LOVE’S KNOWLEDGE Essays on Philosophy and Literature MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New Yor Oxford 240)‘Oxford University Press Oxford. New York Toronto Dah Mombay Caleta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaye Singapore Hong Kong Tokvo ‘Nawab Dares Slsam Cape Town ‘Matbovene Avekland and sociated companies in ‘cin Tbadan Copyright © 1990 by Martha C. Nussbaum Fist published by Oxted University Press, 1990 Fost ined an Oxford Univeraty Press paperback, 1992 Oxford Univesity Pres, ne 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 (Oso reper trademark of Oxforé Univesy Press Martha C. Nusbaum. hte igre ferences Since this page cannot accommodate all the copyright the page that follows constitutes an extension ofthe coy oar6sas Printed inthe United States of America “The essays in this collection have been previously published as follows: spectives on Self Deception, ed. B. McLaughlin and A. Rory (Berke 1988), 487-514, kets Genealogy of Love.” Eth 98 (1988): 225-54, (A French versionContents List of Long and Short Titles xix |. Introduetion: Form and Content, Philosophy and Literature 3 ‘The Discernment of Perception: An Aristotelian Conception of Private and Public Rationality 54 Plato on Commensurability and Desire 106 : James's The Golden Bow! and Literature losophy 125 ly Aware and Richly Responsible”: Literature and the Moral Imagination 148 Theory 168 rium: Literary Theory and Ei rhe Princess Casamassima and 195 Sophistry About Conventions 220 Reading for Life 230 Fictions of the Soul 245 . Love's Knowledge 261 . Narrative Emotions: Becket’s Genealogy of Love 286 vidual: Romantic Rightness and Platonic Aspiration 314 Steetforth’s Arm: Love and the Moral Point of View 335 Transcending Humanity 365 Index 393,Henry James, The Ambassadors Syl ocho wie, npn le Sor thereon fo ee perscaded tat tis no prot of ntellechual mert Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past at all complicated you have to be an Isis Murdoch, Art Aecidemtal Man “Some facts should be suppressed, portion should be observed in eating the a1 JB Introduction: Form and Content, Philosophy and Literature “Ma di si’ vegzio qui colui che fore trasse le nove rime, cominci “Donne ch’avete inteletto d'amore.”” i son un che, quando spira, noto, ea quel modo he dictates within, that way I signify.” Dante, Purgatorio, Canto XXIV How should one bie what words should one select, what forms and structures4 about what happens, resourcefully confronting each new thing. If these views are serious candidates for truth, views that the search for truth ought to consider along. it 1en it seems that this language and these forms ought to be included {trying to understand, that strange unmanageable , source at once of illumination and confusion, agony ‘many varieties, and their tangled relations to hhuman life, to aspiration, to general social concern? What parts of oneself, what ‘method, what writing, should one choose then? What is, in short, love's Knowl- edye—and what writing does it dictate in the heart? A. Expressive Plants, Perceiving Angels He chose to include the things ‘That in each other are included, the whole, ‘The complicate, the amassing harmony. ‘Wallace Stevens “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction” In his preface to The Golden Bowl, Henry James describes the author's selection ‘me as into the only terms that honorably expressed it prefaces, James frequently compares the author's sense of | ‘text to a plant that grows out of that soil and expresses, in character and composition. James's second metaphor is more mysterious. The f compared (in its relation, apparently, to whatever sim quate language may have been, before its invention, on the scet ply looked over the heads of the standing terms—or pethaps rather, like alert ‘winged creatures, perched on those diminished summits and aspired to a clearer two claims about the writer’s art that defend them is a central purpose of first is the claim that there is, with respect to any text caref ‘imagined, an organic connection between its form and its content. Certain ‘thoughts and ideas, a certain sense of life, reach toward expression in writing that hhas a certain shape and form, that uses certain structures, certain terms. Just as 2, James, AV 339, 200d, "formal structures, sentences, "What matters and what does nc Giplant emerges fiom the seeded soil, taking its form from the combined char- seed and soil, so the novel and its terms flower from and express the con- his or her sense of what matters. Conception and form are sgether; finding and shaping the words is a matter of finding the appro- 1010 speak, the honorable, fit between conception and expression. If well done, a paraphrase in a very different form and style will eral, express the same conceptio second claim is that certain truths about human life can only be fittingly accurately stated in the language and forms characteristic