The monarchy of fear A philosopher looks at our political crisis

Martha Craven Nussbaum, 1947-

Book - 2018

"From one of the world's most celebrated moral philosophers, an examination of the current political crisis. In The Monarchy of Fear Martha C. Nussbaum--an acclaimed scholar and humanist--analyzes the political standoff that has polarized American life since the 2016 presidential election and focuses on what so many pollsters and pundits have overlooked: the political is always emotional. Globalization, automation, and the rising costs of higher education have produced feelings of powerlessness in millions of American people. Related issues trouble European unity. That sense of powerlessness and a pervasive underlying fear of change bubble into resentment and blame: of immigrants, Muslims, those of other races, and cultural elites.... While this politics of blame played a role in the election of Donald Trump and the vote for Brexit, Nussbaum argues it can be found on all sides of the political spectrum--confusingly intertwined, however, with reasonable arguments aiming at greater justice. She argues that retribution is always a bad response to fear and articulates a politics of constructive work and hope. Drawing on a mix of historical and contemporary examples, from classical Athens to the musical Hamilton, The Monarchy of Fear untangles our web of emotions and provides a road map of where to go next."--Dust jacket.

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Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Simon & Schuster [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Martha Craven Nussbaum, 1947- (author)
Edition
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition
Item Description
"July 2018"--Title page verso.
Physical Description
xviii, 249 pages ; 21 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781501172496
  • Preface
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Fear, Early and Powerful
  • 3. Anger, Child of Fear
  • 4. Fear-Driven Disgust: The Politics of Exclusion
  • 5. Envy's Empire
  • 6. A Toxic Brew: Sexism and Misogyny
  • 7. Hope, Love, Vision
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Booklist Review

In the election of Donald Trump, Nussbaum sees not simply the triumph of one politician but also the triumph of a cluster of turbulent emotions: envy, anxiety, disgust, anger, and, above all, fear. One of America's leading philosophers here probes this dangerous fusion of emotions, explaining Trump's twenty-first-century ascendance as part of a distressing human dynamic manifested through history and around the globe. Drawing on ethical thinkers from Aristotle to Mandela, Nussbaum analyzes the origins and consequences of dark emotions and summons readers to the difficult task of replacing them with love, faith, and hope. Readers will notice that the path Nussbaum charts from destructive to generous emotions unfolds along the political principles of the secular left. To be sure, Nussbaum calls for open public dialogue that includes a diverse range of voices. But then she dismisses religionists' theological convictions as a distraction from political activism and waves away conservatives' worries about family life. But even readers skeptical about Nussbaum's political orientation will welcome this call for an emotionally healthier public life.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Divisive politics sprout from primal passions, according to this sparkling pop-philosophy treatise. University of Chicago philosophy professor Nussbaum (Upheavals of Thought) attempts to root political impulses in the psychology of babies, who relieve their sense of helpless fear by squalling imperious demands that parents fulfill their needs; this infantile anxiety is so emotionally formative, she contends, that it makes democracies vulnerable to demagogic efforts to gin up fear of scapegoats, from ancient Athens's conflict with its colony Mytilene to latter-day panics over Muslim immigrants. Fear spawns other emotions that animate malignant politics, Nussbaum argues, such as anger that leads to violence and disgust that motivates racism and homophobia. She calls for such programs as three years of mandatory national service to instill feelings of inclusiveness and solidarity, and endorses a varied group of "practices of hope" (such as religion, protest movements, and Socratic education) as antidotes to fear. Nussbaum's erudite but very readable investigation engages figures from Aristotle to Donald Trump in lucid and engaging prose, though some readers may feel she psychologizes politics without grappling sufficiently with positions' substance. Still, Nussbaum offers fresh, worthwhile insights into the animosities that roil contemporary public life. Agent: Sydelle Kramer, Susan Rabiner Literary Agency. