Vol. 26 No. 14 · 22 July 2004
pages 24-25 | 3325 words
Decay-Prone
Stephen Mulhall
- Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law by Martha Nussbaum
Princeton, 413 pp, £19.95, April 2004, ISBN 0 691 09526 4
Liberalism has been dogged by the suspicion that its commitment to tolerance is essentially duplicitous. The goal of respecting each person’s equal right to choose for herself how to live is surely definitive of a liberal conception of the good life for human beings; but if that is so, it requires a kind of neutrality from the state which flows from a belief in the superiority of that liberal conception. In short, advocating such neutrality gives expression to a partisan moral stance. Liberal tolerance cannot but be grounded in intolerance of its rivals.
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Letters
Vol. 26 No. 16 · 19 August 2004
From J.P. Roos
Stephen Mulhall castigates Martha Nussbaum for misunderstanding the bases of disgust and shame (LRB, 22 July). It seems to me that both Mulhall and Nussbaum are in fundamental agreement that these emotions are based on our hatred of our animality. Also, they are both informed by psychoanalysis: 'Shame has its roots in infancy, in the clash between our primitive sense of omnipotence and our expression of powerlessness,' as Mulhall tells us, referring to Nussbaum. I don't know whether Nussbaum mentions evolutionary psychology, but Mulhall at least does not seem to be aware of this approach to the analysis of shame and disgust. In this view, shame and disgust are simply excellent adaptations for survival. A human being who learns instinctively to avoid possibly dangerous substances has a better chance of staying alive than one who happily ingests anything in sight (disgust is learned like language; a baby needs some incentive but then learns without prompting). If such evolutionary adaptations are a fundamental cause of our moral sentiments, then philosophers and psychoanalysts would do well to accept that many things associated with these sentiments can be studied and tested empirically, pace Kant and Freud.
J.P. Roos
University of Helsinki
Vol. 26 No. 17 · 2 September 2004
From Rupert Read
J.P. Roos, a defender of 'evolutionary psychology' (Letters, 19 August), may have half a point against Mulhall and Nussbaum: disgust probably does have some biological basis. But he fails to support the other half of his conclusion: that shame does, too. It's possible to see the evolutionary advantageousness of disgust reactions to excrement, for example, but what is the evolutionary story that will explain the sense of shame felt by concentration camp inmates, rape victims or, indeed, public farters?
Rupert Read
University of East Anglia