of the narrative | With respect to certain elements of human life, the terms of the noveist’s rtarealert winged creatures, perceiving where the blunt terms of ordinary speech, ‘prof abstract theoretical discourse, are blind, acute where they are obtuse, winged | id heavy. ssary condition for such immersion, are able to apprehend only abstract, ices and general forms. Lacking concrete sensuous imaginings, they cannot ive particulars, On earth, they have only an imperfect cognition, as Aquinas not without but of the from the concrete and deeply felt experience of life inthis world and dedicated to a fine rendering of that “life's particularity and complexity. His claim is that only language this dense, this ssubtle—only the language (and the structures) of the narrative artist, ‘ean adequately The essays in literature to the exploration of some important questions about human beings and hhuman life. Their first claim is that in this contribution form and style are not incidental features. A view of life is told. The telling itself—the selection of genre, manner of addressing the expresses sense of life and of value, a sense of of what learning and communicating ae, of lifes reader's sense of life—all 3. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica | 489 al. 4. On the work of art as a shaping of lif, ste Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (India- Fabs nd 1968, chaps. 1 6: also his Ways of Worldmakin fature-on the act od Reader,” ihe Text, ed. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crossman 980), 106-19; see also his ct of Reading: . Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore, Ma, 1978) Ssthis book will conceive it, is to discover the forms and terms that fittingly and fy through amusing word problems than through abstract computations. But hardly implies that the truths of mathematics have themselves any deep or Finsic connection with the word problem form, or that they are deficiently {in their abstract form. Where our questions ied to the i eanarandlog of elements of him or herself are then be certain plausible views ab life that cannot be housed within tl form without generating a peculiar then, that for an interesting family of part of its reader, Marcel also holds self-understanding are will approps both at stating the truth adequately an« citing, from the reader, an intelligent », why has this form been selected above reading of life. ferent view of what is important and what dispens- But Proust and James, and this volume with them, claim more than this. The r ‘that would rescue the author from first claim directs us to look i i ‘author may believe that the psy- as expressive of a view of forms might not be more apps tion of various elements of life. facie plausible to actually are or may be to various questi q tually ambivalent come to know it. The frst claim im ion wil in abstract theoretical language and also hold that they are most efficiently com- municated to readers of a certain sort through colorful and moving narrative. Young children, for example, fequently learn some types of mathematics more -PY1ma facie plausible to hold, as James does hold, that the terms of the novelists (oS ames 0, 6. Fora fuller discussion of this point, soe “Love's Knowledge” in this volume, Zart can state what James calls “the projected morality” more adequately than any 10 be said—especially about Aristotle, other available terms.’ Again, more rative—as irrelevant to the stating of content might be conveyed. When philosophy respect to several interrelated issues in the area of human choice, and of ethics broadly construed (see §§C, E, ms that is a serious candidate for truth—and which deserves, therefore, the attention and scrutiny of anyone who seriously considers these matters—whose ful the second pair are what tentions and thoughts the more conce n the other side, they correctly notice that the reader, too, may in many ways turn, requires of the reader. Thus noth- made by the writer|o ‘questions. More remotely, however, it began, I can only suppose, from st that, like David Copperfield, Twas a child who: ands were, on the Dnovels—a serious and, juts in the brown and sl red by the chilly clear opulence ve and hiking about many du ment of a real human being—even if the writer manages to see what she sees only in her work, ‘A prablem scems to be raised by my use reabife author, and give the statement Here, three things may be said. First, an author need not be a bad judge of what ry often the case, for complex psye ‘of them grew into me, was usually that of reflecting and feeling ab i literary character, a particular novel; or, sometimes, an episode p but seen asthe material for a dramatic plot of my own imagining. All juenced by the stories and the sense of life they expressed. Aris » inoza, Kant—these were still unknown to me. Dickens, Jane Austen, Aristoph- Ben Jonson, Euripides, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky—there were my friends, spheres of reflection. In several projects of early adolescence I find (rereading them with a sense more ty than of rupture) some germs of later preoccupations. I find a paper Aristophanes, discussing the ways in which ancient comedy presents social issues and inspires recognition in the audience. I find a paper on Ben and the depiction of character and motive in the “comedy of humors.” 