How to Think Politically

by James Bernard Murphy

  Nussbaum’s most important contributions to political philosophy have grown out of her collaboration with the economist Amartya Sen. As a student of economic development, Sen has argued that our measures of such development are deeply flawed. Economic progress had long been measured in terms of the growth of income or self-reports of wellbeing, but Sen has insisted that what we should really be attempting to measure are people’s capabilities: that is, their ability to actualize valuable human capacities, such as the capacities to read, write and count, the capacities to direct one’s own life, make friends and marry, the capacities to play, enjoy nature and appreciate beauty. In other words, economic development should be understood in Aristotelian terms as the objective actualization of valuable human abilities rather than as the acquisition of money or the mere subjective belief that one is happy. A developed society is one in which all citizens actualize essential human capabilities.

  Nussbaum was attracted to Sen’s Aristotelian approach to economic development. She generalizes his insights into a theory of social justice by arguing that a just society would be one in which every person has access to the resources and opportunities necessary to develop essential human abilities. In most societies, women, the poor, racial minorities and the disabled lack such access; as a consequence, they possess fewer capabilities than more privileged citizens. She points out that one problem with simply asking people whether their lives are going well is that oppressed people often have low expectations. If one does not expect to be literate, or to direct one’s own life or to participate in politics, then one does not miss these abilities. But that does not mean, of course, that one would not prefer a life of greater capabilities, if that were possible.

  If Nussbaum generalizes Sen’s approach to develop a theory of social justice, then she also specifies Sen’s approach by actually listing the essential capabilities, which Sen has explicitly refused to do. To be capable is to be able to participate in these goods: life, health, bodily integrity (freedom of movement and from assault), the senses, imagination and thought (education and creativity), emotions (freedom to love and to form attachments), practical reason (freedom of self-direction), relations to other people, relations to other species, play and control over one’s environment (rights of political participation and property). A person has a happy and flourishing life to the degree to which she is able to exercise these capabilities, and a just society is one in which everyone has the opportunity to develop them.

  Nussbaum’s list of capabilities combines the ideas of John Locke and of Karl Marx. Locke and his successors, such as James Madison, emphasize political capabilities, such as rights to freedom of speech, assembly and voting. For them what is essential for a just society is that every citizen be guaranteed basic political liberties – liberties that rest, they assumed, upon the prior right of private property. Marx and his successors, such as Mao, insisted that social justice rests upon basic economic rights such as the right to food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and employment. Without these economic rights, said Marx, liberal political rights are a sham. What good is the right to free speech if I am hungry, sick or unemployed? Notice that Nussbaum’s list includes both liberal political rights as well as Marxian economic rights.

  Nussbaum’s approach to social justice also combines Aristotle and John Rawls. From Aristotle, of course, she takes the view that human flourishing and happiness stem from developing our valuable human capacities into moral and intellectual virtues (what she calls ‘capabilities’). From John Rawls, however, Nussbaum adopts the view that a liberal polity should not compel its citizens to become capable or virtuous. Recall that Rawls defended a ‘political liberalism’ in which a just polity will tolerate a wide variety of ethical and religious ways of life, so long as advocates of those different ways of life do not attempt to coerce anyone. A society guided by the ideals of political liberalism, then, will permit but not require its citizens to pursue Nussbaum’s list of capabilities. All that is necessary for social justice is that every citizen should have the resources and opportunity to develop Nussbaum’s capabilities, not that they actually do so. According to Aristotle, by contrast, a polity should ensure not only that citizens have the opportunity to exercise these capabilities but that they actually do so. Since human happiness, says Aristotle, rests upon the exercise of human excellence, political leaders have an obligation to ensure that citizens actually do exercise these capabilities, and not waste their lives on trivial amusements.