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Nussbaum (Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, Univ. of Chicago; The Fragility of Goodness) here attempts to explain the current U.S. political climate as one driven by fear: the fear of losing one's livelihood, country, etc., and of the "other," such as immigrants, minorities, women, and/or the wealthy. The first chapter contains a dialog between Nussbaum and an imaginary "defender of fear." The text then explores how anxiety might influence behavior, both personal and political. But this line of reasoning belies appearances. Fear is ancient, yet the status quo cannot be described as politics as usual-something has changed. One worries that the shift is born not out of fear but lack of concern with the truth. "Truth matters," Nussbaum claims, but still contends that angst causes hysteria that undermines rational deliberation. Yet the 2016 election was not immediately preceded by a recent domestic terrorist attack or threat of impending nuclear annihilation; previous U.S. elections have been prefaced by assaults on the truth, e.g., news programs moved from reporting facts to debating them and politicians ignoring and skewing facts out of dubious political loyalty. VERDICT Not recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 1/29/18.]-William Simkulet, Mid-Michigan Community Coll., Mt. Pleasant © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A philosopher considers Trumpism through the lens of history, classical thought, and a bit of Hamilton.Like any clearheaded thinker, Nussbaum (Law and Ethics/Univ. of Chicago; Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice, 2016, etc.) was unsettled by Trump's election, but she's troubled also by the way people of all political persuasions have succumbed to fear and mindless fear-slinging. She tries to keep Trump at arm's length and focus instead on what philosophers and psychologists going back to antiquity have had to say about fear ("genetically first among the emotions"), its role in stoking anger, disgust, and envy, and how those emotions in turn perpetuate divisive politics (sexism and misogyny especially). That approach gives this important book both up-to-the-moment relevance and long-view gravitas. Athenian debates over wiping out enemies, for instance, reveal the enduring ways that "fear can be manipulated by true and false information." For centuries, irrational fear about others being unclean and untouchable has been shaped into discriminatory policy and violence. Envy has long provoked attitudes of one-upmanship that support systemic oppression or foolish practices like duelingNussbaum writes at length about Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical in this context, focusing on Aaron Burr's and Alexander Hamilton's competitive natures. But while the author generally takes the long view on these conflagrations, she also wrestles with contemporary rhetoric and social media. Unlike the Stoics and Cynics of the past (or her more emotionally cool contemporaries), she's more willing to subscribe to hope and faith as solutions, using Martin Luther King Jr. as a key exemplar. Her main prescription for fixing a fear-struck America is straightforward: effectively making AmeriCorps mandatory, an act that "would put young citizens into close contact with people different in age, ethnicity, and economic level." Nothing would do more to eradicate fear of the other, she argues, though she acknowledges that America at the moment would be too scared to pull it off.An engaging and inviting study of humanity's long-standing fear of the other. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The Monarchy of Fear Preface Election night 2016 was bright daylight for me--in Kyoto, where I had just arrived for an award ceremony, after a joyful sendoff from my colleagues at home. I was feeling pretty anxious about the bitterly divided electorate, and yet reasonably confident that appeals to fear and anger would be repudiated--although there would be a lot of difficult work ahead to bring Americans together. My Japanese hosts came in and out of my hotel room, explaining the schedule of the various ceremonial events. In the background of these conversations, but in the foreground of my mind, the election news kept coming in, producing, first, increasing alarm and then, finally, both grief and a deeper fear, for the country and its people and institutions. I was aware that my fear was not balanced or fair-minded, so I was part of the problem that I worried about. I was in Kyoto to accept an award established by a Japanese scientist, businessman, and philanthropist--also a Zen Buddhist priest--who wanted to recognize "those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind." While I loved the fact that Dr. Kazuo Inamori recognized philosophy as one of the disciplines capable of making a major contribution, I felt the award as more a challenge than an accolade, and was already wondering how, at this fraught moment in US history, I might actually live up to my laurels! By the time the election result was clear, I had to go out to have my first official meeting with the other two laureates (both scientists) at the offices of the Inamori Foundation, so I dressed up in a cheerful suit, fixed my hair, and tried to express happiness and gratitude. The first official dinner was a chore. Social