
On Anger, Disgust, and Love: Interview with Martha Nussbaum - Hooke
http://emotionresearcher.com/on-anger-disgust-love/
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yestoallthat
> I argue that political love needs to be particularistic in this way, but
> that care must always be taken to harness that particular love to good moral
> principles and keep people moving back and forth. Good political rhetoric
> does this instinctively, and I study many cases. Think of Martin Luther
> King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. If Rawls had written it as an abstract
> structure of principle, the civil rights movement would never have
> succeeded. It was the soaring particular poetry, the rhythm of the language,
> its ability to capture Biblical images of love and justice, that made hearts
> leap out of their narrow breasts and soar toward something beautiful. Good
> thinkers have to do this each in their own context.

What? Never would have happened? So Malcolm X was totally lying when he
described [
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kf7fujM4ag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kf7fujM4ag)
] how it was bubbling at every street corner, while King and others squabbled
about money, and that it was for _fear_ of people walking on Washington and
shutting it down that suddenly it was channeled into some kumbaya style thing?
I'm not a huge fan of his, maybe I find him racist, I don't know, but I can't
deny the principledness and energy, and I find his version of events way more
realistic than "an impassioned speech making people realize they didn't want
to be treated like shit anymore".

But actually, I quoted the above because it reminded me of a thinker who might
disagree:

> _What frightened me in your essay was the gospel of love which you begin to
> preach at the end. In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes
> upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy. All the characteristics
> you stress in the Negro people: their beauty, their capacity for joy, their
> warmth, and their humanity, are well-known characteristics of all oppressed
> people. They grow out of suffering and they are the proudest possession of
> all pariahs. Unfortunately, they have never survived the hour of liberation
> by even five minutes. Hatred and love belong together, and they are both
> destructive; you can afford them only in the private and, as a people, only
> so long as you are not free._

\-- Hannah Arendt, Letter to James Baldwin, November 21, 1962

------
hyperliner
"I think that Democrats are sometimes guilty of playing on fear and anger too,
for example a resentful desire to smash elites without any realistic
constructive analysis. I think that Sanders is admirable in many ways, but by
inviting people to feel anger and in a sense fear of elites, and then offering
them only hopelessly unworkable programs, he encouraged emotional
irresponsibility."

------
myegorov
I could never understand how anyone can find Nussbaum's writings as remotely
interesting. "For those who like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing
they like."

~~~
throwaway123561
> "In terms of writ­ing for newspap­ers or doing press in­ter­views, the best
> in my ex­peri­ence are India, Italy, Ger­many, and Be­lgium"

The only reason she has such a media presence in India is because she is
white. The stupidity of American academics on all matters Indian is almost too
astonishing to believe - that goes for her pal Amartya Sen as well. Anyone who
has any understanding of this cult (yes I use that word after due
consideration) hates them with passion.

~~~
Baeocystin
Out of curiosity- any English sources of writing about India you would
recommend?

