James Donnelly, DSW, LCSW
The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Revised Edition, 2001.Cambridge University Press..544 pages.
The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Paperback reissue, 2009. Princeton University Press. 558 pages.
Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Paperback edition, 8th printing, 2008. Cambridge University Press. 751 pages.
I have completed the last volume of what I am coming to call the Martha Nussbaum Trilogy. The term ‘trilogy’ may be more associated with works of poetry and literature than philosophy. However, it is more than appropriate for the work of a philosopher whose style of writing is so engaging and so replete with integrated references between philosophy’s and literature’s mutual enhancement. What is of interest to us as therapists is her integration and use of psychoanalytic object relations developmental theory to address fractures in the philosophical discussion of conflicts between mind/body, emotion/intelligence; and establish the essential validity of emotions for a flourishing human life. Nussbaum’s over all project is to develop a philosophical anthropology in the Aristotelian tradition that is grounded in the uniqueness of the whole person; a philosophy which can support an ethics of justice and compassion for participation in a secular democratic society.
Her first work of this trilogy is The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. It is an enticing invitation into the world of Aristotle, Plato and the Greek dramatists. It reveals how they wrestle with each other around the fundamental dilemmas of the human condition; dilemmas being played out in the turmoil of the Athenian democracy. A meaningful human life is challenged by the unavoidable fact of caprice and chance in our lives. This theme is a consistent thread throughout all three volumes. Nussbaum works her way to a philosophy and ethics that denies none of the realities of our emotional experiences and leads to a truly humanistic individual and communal morality.
Nussbaum starts with depictions of inherent human dilemmas portrayed by the tragic poets: Aeschylus (Agamemnon), Sophocles (Antigone) and Euripides (Hecuba). The tragic Greek dramas demonstrate in various ways the central place of luck and caprice intrinsic in the moral dilemmas of being human together in society: Agamemnon’s awe-full choice between his daughter’s life and the launching of the ships for Troy; Antigone’s insistence on the morality of loyalty to her brother; and the transformation of Hecuba’s noble character by revenge for her son’s murder and betrayal of trust by his protector. All point to an element of impossibility central to the unavoidable necessity of choice in the face of chance or luck (tuche) in our lives. Her message throughout is this paradox: the reality of our vulnerability to chance or luck gives meaning to a social ethics and a flourishing human life.
As she takes us through the different approaches of Aristotle and Plato in the way they address this issue, Nussbaum argues that efforts to avoid or sidetrack the reality of tuche sacrifices too much of what is essential for a flourishing human life. In this and throughout, she takes her stand with Aristotle.
In their political works, the debate between Plato (Republic and Laws) and Aristotle (Ethics and Politics), however, does not center on chance or luck per se, but on the place of emotions and desires versus intellect and reason as aids or hindrance in our pursuit and grasp of truth, goodness and security in our lives.
In his solution to the ravages of vulnerability and dependence, Plato splits mind and body. The emotions, desires and needs of the body wreak havoc in our lives, distort our perceptions and judgments, and interfere with reason’s capacity to know truth and reality. In the Republic, Plato constructs a society ruled by and supportive of only those who can undergo the severe discipline to detach from their bodily needs or relationships with others in order to be free from contingency and to participate in the Immortal, the Good and the Beautiful. There is only a begrudging acceptance of basic human needs. The good life is defined totally in terms of the individual’s transcendence of physical and social need and vulnerability. Emotions are of no value. (Nussbaum, however, points to passages in the dialogue, Phaderus, where the later period Plato seems to soften this stance towards the value of emotion.)
Aristotle, on the other hand, accepts the basic integrity of mind and body as well as the needs we have for each other and the things of this world. They are essential for a good human life. His Ethics and Politics address finding the means to negotiate these realities instead of avoiding or denying them. Emotions for Aristotle are not simply blind forces. Rather they are evaluative judgments regarding what is of vital interest and importance to us. They are intrinsically related to our thoughts and beliefs and are subject to rational review. The good life for Aristotle is found in a life of balance within the realities of community and an ethics based upon the creation of a society that provides for that possibility.
To accept an integrated view of man in society is to accept the validity of emotions and the reality of dependence, chance and luck in our lives. Emotions are indispensable for the achievement of a flourishing human life. Aristotle praises and supports the value for society of emotional expression displayed in drama and poetry. Plato banishes them.
The world of Plato, Aristotle and the dramatic poets was that of the glory, violence and chaos of fifth and fourth century Athens. The society that created democracy executed Socrates, slaughtered all male citizens of its colony, Melos, for wanting neutrality during Athens’ war with Sparta, and engaged in wars of conquest and domination that eventually lead to its downfall. This same society gave us the foundations of Western philosophy, politics, art, science and literature.