1 Somewhat later, a long play about the life of Robespierre, focusing on the flict between his love of general political ideals and his attachments to partic- ; Desmoulins larger narrative st authorial presence ot togethe the creation of his own hybrid text, combining commentary and narration into a larger whole. B. The Ancient Quarrel My father had left a small collection of books ina little room upstairs, to which | had access (for it adjoined my ows in our house ever troubled, From that ble Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, of Wakefels, Don Quinol Gil Ba, and Robi the revolutionary movements that I soon after encountk long paper about Dostoyevsky and the whole question of w! {0 live was one that seeks to transcend one’s finite humani “See some of the very problems and even distinctions th: __Asfor Proust, my French literature courses meticulously | he each year, arriving by twelfth grade at the nineteenth; unknown to me. And Henry James. I read The Portrait of a Lady too early, with Only moderate enthusiasm. The Golden Bowl, lent to me by a teacher, lay on my ‘desk for two years, with its cover of white, black, and gold, the evidently cracked. from my sense bewilderment at finding these questions, on the whole, not addressed in the aca- demic contexts I encountered, a bewilderment that only increased my obsessionsaw across the staged action the faces of fellow citizens on the other side but also ‘their role in the adequate stating of a view. An fod to the soul expresses. it represents human life as being re those represer pupils to confror ‘ ‘i 5 ‘hat generated the ancient quarrel ‘attack upon the poets we find a profound insight me ha were charactor (and mach of a view fi ‘edge and participate in a way mn and public debate about ethi performance involved both fee! inked with one another. The jusive of various forms of laudat by chance can be of enormous refore, good people are these same reasons, an audience’s pity and fear at tragic events fe, since they embody a recognition of ethical 1d based upon correct beliefs about | and good ethical development? What state truth? And what is the content of the most ‘genre depends on such bel tell stories of reversals happening to good but not invulnerable peo ‘they matter for all human beings. And the form the characters and ‘we wish to teach that the good that make their connec- 28. See Fragility, Interludes | and 2. 1c, ploy CD; Scrat cio knowlege of thi though in ener ene at Be anyWe ihat addressed them. The debate was becoming more complex; ‘eriticisms of both Kant times with appeal to ancient Greek questions and debates. But so far between forms of discourse and views of the contemporary Anglo-American treatm« which compartmentalized the forms 10 be no debate and no quarrel—prevented these important qui fo not) give the impression of juestions about style in view. the tragedies. And yet Aristotle does not write tragedies, He writes phi and explanatory commentari But my interest in the sophical problems whose force 2 embody the only sort of hg, the only norm of rationality worth emulating, even in ‘as old as the debate between Plato and Aristotle over the nature of ps. 8-12; on Aristotle's style, I Ancient Writers Luce (New York, 1982), 3G§iyas criticism of Kantianism and Utilitarianism mount yppeared to be Fcontradiction between form Thave already mentioned. An article, for example, argues that the or argument to a very different sphere of human life that may have ‘geography and demand a different ity. Most of the moral philosop! any substantial concepti and the pressure of convent to the idea of bringing a broad range of human con analysis. The ancient quarrel was rejected as ol | Asse im 581984), $20. 2 |IMterary work of recent years has done precisely and firmly aware of sul enormous amount to make readers 1¢ entire ancient approach, and as an excuse for dis juestions.