Book Review: Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice

Martha Nussbaum's 2013 book, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, presents a fascinating dive into what might be needed to generate decent, honest governance with less injustice and social discord. Nussbaum, a professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, considers what the philosophers who have engaged with this topic over the millennia have argued. Then she turns to modern psychology (cognitive and social science) for insight into how to refine what the great minds before her had to say about how to do it. She refines what has gone before in view of modern science.

In essence, Nussbaum sees and does politics the about the same way I do: Look for biological cognitive and social behavioral traits of humans doing politics. Then, try to find plausible ways to advance civil society that accords with what humans beings actually are in terms of their biology and social behavior. The exercise isn't about a complete reinvention of the wheel. Instead, it is about improving existing wheels, i.e., government structures and theories of governance, by acknowledging the fundamental centrality of human biological and social existence. The book is long and dense (the paperback is 397 pages, small print, no pictures), but it shows how human thinking evolves over the millennia.

Good governance

Nussbaum defines the ideal government as characterized by focused on justice and equality for all and a political-social mindset that is compassionate, inclusionary and driven by love of others in widening circles of proximity from self, to family, to locality, to nation, to other nations, and finally to humankind as a whole. The main focus is on use of the nation as the point to generate positive emotions and she is thus a nationalist, but not in the sense of an aggressive ideology.

A core need is compassion and equality morals that operate in a constitutional framework that helps to bridge narrow self-interested emotions to broader inclusive principle-embracing emotions. She asserts that constant critical dialog between the emotions the political culture is necessary. Due to our cognitive and social nature, it is easy for humans to backslide from support of broad practices to narrow concerns. For example, support for an inclusive educational policy can decline when the parent’s children encounter difficulty associated with the policy. Humans are easily distracted from broad goals to their particular circumstances. Some of the great orators, such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and FDR understood this human trait. Their rhetoric tended to stay away from particulars and instead focused on broader principles to foment support for ideals that often required some degree of personal sacrifice or acceptance.

Nussbaum is deeply concerned with the emotions and stigma that critical political and social culture can whip up against minorities, out-groups and other nations. Nationalism has been employed to foment a range of bad things ranging from domestic racial discrimination and misogyny to vicious foreign wars and totalitarianism. Those destructive impulses must be kept in mind and fought against constantly. In her view, playing on nationalism is playing with fire, but is nonetheless necessary. Despite the danger, Nussbaum sees nationalism as a key source to inspire justice and equality.

She argues that the nation is the largest political unit that people can feel is both reasonably accountable to them and also reflective of their collective history, aspirations and moral values. Because of that, the nation has to be a core source of emotional appeal to hold a society together and to induce it to support efforts that ask for personal sacrifice, equality for all and tolerance of both dissent and social differences in individuals and groups.

That is not say that the family and social institutions outside of government are not also important. Nussbaum cites the nuclear family as a necessary source of teaching love, compassion and acceptance of others in children. Public schools are also a necessary reinforcing social institution that can build depth and breadth in personal influence that belief in compassion and equality can exert on people and groups.

Civil religion for solidarity, justice, compassion and equality

Nussbaum argues that good governments and societies need a “civil religion” to help cement public support for justice, compassion and equality. In her view, a “political liberalism” can serve as an ideological basis for building and maintaining overlapping consensus among different religious and secular beliefs about fairness, equal respect and the public good. As John Rawls (American moral-political philosopher) also argued, this civil religion needs to be a free standing social and political force that is drawn from society culture itself. It is not to be derived from any abstract set of values imposed from the outside or any ideology.

However unlike Rawls and other humanists (e.g., Mills and Comte), Nussbaum welcomes existing religions as part of the civil religion family. Because the desired consensus and solidarity that civil religion is supposed to generate is home-grown, it consensus needs “thin” and not try give answers to divisive questions such as life after death or the destiny of the soul. In other words, the civil religion needs to be an ethical doctrine, not a metaphysical or epistemological construct. People will probably always differ in how they view answers to divisive metaphysical questions.

The civil religion concept is an attempted framework for moving people from individual, family and group or religion self-interest to a broader nation and its people interest. The hope is that that national interest can then serve as a fulcrum to extend the positive emotions and beliefs to other nations and ultimately humankind as a whole.

Christianity, democracy, capitalism and libertarianism

Nussbaum argues that Christianity, democracy, capitalism and libertarianism tend to foster narrow self and group interests at the expense of the broader ethical concerns for justice, compassion, equality and so forth at the national level. She asserts that Christianity focuses on an afterlife and an external source of authority and it tends to turn thinking inward and away from others as needed for a broader scope of compassion and acceptance. The religious group tends to elicit a tribal mindset, which can limit a broader worldview. Democracy also suffers from a an innate human tendency to form groups or tribes. Out-groups tend to be ostracized and oppressed.

Opposing that requires constant vigilance and significant effort. When public and political attention turns away from a policy that supports equality and acceptance, the human tendency to narrow the focus often leads to a weakening of the policy. Sometimes the abandoned policy is eliminated ro completely reversed. Thus, walking away from inclusive and pro-justice policies is a mistake that is too common for comfort.

The ideology and morals of capitalism and libertarianism tend to elevate individual concerns at the expense of broader social concerns for equality and justice. For example, ideological demands for almost absolute personal freedom and near-sacred status for personal property, are inherently not compassionate or are ‘anti-sympathy’. Instead, those ideologies tend to argue that human self-interest, acquisitiveness and/or fear alone will serve the public interest very well. Since neither capitalism nor libertarianism are concerned with other emotions such as disgust and the intolerance it foments, such regimes are morally too weak to give rise to stable regimes. Humans are not the rational economic or moral beings that capitalist and libertarian ideologues envision. Cognitive and social science both make that a matter of biological and social fact, not opinion.

One assertion is that a key capitalist and libertarian flaw is their focus is on what humans can do in terms of economic context, while ignoring what they cannot do in a social context. Nussbaum comments regarding anti-discrimination laws: “Libertarian thinkers argue that these laws are unnecessary because, discrimination is economically inefficient. .... Libertarian politics is naïve, because people are just not like that.” That accords with my understanding of history, which is that humans are far from the economic rational person that theory used to rigidly believe. The rational man theory is crumbling under the weight of knowledge flowing from the new research disciplines called behavioral economics and behavioral finance.

Sources of bad behavior and evil

Bad behavior and evil are inherent in the human condition. Nussbaum writes:

“Our working account of  ‘radical evil’ is not complete. We now need to add two tendencies that also appear deeply rooted in human nature, and which pose a serious threat to democratic institutions: the tendency to yield to peer pressure, even at the cost of truth, and the tendency to obey authority, even at the cost of moral concern. Both of these tendencies are very likely rooted in our evolutionary heritage ....”

Immanuel Kant described radical evil as innate tendencies to antisocial behavior that are at the root of our humanity. Because of its inherence, people don't need to be taught to be evil. They can even be evil despite contrary social teaching and norms. Hannah Arendt saw radical evil as a situation where human beings as human beings are superfluous because they lack spontaneity or freedom. Nussbaum asserts it includes “deliberately cruel and ugly behavior toward others that is not simply a matter of inadvertence or neglect, or even fear-tinged suspicion, but which involves some active desire to denigrate or humiliate.”

Clearly, Nussbaum is not a naïve utopian. She is acutely aware of how easy it is for even well-meaning people and societies to slip into bad behavior. What is personally encouraging in this is the fact that other people are trying to combine modern science with politics to build a better, more humane and just world.