  Aristotle’s polity is thus paternalistic and requires its citizens to develop moral and intellectual virtues, even if those citizens do not want to. Nussbaum, following Rawls, rejects this Aristotelian paternalism, except in the case of children. She agrees that children can be compelled to acquire essential capabilities by, for example, compulsory schooling. But, as a Rawlsian liberal, she rejects the right of the government to compel adults to protect their own health, develop their own minds or seek moral virtue. Hence, on Nussbaum’s account, a society could be perfectly just in which everyone has the opportunity to develop his or her essential capabilities but no one actually does so.

  Martha Nussbaum, in her many books and articles, has taught us a great deal about human flourishing, and its pitfalls. First, she provides a comprehensive account of that flourishing that reflects the bodily, emotional, social and rational aspects of human life. Second, she alerts us to the inescapable vulnerability of human life: all of our abilities are shadowed by disability. Human happiness and dignity are precious because they are so fragile.

  In a world in which wealth is the measure of human development, Nussbaum forcefully reminds us that many citizens, even of very affluent societies, cannot exercise basic personal, social or political capabilities – owing to unjust discrimination, poverty, disability or neglect. In a world in which the pursuit of ever higher ‘standards of living’ may be ecologically unsustainable, she offers a path for development that focuses less on material abundance than on learning, love and citizenship – a path, she says, that is better for human happiness and for our planet.

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  Arne Naess: The Mountaineer

  From childhood until his death, Arne Naess spent summers and holidays exploring the mountains east of Bergen, Norway. In the late 1930s, when he was in his twenties, Naess built a simple cabin on a remote mountain perch called Tvergastein – so remote that it took him 62 trips with a horse to carry up the timbers. At 1,500 metres, it was the highest private cabin in Scandinavia and required considerable hiking, snowshoeing or skiing to be reached. Despite a cosmopolitan life of global activism, research, writing and teaching, Naess spent much of his adult life in his mountain hideaway, exploring the local flora and fauna, and reading Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza and Gandhi. He sought to leave a small footprint not only on his beloved mountain but also on the planet Earth – so he ate only vegetables, possessed only necessities and often lived in his cabin without electricity or plumbing and with very little heat. Why would a distinguished philosopher withdraw from the modern world and even largely from human society? Naess had fallen in love with his mountain perch, and this love led him to identify himself with every living creature, from fleas to human beings. He even considered legally changing his own name to Arne Tvergastein.

  We never know what we truly have loved until we lose it. Edmund Burke, as you may recall, pioneered conservative political thought in the wake of the French Revolution. There were no ‘conservatives’ until all moral, religious, social and political traditions came under attack from the revolutionaries of 1789. Similarly, there were no environmentalists, ecologists or conservationists until the Industrial Revolution threatened to destroy the remaining wilderness and even familiar rural landscapes. Just as political conservatives see political change in terms of what is being lost, so many conservationists see economic change in terms of the loss of natural habitats. No one has been more eloquent or influential in mourning what we have lost to modern commerce, industry and technology than Naess, who once
chained himself to a waterfall so that it could not be dammed up.

  Naess is best known for his concept of ‘deep ecology’. According to him, most environmentalists aim to promote merely human values, by reducing pollution to protect human health, conserving resources to protect future consumption and preserving a bit of wilderness for recreation. All of this ‘shallow ecology’, said Naess, ignores the inherent value of nature quite apart from its effects on human welfare. Deep ecology holds that not only human beings but all living creatures have a right to live and to flourish. Naess was appalled by what he saw as the arrogance of human beings who treat the whole of the natural world as nothing more than a woodpile to be used, destroyed or wasted for our own convenience.

  In the Bible, God gives Adam ‘dominion’ over nature. Naess rejected this ideal of human domination or even stewardship over the natural world. As if humans could possibly know enough to ‘manage’ the infinite complexity of nature! According to Naess, every significant human attempt to manage nature has backfired, revealing our arrogance and ignorance. Many large dams, for instance, are now being modified or dismantled because of the unforeseen ecological disasters they have created. Industrial agriculture has left deserts and dust storms in its wake. Naess wanted human beings to be good citizens of the Earth, not its masters.