conversation with strangers, filtered through an interpreter, offered no distracting charms. I wanted to hug my friends, but they were far away. Email is great, but not like a hug for comfort and consolation. That night the combination of political anxiety and jet lag made sleep somewhat intermittent, so I began thinking--deciding, around midnight, that my previous work on emotions hadn't gone deep enough. As I examined my own fear, it gradually dawned on me that fear was the issue, a nebulous and multiform fear suffusing US society. I got some ideas, tentative but promising, about how fear is connected to, and renders toxic, other problematic emotions such as anger, disgust, and envy. I rarely work in the middle of the night. I sleep soundly, and my best ideas usually come to me gradually, sitting at my computer. But jet lag and a national crisis have a way of changing habit, and in this case, I had a joyful sense of discovery. I felt that some insight might possibly be the fruit of this upheaval--and who knows?--it might be insight that would give others some good ideas, too, if I could do the work well. I went back to sleep with a calming sense of hope. The following day--after a cleansing morning workout--I plunged into formal ceremony. I donned my evening dress and smiled as best I could for the official portrait photo. The onstage ceremony was aesthetically beautiful and hence distracting, and listening to the biographies of my fellow laureates and their short speeches about their work was genuinely fascinating, since they were in fields (self-driving cars and basic cancer research) about which I know little, and I was filled with admiration for their achievements. Giving my own short speech, I was able to express some of the things I really care about and to thank people who had helped me throughout my career. At least as important, I could also express love of my family and close friends. (All this had to be written in advance for the sake of the translator, so no ad hoc modification was possible, but being able to express love was still extremely consoling.) Kyoto prize banquets end punctually and extremely early, so by 8:30 I was back in my room, and I sat down at my desk and wrote. By that time the ideas I had had during the night had taken form, and as I wrote, they became more and more developed and more and more convincing (at least to me!). By the end of two evenings of work, I had a long blog piece that a journalist friend of mine in Australia posted, and that blog piece simultaneously took a different shape as a book proposal. But who am I, you might ask, and how did I come to take such a keen interest in the emotions of political unity and division? I am, of course, an academic, living a highly privileged life in the midst of wonderful colleagues and students, and with all the support I could wish for my work. Even at this time of grave threat for the humanities and the arts, my own university still strongly supports the humanities. As a philosopher without a law degree, I have the great delight of serving partly in a law school, where I can learn every day about the political and legal issues of this nation, meanwhile offering courses about justice and political ideas. So, it's a fine vantage point, but it might seem too detached to participate in the anxieties of most Americans. I was a privileged child, too, but in a far more complicated way. My family, living on Philadelphia's elite Main Line, was upper middle-class and fairly affluent. I had love, excellent nutrition and health care, a first-rate education at an excellent private school for women, which in those days supplied incentives to excellence, free of gendered peer pressure, that a public-school education would have offered to girls only more unevenly. (My mother used to tell me, "Don't talk so much, or the boys won't like you," apt advice for the times, but I didn't have to worry about following it at school!) I've always loved reading, writing, and constructing arguments. Furthermore, my father loved my aspirations and supported them. A working-class man from Macon, Georgia, he had worked his way up to a partnership in a leading Philadelphia law firm by dint of ability and hard work, and he thought and said that this American Dream was available to all. That credo planted seeds of doubt. He repeatedly said that African Americans failed to succeed in America because they just didn't work hard enough; and yet, observing his own visceral racism, as he made household help use a separate bathroom, and even threatened to disinherit me if I appeared in public in a large group (a theater troupe) one member of which was African American, I saw that his credo did not make sense of the situation of African Americans, held down and insulted by stigma and Jim Crow separation. And my father's disgust with minorities extended to many who plainly had (despite social obstacles) achieved success through hard work: to middle-class African Americans and middle-class Jews in particular. He understood that women could excel. He delighted in my success, and encouraged independence and