Shame and Disgust - Martha Nussbaum

[selfAdjoint]

I found http://www.reason.com/interviews/nussbaum.shtml" very interesting debate with philosopher Martha Nussbaum more or less by accident. I think the issues raised deserve airing here. Nussbaum asserts that shame and disgust, when projected at other people or groups of people (the current live example is gay marriage) are signs of unresolved issues in our own lives and are completely unworthy to be used in determining public polity. To declare my own interest, I firmly agre with her. What does anybody else think?

BTW, Nussbaum, who started as a classicist, an expert on Aristotle, is an advocate of the view that morals are real and universal, just as Aristotle says. Might be interesting to study up some of her thinking for the Are Morals Real thread.

 

[daveb]

I would say no because greed and abuse of power disgust me. Shame, probably so.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Dave, I think you should look at Nussbaum's contrasting discussions of disgust and anger. Here is what she says about disgust:

believe disgust had an evolutionary function, by giving emphasis and force to the sense of danger. Even if disgust doesn't perfectly track danger, it is close enough as a heuristic, when we have no time to perform the needed inquiry, or are unable to perform it. Even today, when we have many ways of finding out about danger, the sense of disgust is a useful heuristic. If the milk smells disgusting, it's a pretty good rule not to drink it. We can't all the time be testing our environment for bacteria, so staying away from what disgusts is good practice. But I think this shows nothing about the utility of the projective form of disgust, in which we deem certain groups of people disgusting and assimilate them to feces, corpses, and disgusting animals. That may be a ubiquitous human activity, but ubiquity doesn't prove value, especially not ethical and political value. The ubiquity of the male domination of women doesn't show that this domination is ethically or politically good.

And here is a brief discussion of anger, and how it differs in society from disgust.

Anger is constructive: Its content is, "This harm should not have occurred, and the imbalance should be righted." Most philosophical definitions of anger include the thought that the wrong should be punished or somehow made good. Disgust, by contrast, expresses a wish to separate oneself from a source of pollution; its social reflex is to run away. When I am disgusted by certain American politicians, I fantasize moving away to Finland—a country in which I have worked a little, and which I see as a pure blue and green place of unpolluted lakes, peaceful forests, and pristine social-democratic values. And I don't know it enough to know its faults. To fantasize about moving to Finland is not a constructive response to present American problems.

 

[daveb]

I found more interesting her assertion about emotions and public policy.

I believe that we should not say that no emotions belong in public reason. Emotions aren't just mindless urges; they contain thoughts about matters of importance. Anger, for example, contains a thought about harm or damage; the emotion can't be defined, or distinguished from other negative emotions, without referring to those thoughts. Some emotions are essential to law and to public principles of justice: anger at wrongdoing, fear for our safety, compassion for the pain of others, all these are good reasons to make laws that protect people in their rights. Of course individual instances of anger, fear, and compassion may be misplaced, but in the cases where they stand up to scrutiny, we should go ahead and make law in response to those emotions.

The main problem I have with this is that it is merely a utlitarian precept since whether an emotion stands up to scrutiny is dictated by the majority.

For example, the death penalty is an anger based emotion supported by a majority of Americans (last I heard - I haven't seen any recent polls). That anger stands up to scrutiny, but is in direct contradiction with what she implies about equal dignity for all citizens. To punish a person with the death penalty treats the offender as if they are not worthy of life, robbing them of their dignity.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I found more interesting her assertion about emotions and public policy.
The main problem I have with this is that it is merely a utlitarian precept since whether an emotion stands up to scrutiny is dictated by the majority.

For example, the death penalty is an anger based emotion supported by a majority of Americans (last I heard - I haven't seen any recent polls). That anger stands up to scrutiny, but is in direct contradiction with what she implies about equal dignity for all citizens. To punish a person with the death penalty treats the offender as if they are not worthy of life, robbing them of their dignity.

I don't think she would accept that criticism. Of course I can only give my own reaction. Anger is a socially useful reaction to an ill such as murder because it motivates an effort to do something about it. Disgust at a murderer (which is at least a part of the support for the death penalty) is socially undesirable because it puts another human being in the place of a non-human "other", like feces or rotten eggs, to be eliminated from our world. The anger against murder and the desire to reduce its occurrence does not require this attitude toward those convicted of murder, as is proved by the successful reductions in murder rate in places that don't have the death penalty..

 

[daveb]

You may be right. I guess it all comes down to distinguishing whether a reaction is motivated by disgust or anger. One viewpoint seems to say that the reaction/motive dictates whether to classify it as anger or disgust, the other view says the reaction/motive stems from whther it's anger or disgust. Either way, an interesting read.

 

[Dawguard]

Whether they pose any psycological concerns or not, the fact is that disgust and shame are emotions, and as such have no place in deciding law or policy. Law should be logical: not to remove bias but to instill justice, and as such the ideas of disgust and shame should be absent from them. I don't think it requires a long debate or lengthy analysis to reach this general conclusion. Even though I agree with the end conclusion of the article, I can't help but think that it is trying to reinvent the wheel using overly complex methods.