Some Nussbaum

James Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Mon Nov 22 06:53:18 PST 1999


Yoshie,

Thanks for sparing me the trouble for making the point concerning a Marxist reading of Aristotle on human excellence. Didn't Dewey make similar points?

Jim F.

On Mon, 22 Nov 1999 06:08:12 -0500 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> writes:
>Sam quoting Nussbaum quoting Aristotle:
>>...'If one is living the life of a craftsman or hired servant,
>>it is not possible to practice the things belonging to
>>excellence'[Politics 1278a20-1; cf. 1329a39-41]. Even the life of the
>>farmer is not compatible with full human excellence, 'for leisure is
>>required both for the coming to be of excellence and for political
>>activities.'[1329a1-2]. But craftsmen, hired servants and farmers
>will
>>always be needed for the sake of survival and prosperity. The
>conclusion
>>we must draw from these facts is that even in a good city the best
>human
>>life cannot be open to all, since it requires conditions that cannot
>at
>>any one time be distributed at all.... *Fragility of
>>Goodness* p347
>>
>>Shades of Sen? Was Aristotle a bourgeois liberal after all?
>
>While I don't think that Marxism needs a coherent moral philosophy, at
>least with regard to Aristotle's statements cited by Nussbaum here,
>there
>is no need to draw such a conservative conclusion as she does. In
>fact,
>one may read these two statements in a way that makes them compatible
>with
>Marxism. Marx says:
>
>***** In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving
>subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and
>therewith
>also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished;
>after
>labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want;
>after the
>productive forces have also increased with the all-round development
>of the
>individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more
>abundantly
>-- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in
>its
>entirety and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to
>his
>ability, to each according to his needs! ("Critique of the Gotha
>Programme") *****
>
>Marx was no sentimental moralist, nor did he romanticize the
>working-class
>life (mental or physical). So one might expect him to agree with
>Aristotle
>that universal excellence is indeed impossible under class society, or
>even
>under a socialist society while an antithesis of mental and physical
>labor
>persists. No abundance of co-operative wealth, no wealth of free
>time, no
>universal excellence -- for Marx. Read in this fashion, the above
>statements by Aristotle support an argument for communism.
>
>Yoshie
>
>

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