TWENTIETH CENTURY
PHILOSOPHY:
Intellectual Heroes and Key Themes
LECTURES
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
The pariah as rebel.
The hope of the hopeless.
Message in a bottle.
Absolute free.
Human flourishing.
Genealogy as critique.
V. HUMAN FLOURISHING
1. VIRTUES
What about the good life?
2. CAPABILITIES
How to conceive global justice?
3. COSMOPOLITANS
Which attitude is appropriate to the deal with
the big issues of the 21th century?
1. VIRTUES
CLASSICAL ETHICS
 The central question of classical ethics > how to live?
 Many philosophers answered that question by underlining
the importance of certain virtues (courage, honesty, decency,
truthfulness etc.).
 A virtues life is, according to classical philosophers, a good
life.
 However, they differ concerning the question which virtues
are important and outweigh others.
 Plato > virtues that are helpful to have the unstable aspects
of life under control.
 Aristoteles > virtues that are helpful to find the golden
mean, because it is impossible to have the unstable aspects
of life under control.
MODERN ETHICS
In modern ethics the question of the good life
retreats into the background.
Respect for the plurality of lifestyles implies that it
is impossible to prescribe what the just answer to
this question is.
The answer is the concern of the individual.
Modern ethics restricts itself to normative issues
that can be the object of a rational debate and will
lead to generally accepted judgments.
All in all modern ethics is all about the traffic rules
for people with different ideas about the good life.
THE RETURN OF VIRTUES
 The eighties of the 20th century > a kind of rebirth of
virtue ethics.
 Philosophers place classical philosophy with its attention
for the good life in the forefront.
 There are mainly three philosophers who are responsible
for the renewed reflection on virtues:
1. Alasdair MacIntyre > After Virtue. A Study in
Moral Theory (1981).
2. Bernard Williams > Moral Luck (1981).
2. Martha Nussbaum > The Fragility of Goodness.
Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and
Philosophy (1986).
MARTHA NUSSBAUM
BIOGRAPHICAL DATA:
 1947: Born May 6, in New York.
 1969: Studies classics and theatre at New
York University.
 1972: Studies philosophy at Harvard
University.
 1978: PhD in philosophy at Harvard
University.
 1986: involved in research on the quality of
life at the World Institute for Development
Economic Research (Wider) of the United
Nations.
 1995: Professor in law and ethics at the
University of Chicago.
MAJOR WORKS













The Fragility of Goodness (1986).
Loves knowledge (1990).
The Therapy of Desire (1994).
Poetic Justice (1995).
For Love of Country (1994/1997).
Cultivating Humanity (1997).
Sex and Social Justice (1998).
Women and Human Development (2000).
Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions (2001).
Frontiers of Justice (2006).
The Clash Within (2007).
Liberty of Conscience (2008).
Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010).
THE IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONS
 Nussbaum combines classical with modern ethics.
 She mobilizes especially the work of Aristotle to change
modern ethics.
 Like Aristotle one has to admit that emotions should be
taken seriously.
 Emotions don’t frustrate a rational view on reality.
 For instance, anxiety is in most cases based on the correct
view that there is a danger.
 However, Nussbaum doesn’t think that every emotion is
rational and from a moral perspective appropriate.
 She criticizes the stoic vision that emotions should be under
control in order to be independent of the unstable aspects of
life.
 A life without emotions is not only an illusion, but also
poor.
PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE
 Nussbaum underlines the importance of literature for the
clarification of moral questions.
 Literature is good for the ability to judge, because a
reader of a novel will become acquainted with different
perspectives on an issue.
 Novels, poems and tragedies make an appeal to the
intellectual capacity, the emotions and the imagination
of the reader.
 Without having the life of the characters of a novel, the
reader can experience a lot and enrich his life.
 Literature embodies a lot of wisdom that can be fruitful
for philosophy.
THE WISDOM OF TRAGEDIES
Tragedies > stories with a dramatic end that give
expression to practical wisdom and show that one
cannot control everything.
They are dealing with the tension between will and
fate.
Most often they present moral dilemmas >
situations where it is impossible to determine
which of the possible options is the best.
Tragedies give expression to contradictory norms.
Example: Agamemnon of Aeschylus.
A SACRIFICE
 With his crew on the journey to
Troy Agamemnon becomes
punished by the revenge of the
goddess Artemis.
 Revenge: be becalmed.
 Artemis is furious because so
many young men will die if they
are not in time in Troy.
 A prophet gives the sign that
Agamemnon and his crew will
only survive when he sacrifices
his daughter Iphigenia to the
gods.
 Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia.
THE DISGRACE OF AGAMEMNON
Nussbaum raises the question why Agamemnon is
wrong.
Answer: not because he sacrifices his daughter, but
because of his “inappropriate attitude towards the
conflict, killing a human child with no more agony,
no more revulsion of feeling”.