  As good citizens of planet Earth, said Naess, we ought to be concerned not just with our own parochial human interests but also with the common good of the whole of nature. What is that common good? Naess followed the seventeenth-century philosopher Benedict Spinoza in arguing that nature is just another word for God. Instead of locating spiritual or divine realities apart from or above nature, Naess believed that divinity is just another aspect of nature. According to Spinoza, the highest human good is the intellectual love of God, which means, said Naess, the loving appreciation of the infinite diversity of life. Every creature, said Spinoza, including human beings, strives to preserve itself and to actualize all of its powers. Naess insisted that the common good of nature is the self-realization of every living organism. Human self-realization uniquely culminates in the capacity to contemplate and to love the totality of nature, of which we are only one small part. What this means, said Naess, is that human beings approach the divine not by turning away from nature but rather by finding our true home within it. Although human beings have always attempted to leave our natural homes by voyages to new continents and now even to new planets, Naess insisted that no one can be truly happy except in intimate relation with a particular natural setting. Thus, Naess rejected modern ideals of globalization, cosmopolitanism and tourism, let alone space travel. He even fought to keep Norway out of the European Union. He implicitly wanted everyone to follow his own example of a lifelong intimate relation to a particular natural place.

  Naess’s theory of deep ecology and his worship of non-human nature have led other ecologists to call him a mystic, a misanthrope, a fascist and even a Nazi – despite his heroic service resisting the German occupation of Norway. Because human beings pose a unique threat to pristine nature and perhaps even to the future of life on earth, some ‘deep ecologists’ are indeed strongly misanthropic. They argue that we need more disease, war and poverty to reduce human numbers if the natural world is going to survive. Naess himself agreed that respect for the common good of nature requires a massive reduction in human population to a level of about 100 million. But before Naess became an ecologist he was a disciple of Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence. Gandhi, who tolerated poisonous snakes, spiders and scorpions within his own home, extended the principles of non-violence to the whole of nature. Naess similarly rejected any use of force or coercion to protect nature; he wanted to reduce human numbers only by voluntary family planning. Despite the radical or even violent implications of his own deep ecology, and the malicious rhetoric heaped upon him, Naess was the most peace-loving of activists. He never once resorted to verbal polemics or abuse; instead, he always sought respectful engagement and common ground with his opponents. Everyone who ever met him agreed that he embodied the peace and goodwill that he sought to bring about in the world.

  As a young man, Naess was traumatized by the experience of looking through a microscope and observing a flea that had jumped into a bath of acid. Viewing with horror the struggle, suffering and death agony of this flea, Naess became a lifelong vegetarian. His empathetic identification with the suffering flea became a cornerstone of his deep ecology. Instead of asking human beings to sacrifice our interests on behalf of other creatures, Naess asked us to identify with other creatures, to expand our own ‘selves’ to include the whole of nature. Through this widening of the self, the protection of nature becomes a kind of enlightened self-interest rather than an altruistic self-sacrifice.

  Although he occasionally used the language of rights and duties, Naess much preferred to appeal to beauty and joy. He did sometimes refer to the ‘right to life’ of every creature, implying our ‘duty’ not to kill them. And he extended Immanuel Kant’s famous imperative ‘never to treat a person as a mere means but always also as an end’ to our treatment of all living organisms. However, in general, Naess was not interested in any kind of ethics, which he viewed as little more than moralistic aggression. He believed that human beings are motivated less by ethical duties than by their understanding of the world. If we came to see ourselves as just one small part of an immense web of life, if we came to see ourselves in nature rather than above it, if we learned to appreciate the complexity and beauty of pristine ecosystems, then we would protect nature out of a feeling of joy rather than a sense of duty. As a Gandhian pacifist, Naess was reluctant to impose moral, let alone legal, duties on other human beings. He preferred to teach by his own example of loving tenderness towards all creatures, great and small. Hence, his rules about killing always include exceptions: ‘Never kill another living creature unless you must in order to survive’. He condemns killing for sport but not from hunger. Although he rejects any explicit ranking of organisms, he does implicitly privilege human life.

