, envy, and anger, and offers a balanced view of hope as that emotion which, if practiced, can free the heart and mind to persevere in the pursuit of the just and the good.
June 18, 2019
In this interesting book, Ms. Nussbaum considers the most primitive of our emotions – fear and notes its many poisonous byproducts.
She notes that it is an emotion – a reactive instinct, really – that we share with all other life forms. Its source is found in the amygdala, a part of the brain that we share with all vertebrates, and which triggers our survival instincts – fight or flight – when we experience fear. “Fear,” she says, “goes straight back to the reptilian brain.”
The reason why right-wing politicians – and outright demagogues like Trump – always seek to incite and stoke fear is because of the effect it has. Nusbaum writes, “Fear is not just primitive, it is also asocial. When we feel compassion, we are turned outward; we think of what is happening to others and what is causing it.” It is “intensely narcissistic,” driving out all thoughts of others. It causes us to shrink inwards, becoming more defensive and suspicious of others. Therefore, she calls fear “the emotion of a monarch, who cares about nothing and nobody else.”
We are born with the capacity to fear and it is, indeed, probably the first emotion a newborn experiences. Infants are aware that they are truly helpless, unable to care for themselves. They can only wail when they are hungry, thirsty, wet, or upset. Yet, most of us surmount those early fears (although, she points out, we can never banish the emotion for it is central to our survival instincts). How does this happen?
She cites the work of psychologist Donald Winnicott who “invented a concept for what children need, if concern for others is to grow and flourish. He called these conditions the ‘facilitating environment.’” The family, he wrote, “must have a core of basic loving stability…. It must be free from sadism and child abuse…. The facilitating environment has economic and social preconditions as well: there must be basic freedom from violence and chaos, from fears of ethnic persecution and terror; there must be enough to eat and basic health care.”
If a family lacks these things, children are likely to be emotionally stinted by fear, something that will haunt them all their lives.
It is also true that nations need a “facilitating environment” in which their citizens can feel safe, empowered, and optimistic. This is the kind of atmosphere that allows for cooperation, trust, and mutually aided accomplishments.
But when societies, just like failed families, are wracked by economic worries, fractured families, lost careers, and ruined hopes, the result is an environment in which all the positive things that allow a society to flourish are undermined by fear, doubt, and anger.
So, What Can Be Done?
We have arrived at our current sorry state of civic and political life as a result of policies intentionally chosen that have dramatically tilted the playing field towards the uppermost 1%. This, coupled with the politics of deceit and evasion made necessary by these policies, has seriously weakened the economic and psychological standing of millions of our fellow citizens and has, as a predictable byproduct, produced a climate of anxiety, fear, resentment, and outrage.
If we are to blunt this downward spiral we must revert to the kind of policies and politics of the decades that followed World War II, a period of diminished wealth disparity and widespread prosperity.
Nussbaum, consistent with her vision that the “flip-side” of fear is love, says that it is only when most people have adequate access to the necessities of life – and these include FDR’s call for a “second bill of rights” that embraces the goal of a democratic economy as well as what she calls the capabilities necessary if we are to flourish (and to flourish is the idea behind what Thomas Jefferson called the right to the pursuit of happiness).
She recalls FDR’s assertion that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and links this with FDR’s vision of a society in which all have the right to a well-paying job, to a decent home, to adequate health care and, as far as possible, to be free from the fears that accompany old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.
She concurs, for those conditions reduce the likelihood of fear, allowing instead for the more inclusive atmosphere of love, respect, tolerance, and cooperation.
Yes, the road is certainly an uphill one, certain to be blocked at every point by those who have everything to lose from changing the way things now work but, Nussbaum reminds us, we nonetheless must have hope. Hope, she reminds us, has this in common with fear: significant powerlessness. In fear, such powerlessness leads to despair, withdrawal, resentment, and anger, all of which shrink us. But if, even though we lack the power by ourselves to change anything, we choose hope, then that directs our gaze outwards in a search for allies, for possibilities, for a livable future.
She cites Immanuel Kant’s observation that hope was a “practical postulate,” that is, an attitude that we take on without proof that a better outcome will occur because hope can enable a greater likelihood of a better outcome. Fear and despair enable nothing.
There is wisdom here: I am not “in control,” but together we can act to bring about change.
Time to get started!
She notes that it is an emotion – a reactive instinct, really – that we share with all other life forms. Its source is found in the amygdala, a part of the brain that we share with all vertebrates, and which triggers our survival instincts – fight or flight – when we experience fear. “Fear,” she says, “goes straight back to the reptilian brain.”
The reason why right-wing politicians – and outright demagogues like Trump – always seek to incite and stoke fear is because of the effect it has. Nusbaum writes, “Fear is not just primitive, it is also asocial. When we feel compassion, we are turned outward; we think of what is happening to others and what is causing it.” It is “intensely narcissistic,” driving out all thoughts of others. It causes us to shrink inwards, becoming more defensive and suspicious of others. Therefore, she calls fear “the emotion of a monarch, who cares about nothing and nobody else.”
We are born with the capacity to fear and it is, indeed, probably the first emotion a newborn experiences. Infants are aware that they are truly helpless, unable to care for themselves. They can only wail when they are hungry, thirsty, wet, or upset. Yet, most of us surmount those early fears (although, she points out, we can never banish the emotion for it is central to our survival instincts). How does this happen?