* For clearly the ancient approach was not, some of the most interesting and urgent questions iterary form itself could not be well pursued unless one asked about the inti structures and the content they express. demands an exacting formal inquiry. the charge that such criticism must inevitably be wooden and moralisi any more plausible, tof the ancient situatior we form, the way in which ging to the text our hopes, fears, and confusions, and allowing th certain structure to our hearts, he project I undertook was, then, to begin to recover, in the domain of the al, very broadly and inclusively construed, the sense of the deep connection between content and form that ai been present in the greatest ethical 36, Wayne Booth argues eloquently fora revival ofa broad and flexible ethical cri The Company We Keep (Heri it ‘only questions ith respect to which the be studied. ‘The essays h ship between content and form might resent, then, simply a begi jing rooted in my love for ugh the puzzles, in this way go on to shi the deeply held beliefs about these exper ir not. possible, the truth of the greatest number and the most ‘authoritative. Astle, Nicomachean Bthics y of winat the quarrel was about, However much Plato and the poets disagreed, ¥ agreed that the aim of their work was to provide illumination concerning ‘one should live. Of course they were at odds concerning what the ethical truth, ‘and also concerning the nature of understanding, But stil, there was some if, some question to which they could be seen as offering co sbstacle to any contemporary version of at any account of what we are looking for that will ‘My aim is to establish that certain literary texts (or texts similar 4. For other rated philosophical work, se Stanley Cavell (work ited above, lei en, 10), Benarday the terms of one. prove unsuitable, the Utilitarian’s organizing qu accept, already, a certain characterization of of ethics, of the right or relevant desc to what happens anizing quest cutting off from the in life that the novels show as important and link to inquiry that will capture what we actually do when we ask ourselves the mos pressing ethical questions. For the activity of comparison I des tical activity, one that we undertake in countless ways when we ask ourselves ho ive, what to be; one that we perform together with others, in scarch of ways of philosophy is not—as I understand this proposal—to bring them to sor demic discipline which happens to ask ethical questions, Itis to bring them eonnection with our deepest practi conceptions, both with one another and with our active sense of is to recognize that the novels are in this search already: to insist on and describe, the connections the novels have already for readers who love them and who read I fo No way of purs answers might lie! include, what to look of procedure and starting-point are merely subjective and irrational." It does ‘mean that in order to attain to the rationality that is available (as the chimera of ot) we need to be alert to those aspects of a procedure that jon or another, and to commit ourselves to the ir experience, our active sense of life, to the different concepti comparing the alternatives they present, jour developing sense of what fit between experience and conception. And we also find an account of an inclusive starting t inquiries and results were non-comparable wi ts, or comparable only by a method of comparison th: quently appealed to as one that (continu- or framing pro- respect for each, ee” from, the experience hich human beings can live, and live together. "The inquiry proceeds by working through the major alternative positionsabo (including Aristotle's own, holding: them up againgf ind also against the it nd feelings, their that statement implies negation, that to assert something isto rule out something else. The participants look not for a view that is true by correspondence to some extra-human reality, but for the best overall fit between a view and what is deepest in human lives. They are asked to imagine, at each stage, what they can least live mnsable, They seek for coherence and fit in the web of judgment, ind principle, taken as a whole. iterary works play a role on two levels." First, they can inter fe urges us to consider. “Perceptive Equilib- rium’ discusses this question, showing how John Rawls’s conception of the Aris. totelian procedure might be enlarged by consideration of our literary experience.** ‘And the style of this Introduction illustrates the inclusiveness of the Aristotelian approach. But according to the terms of the ancient quarrel the very choice to write a tragic drama—or, we can now say, a novel—expresses already certain evaluative com- mitments. Among these seem {0 be commitments to the ethical significance of uncontrolled events, to the epistemological value of emotion, to the variety and non-commensurability of the important things. Literary works (and from now on. [see §F] we shall focus on certain novels) are not neutral instruments for the inves- tigation of all conceptions. Built into the very structure of a novel is a certain conception of what matters. In the novelists we study here, when we do find a acter, or some other exponent of an ethical position divergent from animates the narrative taken as a whole (James's Mi Dickens's Agnes and Mr. Gradgrind”), those characters are not with the reader. And we are made aware that if the events, rary form they now do, and would not have constituted a novel at all. A ferent sense of salience would have dictated a different form. In short, by con- senting to see the events in the novel’s world as the novel presents them, we are, as readers, already breaking ethically with Gradgrind, Mrs. Newsome, and shall call the Aristotelian conception) that requires, for its adequate and com investigation and statement, forms and structures such as those that we find in these novels. Thus if the enterprise of moral philosophy is understood as we have 4S. A thied function for literature in this inauity is deseribed in the Notes to “Plato on Com- ‘mensurabiliy,” this volume. 