An In-depth Conversation with Prof. Martha Nussbaum (Part 2 of 2)

Prof. Martha Nussbaum is one of America’s most distinguished philosophers. In this exclusive interview with Leader of Tomorrow Grégoire Roos, Prof. Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor for Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, discusses the ideas underlying the storming of the U.S. Capitol, ways to rebuild trust in polarised democracies and how acting has helped her philosophical understanding of emotions.

This is the continuation of the first part of this interview.

Roos: You have a very intimate personal experience with Ancient Greek philosophy and tragedy, not that common amongst philosophers and social scientists… you are also a professional actress! Aeschylus and Sophocles have no secret for you. As we stressed earlier on, insofar as it provides us with a possibly unexplored variety of emotions, literature (fiction) makes us more human, and brings us closer to our neighbour and more sympathetic towards their suffering. 

This actually reminds me of a discussion I had with Lech Wałęsa a little while ago, regarding the repression in Poland under the communist rule. I asked him whether having suffered made you a better leader. He reflected for a moment and said: to the extent that suffering reveals to you what’s really important in life and what isn’t, that it makes you assess the value of empathy to overcome fear and anger, then yes, having suffered may be important. Should we stop looking for the iron leader, and turn instead to people who acknowledge their vulnerability and can therefore better understand the distress, fear and anger of those who suffer? In other words, is a leader who’s suffered more worthy of our trust (Joe Biden seems to be a good example)?

Nussbaum: Yes, I do think that acting helped me understand emotions better, but I am a better actor now than I was then (I often act in amateur productions), because I have life-experience. I sing too, and it just happens that my voice, a dramatic soprano, is suited to roles that often express anger and a desire for revenge. I learn a lot about those destructive emotions by embodying those roles. Just this morning I was working on two arias of Elettra from Mozart’s Idomeneo, and what is fascinating is that underneath her mad fury she is a person of love, but she tries to get rid of that vulnerability and rise above it through anger. She says a sad farewell to “amor, mercè, pieta”, and then turns the full fury of her high note over to “vendetta e crudeltà.” But Mozart shows you in his brilliantly insightful depiction exactly what price she is paying.

As of Joe Biden, I have already discussed his example, and I hope this will be a new beginning in our country.

Roos: For Plato (for whom, by the way, you don’t seem to have particular affinity…), the highest moral good is happiness. And happiness can only be attained by means of specific dispositions he calls virtues. In The Fragility of Goodness (1986), you argue that Platonic virtue ethics presupposes the need for contemplation. Contemplation (taken in the sense of inner reflection, as its etymology indicates: contemplor = looking at the space and sky in the hope of an omen), however, is allowed only by a form of isolation from the shocks and shudders of the external world. Without such isolation or retreat, contemplation becomes more challenging, and goodness even more fragile. 

Has technique, as criticised by Heidegger and the anti-Moderns, with its corollary speed, noise, and the whole tumult of the Industrial Revolution, by depriving the modern man of the time and silence necessary to contemplation, diverted him from his route to goodness? “We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in…” (Charles Chaplin, The Great Dictator, 1940).

Nussbaum: You saw that I am not a fan of Plato! He is an elitist who favours people who are good at math over other people. I don’t think such people are better at understanding human life, so the type of contemplation I favour is the type the Stoics talk about, contemplation of human nature and human emotions. And no, I don’t think that this requires isolation from the shocks of real life. 

I lost my beloved daughter to a tragic death last year, involving a flawed donor organ and a drug-resistant infection, and I kept a journal then and have kept one ever since, concerning grief, tragedy, repair. It will much later become a book on grief, but it is too soon now. And I also really needed to write and work in order to keep going. While she was in the hospital I wrote part of a book on sexual assault that is coming out soon, and it was comforting to denounce malefactors of great selfishness, in order to pay tribute to her gentleness and her loving character. I have also been writing a large book on animal rights, which was my daughter’s great cause. She was an attorney for an animal welfare organisation, and we co-authored four articles together. So it gives me fulfilment to think that I make her cause and her ideas live on.

I think Heidegger’s critique of technē is elitist hogwash. It’s all a matter of one’s choices: but well-chosen technology is a huge help. I love my computer, and I love my kitchen equipment. I bet Heidegger never had to cook his own dinner…

This was the second part of the interview. You can find the first part here.

Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago (jointly appointed in the Law School and Philosophy department) and one of America’s most distinguished philosophers. 

Prof. Nussbaum’s research interests span several fields of philosophy, classics and social sciences, covering Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy and sciences, ethics and philosophy of law. The author of over twenty books -amongst which: The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986), Poetic Justice (1996), Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (1997), From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law (2010), The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis (2018)- Prof. Nussbaum is currently working on a book on justice for non-human animals. Her next book, Citadels of Pride: Sexual Abuse, Accountability, and Reconciliation, will be published in 2021.

The recipient of over sixty honorary doctorates, Prof. Nussbaum is a fellow and associate member of numerous academies of art and sciences (she’s a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences) and has received many awards acknowledging her exceptional contribution to the fields of philosophy, ethics, culture and science. 

Grégoire Roos