Agamemnon can be criticized because of is
inadequate emotions (not mournful, etc.).
The point of Nussbaum: the rightness of an action
doesn’t only depend on the arguments pro and con,
but also on the emotions one shows.
2. CAPABILITIES
HOW TO FLOURISH, THAT’S THE
QUESTION
 In contrast to the philosophy of Kant, Nussbaum is not in
search of universal principles, but in search of ideas that
contribute to human flourishing (eudaimonia).
 She distances herself form the dominant cognitivism within
ethics.
 Cognitivism emphasizes the importance of rationally
acquired knowledge and conceives emotions most often as
irrational.
 Emotions are not irrational, but deliver on several issues a
specific perspective.
 A pure cognitive ethics is according to Nussbaum wrong.
A NEW APPROACH
The issue of development (i.e. worldwide human
flourishing) is not only a question of the
redistribution of scarce goods.
Against that background Nussbaum developed with
Amartya Sen the so-called capability approach.
Development is an issue that is mainly about the
development of the opportunities that people have to
develop their capabilities.
Governments have the duty to give citizens the
opportunities to develop ten capabilities.
CENTRAL HUMAN CAPABILITIES:
1.
Life > being able to live to the end of a human life of normal
length.
2. Bodily Health > being able to have a good health.
3. Bodily integrity > being able to move freely from place to place.
4. Senses, Imagination, and Thought > being able to use the senses.
5. Emotions > being able to have attachments to things and people.
6. Practical reason > being able to form a conception of the good life
and to engage in critical reflection.
7. Affiliation > being able to live with and toward others and having
the social bases of self-respect.
8. Other species > being able to live with concern for and in relation
to animals, plants, and the world of nature.
9. Play > being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.
10. Control over One’s Environment > being able to participate in the
political sphere and hold property.
CONTRA RELATIVISM
Nussbaum refutes relativism, i.e. the standpoint
that human capabilities are not transhistorical and
transcultural.
She argues that the ten capabilities are
transhistorical and transcultural > the are essential
for every single individual.
The ten capabilities are universal.
Nevertheless they are abstract enough to give
space to do justice to differences between
contexts > a question of translation.
THE GOOD LIFE
Just like Aristotle Nussbaum thinks that the human
being is a political animal (zoon politikon) that
wants to have a good life.
The ten capabilities are minimal but crucial
elements of the good life.
Contexts that do not justice to these capabilities
frustrate the good life of an individual.
For a flourishing life it is important that an
individual has the opportunities to develop the ten
capabilities.
This is an issue of global justice.
GLOBAL JUSTICE
 Development should not be stuck on the Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), i.e. the value that all officially
recognized final goods and services produced within a
country have on the market in a specific period of time,
but on the opportunities for people to develop the ten
capabilities.
 The capabilities approach of Nussbaum and Sen has a
practical spin-off > the Human Development Report of
the UNDP.
 Global justice implies that all human beings have de
facto the necessary opportunities to develop the ten
capabilities: “a world in which people have all the
capabilities on the list is a minimally just and decent
world.”
3. COSMOPOLITANS
BEYOND THE CONCENTRIC CIRCLES
Nussbaum resists stubbornly the worldwide rise
of nationalism.
The patriotism that is inherent to nationalism is
based upon the model of concentric circles.
The basic thought of patriotism > people feel
themselves in first instance responsible for the
people who are next to them.
Nussbaum presents a cosmopolitan model that
is based upon her capabilities approach.
HUMAN DIGNITY
The cosmopolitanism of Nussbaum is based on a
specific idea of human dignity.
She argues that the ten capabilities are essential
for a decent life.
They correspond to the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
In order to do justice to these rights, collective
action is indispensible.
That implies that transnational institutions
should be revised or established that garantee
compliance with human rights.
NO WORLD STATE
 Global justice cannot be attained with a world state.
 A world state would lead to a political system that will give
an elite to much power > despotism.
 A world state is a threat to cultural diversity.
 Cosmopolitanism implies that human rights should be
implemented on the level of the nation state.
 That implies that nation states are also responsible for the
quality of life of ‘strangers’.
 Affluent states have the responsibility to give up – to a
certain degree - their wealth.
 Besides nation states transnational corporations and
transnational organisations (World Bank, WTO, etc.) and
NGOs are responsible to establish global justice.
CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
In times of globalisation education should not be
fixed on the nation state.
Citizenship education should also be focused on the
education of world citizens.
That implies that kids should learn a lot about other
cultures, life-styles.
Art and literature are important for the education of
world citizens, because it is helpful to become
acquainted with other perspectives on issues and
opens the door for intercultural dialogues.
RECOMMENDED
1. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of
Goodness [translations in several
languages].
2. Martha Nussbaum, Loves knowledge
[translations in several languages].
3. Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice
[translations in several languages].