POLITICAL EMOTIONS. WHY LOVE MATTERS FOR JUSTICE by MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2014.00678.x |
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
| Author | ANDRÁS SAJÓ |
Book Reviews
POLITICAL EMOTIONS. WHY LOVE MATTERS FOR JUSTICE by
MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013, 420 pp., $35.00)
The blurb of an upcoming UCL workshop on the book under review presents
the best possible description of this work:
Martha Nussbaum has for many years been at the forefront in exploring the
nature of the emotions, their place in a flourishing human life, and their
practical significance for politics and law. In her new book, Political
Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, she turns her attention to the
emotional roots of a liberal political order.
The UCL workshop indicates the increasing interest in emotions as a
(troubling as well as fascinating) feature of political life as well as the
prominence of Nussbaum in this field. It will be a proper tribute to a book
that is rich in unexpected interrelations between facts, disciplines, ages, and
countries, more diverse than perhaps any book since Douglas Hofstadter's
Go
Èdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.
Political Emotions is about `crafting public sentiment' for a decent
society. Nussbaum argues that such emotional craftsmanship is needed given
that law and political institutions are not self-sufficient. Decent society can
be sustained if and where love becomes central in emotion management.
Nussbaum argues that democratic reciprocity needs love. Respect is not
enough, because a society in which respect is ubiquitous runs the risk that
people will become obsessed with hierarchy and status (p. 43). Even:
respect grounded in the idea of human dignity will prove impotent to include
all citizens on terms of equality, unless it is nourished by imaginative
engagement with the lives of others and by an inner grasp of their full and
equal humanity (p. 380).
The demand for a civil religion, that is, for an organized emotional
community, is centuries old. It emerged as soon as it became clear that in the
absence of submission to absolute power (and because of the unsustainability
of the medieval custom in which social arrangements were taken for granted
or as God-given), emotional ties were becoming important for societal
cohesion. I would add that this is a change in the emotional structure
sustaining society, among conditions of increased personal choice. In
increasingly heterogeneous societies, people will not be able to live together
and even less to make sacrifices for the common good.
According to Nussbaum, Rousseau and Comte considered sympathy to be
the fundamental civic emotion. She finds their approach insufficient, because
470
ß2014 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2014 Cardiff University Law School
To continue reading
Request your trial