46. See also Hi, Richardson, “The Emotions of Reflective Faull 47. On Mrs. Newsome, see “Perceptive Equilibrium”; on Agnes, \ forthearing rforth’s Arm,” On Mr, . then moral philosophy requires such literary texts, the experience of loving and attentive novel-reading, for its own completion. js involves, clearly, an expansion and reconstruction of what moral philosophy ethics. Although this may disappoint some who find mod- boring, I have no interest in dismissive assaults on systematic eth- A or even on Kant {o which the novels, to be sure, display their own oppositio that should be acceptable even to Kantians or Utilitarians, ‘wick, they accept the Aristotelian question and the Aristotel 10 the sympathetic study of should add the study of that without them we wil tl conception, one that ethical conception and that 18 of a defense of it. But the the beginning, not the comple- tion. And in the full working out of the inquiry the investigation of alternative views, in their own styles and structures, would play a central role. In fact, work. “Perceptive Equilibrium” argues, play a role even in tinct, are in many ways continuous with one another, in that the sense of life that leads us to build i lars, a respect endedness, it can plausibly claim to be a balanced philosophical ing alternatives, not simply a partisan defense of this one. Furthermore, the procedure did not include these features for arbitrary theoretical reasons: it got them from life, and it included them because our sense of life seemed to include them. So if a procedure that includes what life includes is distant from certain theoreti alternatives, this is, or may be, a sign of narrowness in those theoretical alter- natives. surely, some will say, any conception of procedure that has any content at ll incorporate a conception of rationality that belongs to onc tradition of all at28 ‘thought rather than another, and which ca sefore contain or sympath sally explore the thoughts of any other tradition. Traditions each embody of procedural rationality that are part and parcel o ‘they support.* This is no small worry; but 1ow determined one is or is not to make progr totelian procedure tells us to be respectful of diff look for a consistent and sharable answer to the will capture what is deepest and most basi ‘an enumeration of differences an¢ cannot rationally decide. It instructs us to do what we can to compare and. the knowledge that no comparison is, perhaps, altogether: since we must translate exch of the alternatives, in ef lawed method, instead of simply radition is altogether noncomparable with every other, no single starting point, no single procedure? ‘The Aristotelian’s answer to this is that this is what we actually do—and wh it we conduct every d les against fair comparison alternatives as insuperable for reasons of methodological purity, we can always tical cost. And our common experiences, our active pi i questions, give a unity and focus to the search that it might not seem to has ‘when we regard it solely on the plane of theory. As Aristot inquiry, see Nussbaum, “Aristotelian Social Democracy,” in Li Richardson and G. Mara (New York, 1990), 50. Arisote, Potties, 1268 39M, discussed in “Non Relative Virtues” above, n. 49). mnal, we need to do this, ‘no matter how hard it re urgently, as flexibly and attentively as we tter hi ATE As Charlote Stat sas tothe Prince (before embarking on a is messy, urgent, and full of love), “What else can we do, what in all lsc?" ‘adifferent objector might ask, do I wi josophical enterprise? And must thi {0 the philosophical demand for explanation to be sic. We do “read for! edly philosophical) our pressing questions and ‘what we might do and be, and holdi om our knowledge of other conception: ‘the further pursuit of this enterprise is not a diminution of the novels at all, but rat and breadth of the claims that those who love them make for them. ‘because the Aristotelian practical procedure shows with what they are to pared, to what they are taken to be the rivals: namely, to the best and ppproach to works rt them from what they are into systematic treatises, ignoring in the process features and their mysterious, various, and complex content. It is, in 1. and which therefore must become various snd insofar as, the truth is so. The very qual- xy theorists allied with deconstruction have rss the ‘ neglect of ethical and social considerations