Martha Nussbaum interview
Rebecca Lann
-excerpt- Q: As far as I know, it is striking that you are one of just
a handful of philosophers in the US who routinely contribute to wider
debates. It has been said to me that much of anglophone academic
philosophy tends to speak to itself: do you agree?
MN: As Chair of the Committee on Public Philosophy in the American
Philosophical Association, I know that what you say is not correct:
there are dozens, even hundreds, of philosophers who address wider
topics. The problem is our media. The US media are controlled by large
corporate conglomerates who are interested primarily in short-term
profit, so it is very difficult for intellectuals to get into the
major media, whether TV or newspapers.
But philosophers have more success at the local level, writing for
their local newspapers and appearing on local radio and TV. The most
successful philosophical radio program I know, John Perry and Ken
Taylor's "Philosophy Talk," started out in Palo Alto only, and by now
it is all over California and reaching into Oregon. I hope that
continues, but one never knows.
The Anglophone nation in which the voices of intellectuals have the
easiest time reaching a broad public is India, where more or less any
prominent intellectual can get an op ed in a major newspaper, and so
that encourages people to try. I myself have an easier time getting
coverage of my ideas in India than in my own country. Going beyond
newspapers, Indian magazines such as Economic and Political Weekly,
Frontline, and others show that one can produce very high level
intellectual work for a very broad audience. In the US, the analogues
would be The Nation, Dissent, and The Boston Review, but they have a
rather small audience by comparison. In India one sees quite generally
that the political powers that be want to hear from intellectuals, and
invite them to consult. That is not the case in the U. S., with
occasional exceptions in the area of law.
Most nations in continental Europe have a bigger audience for
philosophy than does the US, despite their smaller populations. The
Dutch translations of my books typically generate much more media
attention and larger public audiences than do the U. S. editions.
Holland is an impressive case of a country with a very strong public
culture of philosophy, but one might also mention Italy, Germany, and
Finland.
Q: If so, does that particularly matter - which is to say, might
philosophy usefully contribute much more, and might it in some sense
be better if it did? Again, if so, in what ways?
MN: I think, as I've said, that young philosophers will be encouraged
to learn the skills of writing for the general public only if they
think that there is an outlet. But in fact there is not an outlet, and
entities such as the New York Times Book Review and other major
newspapers are becoming less and less interested in the work of
philosophers. So, one has to beat one's head against the wall, and it
is hard to advise young vulnerable nontenured philosophers to do that.
I sometimes tell them, "You can always consider moving to another
country!" and I have had former students teaching in Dubai, in
Lebanon, in Canada, in Germany - all of whom have a much easier time
getting involved in the public debate than the ones who remain in the
U. S. But you can make a difference in the U. S. - you just have to
try much harder and to have some good luck.
Q: At a personal level, can you say why you are still drawn
specifically to the philosophical tradition/philosophical approaches
to ask the questions you do?
MN: I love thinking and writing about these questions, and I never get
tired of it. I admire good activists, and I think that they make a
superb contribution. Sometimes I think that I should go join them
(e.g. the activists working with women's literacy that I describe in
WOMEN AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT ). But I would not be a good activist, and
I have concluded that the contribution that I am best placed to make
is one through thinking, writing, and speaking.
I do think that theoretical work makes a contribution, especially in a
world in which people's lives are pervasively influenced by bad theory
(e.g. through the defective normative conceptions embedded in
development economics). In general, I think that getting clear about
the reasons for one's beliefs matters in human life, and that it is a
good thing for us all to do: it is only that philosophers have the
good luck to be able to do it full-time.
Q: Whilst noting that ancient Greek and Roman philosophy is not your
special interest, does the moral question from that tradition, how
should we live? - as opposed to what is right, how do we decide, and
so on - make sense as an approach to morality to you today?
MN: Yes and no. I think that as an approach to personal ethical
inquiry, the question, "How should a human being live?" is a good
starting point, because it is very inclusive -- although, as you might
notice, it doesn't direct us to the good of nonhuman animals, and it
might encourage us to sever human beings too sharply from the lives of
animals. On the other hand, it includes many diverse and non-
commensurable elements in a human life, such as friendship, family,
political justice, courage, and it doesn't wrongly assume that all of
these are commensurable according to some single metric. So it is a
promising starting point. On the other hand, it does not inform us
that human beings are all equal, and not to be treated as mere means:
so it needs to be combined with the insights of Kant if it is to offer
good ethical guidance.
As for politics, no comprehensive ethical approach offers good
guidance, since we need to base political principles on what can be
affirmed by people who have different secular and religious views of
the good life. The Greeks and Romans absolutely did not understand
this: they thought that the only thing we had to do was to figure out
which view was correct, then we could build society on that.
The idea that respect for persons entails respecting the space within
which they search for the meaning of life in their own way was not on
their agenda, and they usually treat views that diverge from their own
with caustic lack of respect. The idea of respectful pluralism was
probably not even discovered in Europe and North America until the
seventeenth century (in thinkers such as Locke and Roger Williams),
although it was well known in India long before that (from at least
the emperor Ashoka in the second century B. C.). So, the Greeks and
Romans do not offer terribly good guidance toward the framing of
political principles in that way, though they do have some ideas in
the area of politics that are more helpful.
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