Chris Navin

Is India pursuing equality too zealously in this case, risking too much change too quickly, foisting top-down legislation upon traditions that will resist it and do not recognize its legitimacy? In pursuing (or at least legislating it), do you also risk less equality?

Via Andrew Sullivan, a roundup of opinion from Global Voices online.

Addition: I should add that it’s not clear to me.

Also On This Site: In the U.S., I’d argue that feminism has succeeded in many ways, but haven’t there been costs? Repost-Revisting Larry Summers: What Did He Say Again?.

Derek Bok, who was asked to step back in at Harvard after Summers was ousted, has his book, the Politics Of Happiness reviewed here. Have we backed into an idealism not sufficiently skeptical of what government can do?

From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’ Martha Nussbaum In Dissent–Violence On The Left: Nandigram And The Communists Of West Bengal

Nussbaum argues profoundly for more equality: From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum

A Few Thoughts-Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”

A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”

Full review-essay here.

Nussbaum’s book can be found here.

“Nussbaum sees the university as under attack from two directions, one represented by conservative critics, such as Allan Bloom, George Will, and Roger Kimball, who accuse the university of fostering relativism, trendy “political correctness,” and an ignorance of, if not downright antipathy toward, the standards of reason and the canon of Great Literature that the university, they believe, should be defending. The other threat comes from groups, including some feminists and advocates of racial and ethnic difference, who have also challenged the traditions of the university, questioning its reliance upon Western- or male-centered rationality and a canon that is insufficiently inclusive of the contributions of nondominant groups.”

This is insightful. Perhaps, like Camille Paglia, you are genuinely concerned that humanities departments have given too free a home to equality ideologues, feminists and relativists, and that this has spilled back out into the culture at large. Yet, popular political thinkers on the right, like George Will (and Paglia herself who’s not on the right), aren’t deep enough to get at the root of the problem as Nussbaum is here defining it: classical learning.

(Would Stanley Fish be part of that same rightist group, or is he deeper than that? Is Rush Limbaugh the tail end of it)?

In addition, perhaps like Nussbaum, you may be concerned at Allan Bloom’s reliance on Platonic Idealism to diagnose the problem.

I should mention this, among other things, is what really frightens me about Nietzschean influence; what he didn’t understand of the mathematical sciences and philosophy,he attacked from within his own ideas.

So what does Nussbaum suggest?

“Between these two lines of attack, she believes, the university must articulate a conception of itself that defends the standards of reason, while remaining open to new points of view; that preserves the intellectual traditions and canons that define U.S. culture, while consciously broadening the curriculum to expose students to traditions which diverge from their own and which, in their difference, may confront students with an awareness of their own parochialism; that remain respectful and tolerant of many points of view without lapsing into relativism; and in short, that manages to prepare students simultaneously to be citizens of U.S. society, and cosmopolitans, “citizens of the world.”

This has always struck me as a little too broad of a vision to maintain (too heavy on the gender and equality side of things, too much of its time), though I certainly respect the attempt. We should aim to be citizens of the world and in the best Aristotelian sense (such depth and breadth may be in fact necessary). But is it enough within this framework?

Our author remains skeptical, and finds that the book didn’t quite meet Nussbaum’s own aims:

“In all of this, I think, we return to the narrow conception of philosophy that drives Nussbaum’s argument. By equating philosophy with the defense of Socratic reason, and by refusing to consider that this mode of analysis may not provide the universal discourse for resolving disagreements even within this society, let alone on a global scale, Nussbaum ends up providing, on the whole, a conception of liberal education that diverges very little from the secular university’s present self-conception.”

An interesting review. Obviously, there’s more depth here than I’ve addressed.

* Could the limits of such a view be seen in Amartya Sen’s recent New York Review Of Books piece (is Sen’s thinking more apropos of India’s problems rather than America’s…despite its depth?) Sen and Nussbaum have worked well together to address difficult problems, but maybe I don’t understand economics enough to say. (Am I flirting with isolationism?)