In a forthcoming issue of Ethics (May, 2006, I think), I have a long review article on two recent books by Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge, England: The Cambridge University Press, 2001), and Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Here is the conclusion of that article:

These two books together build an imposing structure of ideas, glittering with erudition. It is also true, I think, that it is a structure that is crossed by several fissures between ideas that do not seem to be entirely consistent. There is the gap between her insistence that we accept and affirm our animality and (physical) humanity on the one hand, and her strategy of condemning some (apparently perfectly natural) emotions as morally deficient in themselves on the other. On her own account of the matter, nothing could be more natural, more firmly rooted in our nature as embodied beings, than disgust or (to an admittedly lesser extent) shame. Given that, is it really a good idea to brand certain emotions as ethically bad? Given the anti-ascetic bent of Nussbaum’s view, I would think a more appropriate approach to the ethics of the emotions would be the one that I find in Aristotle in Nietzsche, which maintains that an emotion cannot be bad per se, but only becomes bad becomes bad in certain circumstances (as for instance when it is indulged to excess). There is also the fissure between Nussbaum’s rather Hobbesian developmental psychology and her Rouuseauian social views. If children begin life as would-be dictators, why isn’t the best sort of child-rearing the one that Murdstone inflicts on David Copperfield, in which one seeks to break and pulverize the little tyrant into civilized pliability? In addition, there is the tension, which she recognizes as at least a source of potential criticism, between her heavy emphasis on human deficiency and weakness on the one hand, and liberal insistence on human dignity on the other. Finally, there is the gap that yawns between her insistence that we accept our frailty and her apparent hope that it can be wiped out altogether.

On any number of important subjects, Martha Nussbaum is virtually the only person in the world of academic philosophy who is writing about them. It is possible that her work will stimulate a wider discussion of them. I certainly hope it will. If it does so, that will itself be a great contribution indeed. It is in the hope of extending this discussion that I offer these comments.