Martha Nussbaum Conference
Abstracts
The following abstracts are available:
Duties of Justice, Duties of Aid: Cicero's
Problematic Legacy
Martha Nussbaum
The Law School
University of Chicago
In contemporary international law and morality, we have an elaborate
doctrine of human rights corresponding to the traditional idea
of the ‘duties of justice’. The ‘duties of justice’
include the duty not to engage in aggressive warfare, duties not
to torture or rape, limits on the cruelty of punishments. In general,
it is agreed that all human beings have certain duties of respect
to other human beings, and that there are certain things that
they must never do to them. On the other hand, we have no well
worked out doctrine of duties of material aid across national
boundary lines. I argue that we can understand the reasons for
our current situation by turning back to Cicero, who forged the
distinction between duties of justice and duties of material aid,
arguing that the former are strict and binding on all human beings
everywhere, the latter flexible, allowing much latitude for preferring
the near and dear. Cicero's distinction has had enormous influence
on such later writers as Grotius, Adam Smith, and Kant, and through
these writers on modern law and morality. But if we inspect the
reasons for Cicero's distinction, we will find at its root the
Stoic doctrine of the alleged irrelevance of external goods for
happiness, a doctrine that we should reject.
"Was Aristotle an 'Aristotelian Social
Democrat'?"
Richard Mulgan
Public Policy Program
Australian National University
Aristotle's philosophy is at the core of Nussbaum's philosophical
and educational enterprise. Is her account of Aristotle historically
accurate or has she distorted him for her own (quite legitimate)
purposes? Her interpretation of Aristotle's political principles,
as distinct from his concept of ethical reasoning, may exaggerate
the extent to which he can be seen as endorsing the assumptions
of modern social democracy. Though the best city will require
good men for its citizens, individuals do not need to possess
the rights of citizenship in order to flourish. Aristotle does
not systematically apply his principles of distributive justice
to the removal of socio-economic disadvantage. He criticizes the
egalitarianism and personal freedom of democracy. He supports
aristocracy and the mixed constitution in preference to democracy.
The tendency of modern scholars to see Aristotle as sympathetic
to democracy is an example of what Nussbaum herself describes
as 'descriptive chauvinism', the unjustified imposition of one's
own values and concerns on to thinkers in other cultural contexts.
The challenge posed by Aristotle's social philosophy is how an
ethical theory which so accords with our own experience of personal
relationships can be linked with a political agenda which favours
undemocratic and authoritarian institutions.
BIOGRAPHY:
Richard Mulgan is on the staff of the Public Policy Program,
Australian National University, where he teaches public policy
and public sector management. He began his academic life as a
classicist, specializing in Greek political philosophy. His first
book was Aristotle's Political Theory (Oxford University Press
1977) and he has retained a research interest in Aristotle, publishing
occasional articles (eg. 'Aristotle and the value of political
participation', Political Theory 18 (1990), 195-215; 'Aristotle
on the political role of women', History of Political Thought
15 (1994), 179-202; 'Aristotle, ethical diversity and political
argument' forthcoming in The Journal of Political Philosophy).
"Love, the Self and the Will in Augustine's
Confessions"
Simon Haines
English
Australian National University
For St Augustine, finding out what 'love' really meant, discovering
love's proper object and understanding his own life were three
aspects of the same process. By the time of his Confessions, written
at the turbulent close of the fourth century AD, with the Roman
Empire about to collapse, that concept so compellingly evoked
by Plato at an earlier epoch of collapse had become the one essential
and reliable constituent of all self-understanding. Confessions
sees a life as the search for and final apprehension of its own
meaning. Drawing most deeply on Plato's theory of love in Phaedrus
and Symposium, Virgil's story of Dido and Aeneas and St Paul's
conceptions of faith and grace, Augustine created an enormously
influential autobiographical model of the self as ‘inner’
and conceptual, with Being at its punctual centre: a model of
the ‘soul’. In this model the passions, erotic love
above all, appear as dark and sinful forces intervening between
the soul and Being. The will is introduced as a way of accounting
for the soul's otherwise inexplicable resistance to the Being
concept and desire for passional life.