Despite its dark side, Athens allowed the voices of its conscience in the works of its philosophers, historians and poets.
It is into a very different world and society that Nussbaum takes us in her second work: The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. This is the world of Imperial Rome. We are no longer in the small city state where ‘free’ men debate with each other face to face in the Polis; where there was a much clearer demarcation between who is a citizen and who is not. We are now in the sprawling empire of post republican Rome; an empire that encompasses much of the known world. This is the Hellenistic world where the Greek philosophical legacy is fully adapted, expanded and transformed by Roman reality and spirit.
As Nussbaum takes us into the world of the Hellenistic philosophers – primarily the Epicureans and Stoics – it is refreshing to discover how much of our contemporary understanding of human relations and therapeutic endeavors are at the core of these philosophies. Before taking us into detail of the differences and similarities between these two philosophies, Nussbaum outlines two major underling themes for both:
- Philosophy for the Hellenists is not a detached and abstract study of Being or the nature of things. Philosophy must address the pains and suffering of mankind. The philosopher is primarily seen as a healer. His philosophy includes a method of healing. The relationship between the philosopher and student is crucial and the application of his healing methods is specific to the particular student.
- “Therapeutic argument” is the primary method of healing. It is the use of our powers of practical, deliberative reason to examine our experience. However, therapeutic argument is applied within the context of a therapeutic relationship and involves the progressive exploration of the student’s narrative.
These philosophers hold that the center of our suffering is our dependence and emotional attachment to each other and the things of this world. However, these philosophies are sophisticated and detailed in their examination of this dilemma. Our dependence, feelings and desires are not blind forces, but actually erroneous beliefs. These beliefs are inculcated into us by society and blind us to a healing perception of our true nature and reality. Midst this storm called life, the only hope of healing is a life-long commitment to take firm hold of the tiller of reason and the methods of therapeutic argument. This enables us to rationally examine our daily experiences and clear away the obstacles of false belief blinding perception of our true nature.
What can we rely upon to find security against the vagaries of fortune?
For the Epicureans it is learning to trust the innate intelligence of our senses. Through them we are intrinsically in harmony with nature. It is the false opinions of society that obscure our awareness of this intrinsic harmony. For the Stoics, it is learning to identify ourselves with our innate capacity for reason and the power of intelligence at work in the entire universe. Both these philosophies present with a methodology and commitment to an ongoing, deep deconstruction of the assumptions of our experience.
The Epicureans and Stoics both promote a radical suspension of judgment regarding the validity of information conveyed to us by our emotions. It is our emotional links to others and the things of this world that harbor the faulty beliefs of society we hold well below our normal awareness.
The two schools have significant differences as well as much in common. Both are highly critical of society, its mindless beliefs and tendency to categorize some men more ‘human’ than others. For these philosophies all human beings are equal; equality based upon their common human nature. However, they differ in their understanding of that commonality. Far beyond the particular nationality or status of citizenship, all – men and women, slave or free – are equal and worthy citizens of the cosmos. Therefore the commitment of the philosopher is to reach out to all men and women no matter what their status in society. The Epicureans and Stoics differ, however, in their commitment to social change.
Both demonstrate how deeply rooted are the beliefs held in our emotions far below our awareness. Thus, they affirm the importance of a personal relationship with the teacher to explore the student’s narrative in order to arrive at this level of awareness. Both share an obligation of concern for one’s fellow human being regardless of status. They hold firmly to a conviction of the interrelatedness of all mankind.
However, there are striking differences between the Epicureans and Stoics regarding the nature of student-teacher relationships, their method of teaching and ways the schools are structured. They differ significantly in their attitudes toward society.
The Epicurean teacher is the authority and source of true doctrine. He is the healer. He imparts knowledge to his student. It is not a genuinely reciprocal relationship and there is a strong emphasis on persuasion. In order to reduce the influence of society’s opinions, the student is encouraged to become part of an Epicurean community. It is a communal withdrawal from society to minimize its influence. The concern for one’s fellow human being is an individual concern. It is not a concern to reform society. It reminds one a little of the communes of the 60s
The Stoic teacher, on the other hand, is a guide to the student’s capacity to discover his or her power to heal oneself. The Stoic philosophy is characterized by radical respect for the power of intelligence and reason in all human beings. For them, this is the essence of humanity, present in everyone. The possibility of its discovery is available to all. More true to the Socratic Method, the student is guided toward his or her own innate capacity to exercise their reason and liberate themselves from the illusions of society. Unlike the Epicureans, Stoics face society rather than withdraw from it and are committed to point out disparities and injustice. They promote reform and awareness of the destructive impact indifference by the powerful has on the lives of real people in society. They opposed slavery and other forms of disparity and injustice. They actively reached out. Epictetus, sometimes called the Roman Socrates, was active in the market place promoting his teaching. Cicero was a Roman statesman who was murdered for his political beliefs.