  Naess is often described or denigrated as a ‘mystic’. He did not think that language, let alone philosophical argument, could capture our primordial ‘awe’ in relation to nature. Ultimately, he was a spiritual thinker who claimed that the human wonder before nature must be cultivated before the elaboration of any ecological ethics. Naess himself drew upon Spinoza’s pantheism, Buddhism and Gandhian Hinduism in his own spirituality of nature. But he thought that a proper spiritual response to nature could also be found in many other religious traditions.

  The word ‘nature’ evokes very different images in different minds, just as the word ‘God’ does. Nature can connote a nurturing mother, the cycle of life and relations of interdependence – or nature can connote the struggle for survival, predators and prey, and cycles of extinction. Nature for Naess was ultimately a peaceable kingdom of mutual co-existence and harmony, where, in the biblical vision, ‘the lion lies down with the lamb’. Human beings alone, he suggested, are unnatural: our overweening arrogance, our out-of-control fertility and our destructive intelligence pose a unique threat to the harmony of nature. Nature was a garden of paradise until man arrived and overturned the divine order. Unless human beings return to their proper place as but one creature among infinitely many, nature will be destroyed.

  Yet, from another, more Darwinian point of view, nature is not a place of peace or harmony at all: every creature is locked into a struggle for survival; every creature produces too many offspring; every creature kills or is killed. Natural history is replete with starvation, death by exposure, relentless predation and extinction. By some accident of random genetic mutation, human beings developed a uniquely powerful combination of intelligence and dexterity, permitting us to become the top predator. In this view, human culture, technology and urbanization are natural adaptations to our ecological niche, permitting us to dominate and subdue all other organisms.

  Did human beings ever live in harmony with nature? Naess and
other ecologists have claimed that prehistoric and contemporary hunter–gatherers were able to co-exist with nature. But the fossil record suggests otherwise. As soon as these hunter–gatherers migrated to America, for example, they quickly hunted to extinction all the large Ice Age mammals. Human ‘destructiveness’ (if that is what predation is) has always been limited only by human knowledge and abilities.

  According to Karl Marx, human beings by nature transform the natural world into something recognizably human: that is, into a human home. According to Arne Naess, human beings should stop transforming nature and start conforming to it. Are we by nature the masters and possessors of the earth or are we by nature merely fellow citizens among other creatures? These are ultimate religious and philosophical questions which are not likely to be resolved any time soon.

  How should we interpret Naess’s distinction between deep and shallow ecology? Although he rejected an ‘anthropocentric’ perspective on nature (what he calls ‘shallow ecology’), his own celebration of the joys of communing with nature, of ecological diversity, the flourishing of all species and the harmony of local ecologies – all these reflect distinctively human values. In other words, both deep and shallow ecology understand and appraise nature in relation to human flourishing. Shallow ecology values nature only insofar as nature serves material or transient human desires. Deep ecology values nature insofar as nature serves the spiritual and permanent human desires for the contemplation of the beautiful and the sublime, for the wonder of the intellectual complexity of natural order and for humility in the presence of a mysterious gift not created by us.

  Conclusion: The Unhappy Marriage of Politics and Philosophy

  When considering the long history of political thought, it is natural to wonder whether ideas make any difference in the real world. Karl Marx, for one, thought not, and his view has some plausibility. There was political activity long before there was philosophizing about it. Human beings typically act before they think about acting; indeed, we theorize mainly because of the need to overcome obstacles to our practical goals. I only think about how locks work when I cannot get my key to open one. Perhaps philosophy helps us to see more clearly the target that we were already attempting to hit, to use Aristotle’s image of archery. By thinking through such vague concepts as liberty, equality and justice, philosophers can help us to pursue those ideals with better focus. Unfortunately, as we have seen, philosophers hold incompatible views of these ideals. How can we improve our aim when our archery masters want us to aim at different targets? We might do better without any teachers at all.