BIOGRAPHY:
Simon Haines is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English
and Theatre Studies at the ANU. His main interests are in the
literature of the Romantic period, in modern moral philosophy,
and in the old 'quarrel' between poetry and philosophy. He has
published articles on Shelley, Wordsworth and Tennyson; on the
suppression of the self in modern literary theory; and on the
languages of ethics and literature. His book Shelley's Poetry:
The Divided Self was published by Macmillan/St Martin's Press
in 1997. He is currently completing a book on romanticism and
realism in European poetry and philosophy from Homer to Rousseau.
"Ethics and Autobiography: Diana (and
Lionel) Trilling on the Will"
Richard Freadman
English
La Trobe University
Martha Nussbaum has persuasively argued that the analysis of
complex literary texts can deepen the ethical understandings that
we derive from philosophy and elsewhere. I argue that analysis
of complex works of autobiography can likewise deepen our ethical
understandings. What I call ‘reflective autobiographers’
characteristically inquire how a life ought to be lived. In this
sense (among others) they are inevitably ethicists. Moreover,
many reflective autobiographers explicitly consider particular
ethical themes, problems and concepts. An example here, I shall
argue, is the autobiographical exploration of the human will that
we find in Augustine and much subsequent autobiographical writing
in the West. Augustine, indeed, is often said to be both ‘the
first philosopher of the will’, and the ‘first modern
autobiographer’. So the link is deep and important. After
discussing the link between autobiography, ethical discourse and
the will, I shall give a reading of a contemporary autobiography
which is deeply preoccupied with the will: Diana Trilling's The
Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling.
The will constitutes an important category in Diana Trilling's
critical work; in the work of her husband Lionel it is absolutely
central. The Beginning of the Journey offers not only a detailed
characterization of the state of Diana's will, but also an assessment
of the condition of Lionel's will–an assessment that is both
tough and important in its ethical implications.
BIOGRAPHY:
Richard Freadman is Professor and Head of the School of English
at La Trobe University, Melbourne. He is also Director of the
Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography at La Trobe. He
has written primarily on the nineteenth and early twentieth century
novel, literary theory, ethics, and autobiography. His books are
Eliot, James and The Fictional Self (Macmillan); (with Seumas
Miller) Re-Thinking Theory: A Critique of Contemporary Literary
Theory and an Alternative Account (Cambridge); (with Lloyd Reinhardt)
On Literary Theory and Philosophy: A Cross Disciplinary Encounter
(Macmillan); (with David Parker and Jane Adamson) Renegotiating
Ethics in Literature, Philosophy and Theory (Cambridge). He has
just completed a study entitled Threads of Life: Autobiography
and the Will for the University of Chicago Press. He is currently
working on a book about Australian Jewish autobiography.
"Literature, Individual Love and Moral
Understanding"
Christopher Cordner
Philosophy
University of Melbourne
Martha Nussbaum has argued, most interestingly, that Plato's
Symposium crystallizes for us two ‘mutually exclusive varieties
of vision’, one defined by the deep importance of individual
love, the other marked by the moral/philosophical aspiration to
rational order and stability. Nussbaum claims that these visions
are both compelling for us as human beings, although they are
incompatible with one another. That makes for tragic conflict
in our lives. Making no claims about Plato, I begin by reflecting
critically on Nussbaum's two ‘visions’. I suggest that
Nussbaum partly misconceives the character of each, because they
are in fact interdependent. (They are still, however, capable
of conflicting terribly). My main aim is to explore some aspects,
and some of the implications, of the interdependence of individual
love and moral understanding. (In the course of doing that I shall
also reflect on some aspects of Nussbaum's conception of literature).
BIOGRAPHY:
Christopher Cordner has taught in the Philosophy Department at
the University of Melbourne since 1989. In his main area of interest–Moral
Philosophy–one of his chief concerns is to make philosophically
accessible broader and richer conceptions of moral thinking and
the moral subject than those usually acknowledged in moral philosophy.
