from NYTimes Mag.:
>Appearing in The New
>Republic, Nussbaum's 8,600-word essay, "The Professor of Parody,"
castigated
>Butler for proffering a "self-involved" feminism that encouraged women to
>disengage from real-world problems -- like inferior wages or sexual
>harassment -- and retreat to abstract theory.
and
>"I thought of the Butler and
>Bloom reviews as acts of public service," she said. "But a lot of my
>impatience with their work grew out of my repudiation of my own
aristocratic
>upbringing. I don't like anything that sets itself up as an in-group or an
>elite, whether it is the Bloomsbury group or Derrida." ===
I don't know much about Nussbaum, but from what I've read, one could make similar charges against her. If true, of course this wouldn't invalidate her charges against Butler, if they were true.
Nussbaum believes philosphers should be "lawyers for humanity." One could say she has a legalistic, Rawlsian-liberal take on things that plays down popular movements and wider economic forces.
Nathan failed to quote something from the piece that I think is more to the point:
[clip] When I asked why she reacted so strongly to Butler's work, she furrowed her brow, looked down and spoke with the hushed, somber tone one might employ in addressing a grave threat to national security. "Butler is like the Pied Piper leading all the children away!" she told me. "If all these wonderful people drop out of politics, then there are that many fewer people left to fight against evil ." Such unabashed moralism is rarely heard from philosophers these days. "Martha is unashamedly interested in goodness, which she writes about with such shocking earnestness," explained her friend Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of the New Republic. "For her, philosophy is nothing less than an intellectual tool for the improvement of mankind." [clip]
Friend Leon Wieslelier? Blech! Nussbaum fears Butler is leading all "these wonderful people" out of politics. One could argue that Nussbaum is leading people to the conclusions that the legal system is the main vehicle for politics, that capitalism really can't be significantly altered, and that a lawerly elite is needed to combat conservatives. What about the folks who can't afford law school? Vote for the politician who will appoint judges you agree with?
Forgive me if I'm caricaturing Nussbaum. I do think that conservatives should be combatted in the legal sphere and I would be interested to read her thoughts on international development. Maybe she is a latter-day John Dewey as the author of the piece argues, but would Dewey be writing for that unprincipled, wavering, centrist sheet The New Republic if he were alive today?
Perry Anderson in _A Zone of Engagement_:
"In his book _Liberalism and Social Action_, published in 1935, Dewey - noting the historical absence in America of the Benthamite, as opposed to Lockean, moment of what he took to be the historic liberal legacy - forthrightly denounced laissez-faire orthodoxies as 'apologetics of the existing economic regime' that masked its brutalities and inequalities.' He went on, writing at the height of the New Deal: 'The control of the means of production by the few in legal possession operates as a standing agency of coercion of the many' - such coercion backed by physical violence, being 'especially recurrent' in the US where in times of potential social change, 'our verbal and sentimental worship of the Constitution, with its guarantee of civil liberties of expression, publication and assemblage, readily goes overboard.' Dewey saw only one historical resolution for the tradition he continued to champion: 'The cause of liberalism will be lost,' he declared, 'if it is not prepared to socialize the forces of production now at hand,' even - if necessary - resorting to 'intelligent force' to 'subdue and disarm the recalcitrant minority.' The aims of classical liberalism now required the achievement of socialism. For 'the socialized economy is the means of free individual development.' ****
The other day, here in Chicago I saw Stanley Fish engage in a debate about free speech. Here's a link to an article he wrote about how the right-wing has hijacked "America's civil religion - the vocabulary of equal opportunity, color-blindness, race neutrality and, above all, individual rights" to use for their own ends:
http://www.turnpike.net/~jnr/hijacked.htm