even defiance. And yet I observed an issue there, too: for he married a woman who was working as an interior designer, and it was immediately understood that she would stop working, something that left my mother unhappy and lonely for much of her life. His attitudes were so mixed. When I was sixteen, he offered me the choice between a debutante party and a homestay abroad on the Experiment in International Living, and was thoroughly pleased that I chose the latter--but he would never have married a woman who didn't choose the former. He did think that wearing daring fashionable clothes was (for both women and men) thoroughly compatible with intellectual aspiration and success, and the fun we had on shopping expeditions was doubled by the subversive plan that I would show up at his lecture on "Powers of Appointment" at the Practising Law Institute wearing a bright pink mini-suit. And yet, where did he really think all of this was heading? To what sort of family life, in particular? He encouraged me to date exactly those upwardly mobile preppy men who--like him--would never have wanted a working wife. Meanwhile, that trip abroad fed further my skepticism about my father's credo. I was sent to live with a family of factory workers in Swansea, South Wales, and I understood how poverty, bad nutrition, bad sanitation (no indoor plumbing), and bad health conditions (coal mining in particular, which had ruined the health of quite a few family members) robbed people not only of flourishing lives but also of desire and effort. My teenage pals in that family did not want to go to school or to excel by hard work. Like the working-class British families relentlessly studied in Michael Apted's "7 Up" and its sequels, they envisaged for themselves no rosier future than the lives of their parents, and their greatest pleasure was to go drinking and to visit the legal gambling casinos nearby. I remember lying in bed reading an elite British novel--in that house with an outhouse in the garden--and thinking about why Eirwen Jones, my own age, hadn't the slightest interest in reading and writing, or even in learning Welsh. The obstacles imposed by poverty often lie deep in the human spirit, and many deprived people can't follow my father's path. (By his own account, he was well nourished, given a lot of love, inspiration, and good health care, and somehow got a first-rate education. He didn't notice how being white gave him huge advantages. Born in 1901, he also lived in a world of greater upward mobility than is now the case, even for poor white people.) So, I saw myself in a new perspective, as not just a very smart kid but as the product of social forces that are unequally distributed. It wasn't surprising that much later I deepened this understanding through work in an international development institute and by a deep partnership with development groups working for women's education and legal rights in India. Like most of the people I knew in Bryn Mawr, I was at that time a Republican, and I admired the libertarian ideas of Barry Goldwater. I still believe Goldwater was an honorable man and totally committed to the eradication of racial segregation--he had in fact boldly integrated his family business. I think he really believed that people should choose to be just and should respect and help one another, only without government coercion. But when I began working for his campaign while still in high school, I discovered that most of my fellow Goldwaterites were not high-minded but deeply racist, supporting libertarianism as a screen for segregationist views. The ugliness of white supremacist politics repelled me, convincing me that Goldwater was naïve and that only the force of law would finally break the grip of Jim Crow. I also understood by then (after that homestay in Swansea) that real equality requires equal access to nutrition and health care. I began to embrace the political ideals of the New Deal, while my father protested to my school that my history teachers had "brainwashed" me--not the only time he underestimated the independence he had proudly nourished. I've mentioned the theater, and early in my life the arts, especially theater and music, became my window onto a more inclusive world. First of all, it was a world that encouraged the expression of powerful emotions, unlike the WASP culture of Bryn Mawr. All my teachers encouraged my mind, but the drama teacher encouraged my whole personality. I decided that I wanted to be a professional actress. I did summer stock for two seasons, left Wellesley College after three semesters to take a professional job in a repertory company, and pursued acting at what is now the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU (New York University)--until I understood that I was not a very good actress, that the life was too unstable, and that my real passion was thinking and writing about the plays. But I still act and sing as an amateur (I'm better, having had real-life experience), and it brings me joy. I also urge my colleagues to act (in plays connected to our law-literature conferences). I've found that