The above is a very thin outline in comparison to the wealth of presentation in Therapy of Desire. To explore the richness, depth and hidden ambiguities of both schools, Nussbaum takes us into the texts of two of their Roman representatives: the Epicurean, Lucretius (De Rerum Natura) and the Stoic, Seneca (Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, De Ira, other Dialogues and Medea). The solid bridge of our common humanity between ourselves and these ancients is firmly established in the writing of Martha Nussbaum.
On her journey towards an ethic for a secular democratic society, Nussbaum builds upon her Aristotelian foundation. She gleans from the Hellenistic philosophers’ riches and insights that add depth and breadth. In affirming the basic integrity of mind and body, Aristotle validates the place of emotion in our lives. The Hellenists validate and explore in depth the cognitive richness and complexity of emotions – but radically disavow their validity. Nussbaum has now reached the limit of the ancient anthropology to integrate fully the value of our emotions for an ethical and flourishing human life.
We now enter her last volume of this trilogy: Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions.
In Upheavals, building upon the foundation of Aristotle and the Stoics, Nussbaum takes us through constructing her approach to ethics; an approach where emotions are seen neither as excluded from nor simply supporting the so called higher functions of human being. Rather, as she demonstrates, the reality of our emotions is the grounding of any truly humanistic ethics leading to a flourishing human life. As we will come to see, this is an ethic not based simply upon the integration of mind and body, but upon the complete unity of mind and body.
She begins by taking seriously the Stoics concerns about the dangers to a truly human and ethical life presented by emotions: the dangers of uncontrolled anger, violence in response to the frustration of need, erotic desires, and the vicissitudes of our dependence upon each other and the things of this world. Even Aristotle (De Anima), the biologist, held that though plants and animals had intelligence relevant to their needs, human capacity for reason was qualitatively different, unique and can exist without reliance upon the body. To address these ancient concerns, Nussbaum steps beyond the traditions of philosophy. She focuses our attention on the two living beings to which the ancients paid little attention: animals and children.
Through modern studies of emotions in animals, Nussbaum argues for the biological continuity of emotions between animals and humans. However, it is her inclusion and reliance upon psychoanalytic theories of emotional development in children that serves as the keystone in the arch of a reconstructed philosophical anthropology that closes the gap between eros and philos; sexual passion and the love of friendship. It lays the foundation for an ethics of compassion supporting the real possibility of a flourishing human life; a life within the reality of our need and desire for each other and community. Here we will encounter some familiar names: Winnicott, Bollas, Mahler, Fairbairn, Kohut to name just a few.
There are a number of key concepts taken from psychoanalytic theory that she uses to address the concerns of the Stoics.
First, there is the reality of progressive emotional development within a holding environment. This developmental process, which, subject to the vicissitudes of interaction between the emergent child and parental care, leads progressively from absolute dependence to negotiable dependence; from complete merging of self and other to a differentiated and articulated self with others. This allows us to account for the real concerns the Stoics have (as well as ourselves) with the turbulent and destructive potential of emotions resulting from a failure in holding; wounded development within an inadequate or destructive parental and community environment. At the same time, it supports and accounts for the reality of a passionate and vital emotional life – possible and necessary for a flourishing individual and communal life together.
Second, is the central importance for our individual and communal lives of our capacity to imagine, and the vital link between emotion and imagination. Within our allowance of this capacity lies our ability to see the world and identify with another’s point of view; and, thereby, discover and create new possibilities between us.
Third, is the indispensable importance of narrative as the only vehicle within which we both discover and address with healing, the wounds of our individual and communal developmental failures.
By incorporating these concepts into her philosophical dialogue with the Stoics and early Greeks and Romans, Nussbaum can say: it is not our emotions that are the root of the turbulence and destructive forces between us. Rather is the disallowance of emotion in a wounded course of development that is at the root of these evils.
Emotion, rather than being a threat to us, is the psycho-biological marker of our unavoidable and absolute dependence upon each other. Through pain and through joy, it is only through our embrace of life with our emotions that, despite the vicissitudes of chance and luck, we achieve together a flourishing human life.