Two recent publications which manifest that aim are: ‘Honour,
community and ethical inwardness’, in Philosophy 1997, and
‘Literature, morality and the individual in the shadows of
postmodernism’, in Literature and Aesthetics 1998.
"Natures and Norms"
Louise Antony
Philosophy
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Both Aristotelian moral theory and Enlightenment liberal theory
attempt to ground ethical systems in positive facts about human
nature; ideas that have emerged from these traditions have funded
many progressive and egalitarian movements. At the same time,
apologists for sexist, racist, and heterosexist social structures
have also appealed ‘to nature’ or the ‘natural’
to rationalize segregation and oppression. What are ‘natures,’
that they have played this normatively dual role in human history?
I'll argue for a particular understanding of ‘natures’
that explains, but does not vindicate, these various normative
claims. This leaves us with excellent grounds for criticizing
pernicious appeals to nature, but, apparently and unfortunately,
little basis for supporting progressive and liberatory appeals.
Nonetheless, I'll argue, there is still something to be salvaged
in the Aristotelian/liberal notion that what we ought to do derives
from what we are.
BIOGRAPHY:
Louise Antony is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has research and teaching interests
in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and feminist theory.
She has published articles in these areas, and is co-editor, with
Charlotte Witt, of A Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason
and Objectivity. She is currently at work on two monographs: Feminism
as Humanism: Reclaiming the Liberal Ideal and Human Nature.
"The Perils of Feminist Internationalism"
Hilary Charlesworth
Centre for International and Public Law
Australian National University
This paper will consider the possibilities of feminism in the
context of international law. What type of theories and methods
can be used to analyze the universal principles developed in the
international legal system? The paper will address criticisms
of feminist interventions in international law, particularly from
African and Asian jurists.
BIOGRAPHY:
Hilary Charlesworth is Professor of Law and Director of the Centre
for International and Public Law at the Australian National University.
From January-May 1999, she was Scholar in residence at the Law
School, Washington and Lee University. Her publications include
International Law and World Order (1997) (with Burns Weston and
Richard Falk) and The Boundaries of International Law (with Christine
Chinkin) (forthcoming).
"Perfectionism and Politics"
Richard Arneson
Philosophy
University of California, San Diego
Perfectionism is the view that actions, policies, and societies
can be ranked according to the level of human perfection they
produce. Human perfection, roughly speaking, is excellence in
significant achievements that involve the exercise of talents.
Perfectionism is to be contrasted with broader principles that
rank actions, policies, and societies according to the level of
human flourishing they produce, with flourishing including perfectionist
achievement and also other objectively valuable goods such as
pleasure and the avoidance of pain and rational desire satisfaction.
The perfectionist construes flourishing narrowly. Perfectionism
can be yoked to any of several political principles that would
assert that we ought to maximize, or maximin, or maximax, or equalize
(for example) the level of perfection in society. This essay considers
and assesses political perfectionism as a social justice norm
and compares it to liberal and egalitarian theories of justice.
BIOGRAPHY:
Richard J. Arneson is professor of philosophy at the University
of California, San Diego, where he was department chair from 1992-96.
He has held visiting appointments recently at the University of
California, Davis, and at Yale. He writes mainly in the area of
contemporary political philosophy and especially on theories of
distributive justice. He is working on a book on egalitarian justice
and individual responsibility.
"The Legal Relevance of Moral Objectivity"
John Tasioulas
Philosophy
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
One of Martha Nussbaum's major contributions to legal philosophy
has been to stress its important inter-connections with moral
philosophy and, in particular, to underline the significant implications
of the issue of moral objectivity for our understanding of legal
practice. In this she stands with a classical tradition in legal
philosophy that is at odds with most of the dominant currents
in twentieth century American jurisprudential thought. In a broadly
Nussbaumian spirit, this paper will offer a defence of the relevance
of moral objectivity to legal adjudication and argue further that
the dependence of judicial reasoning on legal tradition has implications
for our understanding of ethical objectivity itself. Various arguments
for ethical objectivity's legal irrelevance or dispensability
advanced by Waldron, Dworkin, Rorty, Posner and Herrnstein Smith
will be considered.