sharing emotions with one's colleagues humanizes the law school and enriches intellectual friendship. It was in the theater that I first encountered people who were openly gay. Indeed, I had a big crush on one such actor at the age of seventeen, and observed his life with the keen sympathy of disappointed infatuation, seeing how he had a life partner who visited him and with whom he had exchanged high school rings, but that they were openly together only in the world of the theater, not in the larger society. This seemed to me utterly absurd and irrational. He was certainly much nicer than most of the boys I knew, more understanding and respectful. I guess by that time I understood the ugly self-interest behind racism and sexism, but discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, previously hidden from me as were the phenomena, was another appalling American vice I then added to my list. After deciding not to become a professional actress, I returned to the academic side of NYU, where I thrived. And soon after that I met my future husband, got engaged, and converted to Judaism. I was and am attracted to the primacy of social justice in Judaism. And I have always loved the Jewish culture I joined, finding it more emotionally expressive and more openly argumentative than WASP culture. As one of my Jewish colleagues (highly successful) said of his own history in "white-shoe" law firms, WASP lawyers would never criticize you, just fire you suddenly after five years, whereas Jewish lawyers would yell and jump up and down, but in the end, treat you pretty fairly. Though no longer married, I've kept my Jewish name and my Jewish religion, and am more involved in the life of my congregation than I was back then. (With the middle initial C, I honor my birth name, Craven.) So that meant that I joined one of the groups my father despised, and he did not come to my wedding, although my mother helped organize it. (By that time my parents were divorced.) I've had a charmed life in some respects, then, but early on I gradually learned to see it as privileged and to ponder the exclusions of others. One form of discrimination I did not avoid was discrimination against women, which played a major role in my early career (though I had a lot of encouragement, too), and which probably explained my not getting tenure at Harvard--although in a narrow decision, and with two departments split, any number of things could be brought forward to explain the result. And, like most working women of my generation, I've experienced the problems of reconstructing family life around expectations that were new and not yet fully explored. Even when both parties have the best intentions, male expectations of an earlier era are hard to live down in the heart, particularly when there are children. And sometimes two people who love one another just cannot manage to live together. But I certainly don't regret plunging in. My daughter, now a lawyer working for the rights of wild animals at Friends of Animals in Denver, is among the great joys of my life. (Her lovely and supportive husband, who was imprisoned in East Germany for three years, at the age of eighteen, for putting up one political poster criticizing Communism, has shown me the perspective of an immigrant, one who loves the United States, with its freedoms and its tradition of welcome and inclusion.) Academics can be too detached from human realities to do good work about the texture of human life. That's a risk inherent in academic freedom and tenure, wonderful institutions that did not protect philosophers of most earlier eras. My own commitments and efforts have always led me to want to restore to philosophy the wide set of concerns that it had in the days of the Greeks and Romans: concerns with the emotions and the struggle for flourishing lives in troubled times; with love and friendship; with the human life span (including aging, so well studied by Cicero); with the hope for a just world. I've had a lot of partners in this search for a human philosophy (and several superb mentors, including Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam, and Bernard Williams). But I'm hoping that my own history, both in its unearned privileges and in its awareness of inequalities, has helped my search as well. Maybe if I had been able to hug my friends, that night in November 2016, I would not have embarked on this book project, or not right then. But once I started down this path, my friends have been crucial sources of support, understanding, skeptical challenges, and useful further suggestions. Deference is poison to intellectual work, and I am so lucky that my colleagues and friends are far from deferential. But there is one above others whose skeptical challenges, provocative insights, cynical scoffing at all emotions, and unwavering support and friendship make me enjoy my life and work more and (I hope) do the work better. So I dedicate this book to Saul Levmore. Excerpted from The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis by Martha C. Nussbaum All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.