These few summary paragraphs do little justice to the richness and pleasure of Nussbaum’s presentation. As she has done in both Fragility and Therapy she takes us deeply into the texts of her dialogue partners beyond Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics: Proust, Spinoza, Augustine, Dante, Emily Bronte, Mahler, Walt Whitman, and James Joyce.
Nussbaum devotes the second half of this work to the elaboration and clarification of the value/emotions of love and compassion. The conclusion to which she leads us is this: there are not different kinds of love. There is one love. Our perceptions of different kinds of love are simply veils woven from the wounds of our personal and communal development. These veils disavow the marker of our physicality and innate connectedness: our emotions. The veils, the wounds of developmental failure, are called shame and disgust.
In a play on Diomita’s (Symposium) ladder of ascent to love, Nussbaum offers a counter metaphor in the form of a ladder that ascends and descends; a ladder that leads in both directions at once.
Starting with Plato, Spinoza and Proust, she points out their creative attempts to ascend to a contemplation of a love that escapes the realities of flesh and emotions. In their efforts, they tend towards a solipsist use of the other. She highlights how each in their own way fail to meet the criteria for a love needed for a flourishing human life. For Nussbaum, there are three criteria set for such a love: it must be reciprocal; it must individualize each person; it must be capable of compassion.
Moving up and down the ladder, she looks next at Augustine and Dante. Augustine clearly embraces the reality and need for acknowledging our vulnerability and emotions; yet still labors under a Platonic influence. He loves the Divine through the individual and not the manifestations of ‘fallen’ man. Dante, a true son of Aristotle (via Thomas Aquinas) truly individualizes and respects the agency of each person. He really loves Beatrice and she him as actual flesh and blood individuals … flaws and all. He does not turn away from the realities of human need in society and faces the world with concerns for justice. However as a man of his time and his faith, there is a sense of disgust at the failures of the flesh and a judgmental exclusion of the ‘other’ outside his world.
She then moves to two representatives of Romantic love, Bronte, Mahler and to Walt Whitman’s vision of democracy founded on a radical acceptance of love and desire. . The tragedy of Cathy and Heathcliff are Bronte’s images of rebellion against the repression of life and passion by a dead and hypocritical tradition. Only in the face of immediate death can they let their love defy and disturb the so called Christian household. Yet the authenticity of their passion is a critique of the empty love of their society – with its fear of passion and consequent cruelty. Their love is doomed and does not reach beyond themselves. Mahler, on the other hand, through the power of his music and his thoughts about the meanings he wants to communicate, emphasizes love’s creative striving and imagination. He evokes deep longings to break down and over come all barriers to full bodily and spiritual acceptance of love and freedom for all. His vision is for everyone and incorporates a commitment to face the world’s barriers to justice and inclusion. Whitman sings of unbridled allowance of love, desire, total openness and acceptance of oneself and others. This is for him the true hope and foundation of a democratic society. His blatant and assertive physicality was an offense to those who maintain the exclusion of the other under the banner of morality and religion. A lover of Lincoln and an opponent of slavery, hypocrisy and homophobia, he very clearly drew the political conclusions for love in a democracy.
Nussbaum then asks of Mahler and Whitman: in the loftiness of their vision, have they flown over love in the messiness of our everyday lives? To address this question, she takes us to and leaves us with a day in the lives of Leopold and Molly Bloom. Like Whitman, Joyce’s portrayal of love was banned as obscene. Through the text of Ulysses, Joyce demands of us the patience to wade through the disjointed, fragmented, contradictory, irreverent, profoundly sexual and messy everyday – to find our way to an uncompromisingly human discovery of love in Molly’s “yes”. The allowance with which Joyce provokes us on our journey with Bloom is a challenge to each of us: what actually is our commitment to love of ourselves and each other, as we actually bump into us … every day. Here is where ascent and decent on the ladder of love actually meet.
Love is ladder that goes both ways.
On this journey with Martha Nussbaum from Antigone and Diotima to Molly Bloom, we can see the faces and hear the dilemmas of the clients we serve every day. She helps us see the bigger picture and the wider implications of our conversations with our clients; conversations that are in the most radical sense, a contribution to society. Through the experiences and resolution of a mutual and therapeutic transference, these conversations foster and allow worlds that ‘hold’ and support all our efforts to achieve a flourishing human life together. It validates for us that love, love that embraces the ‘high’ and the ‘low’, is realized and discovered in the acts of meaningful, inclusive and truthful speech, both within and between us: speech that tolerates the discomforts of disgust and shame and does not avert its eyes from the often messy realities of our imperfect attempts to address the dilemmas imposed by tuche, the vicissitudes of life and our desires.
It has been a journey well worth taking.
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