BIOGRAPHY:
Dr John Tasioulas has been Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Corpus
Christi College, Oxford since October 1998. His main research
interests are in ethics, the philosophy of law, political philosophy
and the theory of public international law. He edited ‘Law,
Values and Social Practices’ (Dartmouth, 1997) and his articles
have appeared in journals such as the Cambridge Law Journal, European
Journal of Philosophy, Inquiry and the Oxford Journal of Legal
Studies. He is currently working on a book on the ethics of law
and continuing research on the social dimensions of ethics.
"Emotions, Learning, and Moral Improvement"
Ronald de Sousa
Philosophy
University of Toronto
Learning, whether of skills or of knowledge, typically extends
the range of our pleasures. This is plausibly regarded as a biological
adaptation. Emotions are essential to learning intellectual and
bodily skills: some, like curiosity, motivate inquiry, others,
like pride, reward its outcome. Thus emotions seem capable of
stimulating growth and change. But the way that emotions function
in intellectual or skill learning is doubtless different from
the way they function in moral growth or progress. Moral education
also involves our emotions, but the range of relevant emotions
is broader–including, perhaps, intrinsically moral emotions
such as compassion, indignation, empathy, as well as others, such
as jealousy, spite, that we are inclined to classify as intrinsically
nasty. Here the role of emotions is more complex: they do not
function merely as desires, prompting calculation of means to
their satisfaction; their biological basis is highly controverted,
and insofar as most emotions are learned in early formative stages
of moral development their effect is probably inherently conservative.
My argument will build on some suggestive ideas in Nussbaum's
work about the contribution of emotions to moral knowledge, and
ask how we can pick out those emotions that bring such knowledge,
and how they can be enlisted in the quest for moral growth.
BIOGRAPHY:
Ronald de Sousa is Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Toronto. He is the author of The Rationality of Emotion (MIT
1987), and of articles on emotions, rationality, philosophy of
mind and ethics. Apart from a continuing interest in the ethical
and psychological dimensions of emotions, his two main current
research projects concern various aspects of individuality, and
the philosophy of biology. He is preparing (in French) an Introduction
to the Philosophy of Biology to be published by Éditions
Nathan. This is his first visit to Australia.
"Nussbaum's Defense of the Stoic Theory
of Emotions"
John Deigh
Philosophy
Northwestern University
Martha Nussbaum's work in ethics and moral psychology includes
a powerful theory of emotions that revives and strengthens the
classical theory of Stoicism. Few contemporary philosophers would
defend the Stoic theory. Its principal thesis is that emotions
are identical with certain judgments, and this thesis goes against
standard views of emotions in Anglo-American philosophy and psychology.
On these views emotions consist at least partly of feelings as
distinct from judgments or thoughts. To defend a version of the
Stoic theory therefore requires overturning these views, and Nussbaum's
offers an impressive argument in making this defense. In my paper
I set out Nussbaum's theory and this defense of it. I accept as
cogent her answer to the standard objection to Stoic theories--that
they cannot account for the feeling component of emotions. I then
consider a different objection, which is that they cannot account
for the emotions of beasts and babies. Nussbaum departs from the
classical Stoic view that beasts and babies are incapable of emotions.
Introducing a conception of judgment that covers a larger class
of cognitions than the classical Stoic conception, she explains
the emotions of beasts and babies consistently with her acceptance
of the main tenets of the Stoic theory.
In the last part of the paper I advance reasons for doubting
the cogency of this explanation.
BIOGRAPHY:
John Deigh teaches moral and political philosophy at Northwestern
University. He is the author of The Sources of Moral Agency, a
collection of essays in moral psychology. He is the editor of
Ethics.
Enquiries
Leena Messina, Programs Manager, Humanities Research
Centre, ANU
Email: Leena.Messina@anu.edu.au
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