She cites the work of psychologist Donald Winnicott who “invented a concept for what children need, if concern for others is to grow and flourish. He called these conditions the ‘facilitating environment.’” The family, he wrote, “must have a core of basic loving stability…. It must be free from sadism and child abuse…. The facilitating environment has economic and social preconditions as well: there must be basic freedom from violence and chaos, from fears of ethnic persecution and terror; there must be enough to eat and basic health care.”
If a family lacks these things, children are likely to be emotionally stinted by fear, something that will haunt them all their lives.
It is also true that nations need a “facilitating environment” in which their citizens can feel safe, empowered, and optimistic. This is the kind of atmosphere that allows for cooperation, trust, and mutually aided accomplishments.
But when societies, just like failed families, are wracked by economic worries, fractured families, lost careers, and ruined hopes, the result is an environment in which all the positive things that allow a society to flourish are undermined by fear, doubt, and anger.
So, What Can Be Done?
We have arrived at our current sorry state of civic and political life as a result of policies intentionally chosen that have dramatically tilted the playing field towards the uppermost 1%. This, coupled with the politics of deceit and evasion made necessary by these policies, has seriously weakened the economic and psychological standing of millions of our fellow citizens and has, as a predictable byproduct, produced a climate of anxiety, fear, resentment, and outrage.
If we are to blunt this downward spiral we must revert to the kind of policies and politics of the decades that followed World War II, a period of diminished wealth disparity and widespread prosperity.
Nussbaum, consistent with her vision that the “flip-side” of fear is love, says that it is only when most people have adequate access to the necessities of life – and these include FDR’s call for a “second bill of rights” that embraces the goal of a democratic economy as well as what she calls the capabilities necessary if we are to flourish (and to flourish is the idea behind what Thomas Jefferson called the right to the pursuit of happiness).
She recalls FDR’s assertion that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and links this with FDR’s vision of a society in which all have the right to a well-paying job, to a decent home, to adequate health care and, as far as possible, to be free from the fears that accompany old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.
She concurs, for those conditions reduce the likelihood of fear, allowing instead for the more inclusive atmosphere of love, respect, tolerance, and cooperation.
Yes, the road is certainly an uphill one, certain to be blocked at every point by those who have everything to lose from changing the way things now work but, Nussbaum reminds us, we nonetheless must have hope. Hope, she reminds us, has this in common with fear: significant powerlessness. In fear, such powerlessness leads to despair, withdrawal, resentment, and anger, all of which shrink us. But if, even though we lack the power by ourselves to change anything, we choose hope, then that directs our gaze outwards in a search for allies, for possibilities, for a livable future.
She cites Immanuel Kant’s observation that hope was a “practical postulate,” that is, an attitude that we take on without proof that a better outcome will occur because hope can enable a greater likelihood of a better outcome. Fear and despair enable nothing.
There is wisdom here: I am not “in control,” but together we can act to bring about change.
Time to get started!
August 12, 2023
Een vlot geschreven boek door de meest gerespecteerde auteur over filosofie van emoties. Je merkt dat de auteur als het ware getraumatiseerd is door de verkiezing van Trump, en alle bronnen zijn goed om een stelling te verdedigen. Opvallend is de volkomen afwezigheid van kritische houding tegenover psychoanalytische theorie alsof de honderden pagina's kritiek op deze ontsporing van de menswetenschappen nooit zijn geschreven. Dit boek is geen filosofisch boek, maar een hopeloze poging om milde ideeën te onderbouwen. Vergeet vooral niet naar de musical Hamilton te gaan kijken.
January 23, 2023
"اندیشیدن دشوار است اما ترس و مذمت آسان"
4.5🌟
کتاب پر مغزی بود. تو شرایط مناسبی خوندمش.
بحث کتاب درباره ترسه و به خوبی احساساتی که ازش ناشی میشه رو توضیح میده.
قسمت جذاب برای من کاربرد همین ترس و احساساتی مثل خشم، حسد، سرزنش، انزجار تو فصل ملغمه ای مسموم : جنسیت زدگی و زن ستیزی بود.
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3 دی 1401
4.5🌟
کتاب پر مغزی بود. تو شرایط مناسبی خوندمش.
بحث کتاب درباره ترسه و به خوبی احساساتی که ازش ناشی میشه رو توضیح میده.
قسمت جذاب برای من کاربرد همین ترس و احساساتی مثل خشم، حسد، سرزنش، انزجار تو فصل ملغمه ای مسموم : جنسیت زدگی و زن ستیزی بود.
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3 دی 1401
September 3, 2025
Fear, anger, envy, vs love, hope and cooperation!!!
Emotional intelligence is needed more than ever in our times. Nussbaum discusses the emotions from infant to adult, from families to communities, from political parties to nations. Thoughtful suggestions for understanding our own political crisis threads its way through the book!!! Highly recommended.
Emotional intelligence is needed more than ever in our times. Nussbaum discusses the emotions from infant to adult, from families to communities, from political parties to nations. Thoughtful suggestions for understanding our own political crisis threads its way through the book!!! Highly recommended.
October 3, 2018
Nussbaum argues appealingly that fear is detrimental to democratic culture. In spite of the current political situation she makes a case for hope saying this is actually a time when hope and work can accomplish a great deal of good.
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