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Title: Upheavals of Thought : The Intelligence of Emotions by Martha C. Nussbaum ISBN: 0-521-53182-9 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 14 April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: What it is all about
Comment: The 760 pages of Nussbaum's book make for many hours of absorbing reading. Her aim is to bring back into philosophy what it has lacked so often: emotions. The book gives splendid summaries of the best in (Western) philosophy, literature and music. Having read the chapters on Seneca, Dante, Spinoza, Proust, Mahler, Joyce and others, many readers will feel tempted to go back to the originals and read or re-read them.
It is not too difficult, either, to disagree with much that Nussbaum proffers. Take music. She has much to say about the "contents" and "meaning" of Mahler's music, in detailed descriptions of such works as the Second Symphony. She cannot, however, really convince us that it is the music itself which conveys the message. Mahler thought and wrote a lot about what prompted him to write music. But apart from the words of songs included in his symphonies, can the music itself "mean" anything? What we hear is chords, tempi, structure - which through mysterious ways move and touch us. But there may be nothing, really, which would prompt the listener to hear any part of that symphony as particularly "heroic" of "tragic" or "fateful" if that listener does not know of Mahler's commentary - he or she may well feel those parts are spirited, or hurt, or just plain "beautiful" - or maybe tedious and longwinded. The same could be said for other arts: paintings, sculpture, dance (which Nussbaum, remarkably, does not refer to at all).
Language can express emotions a lot more explicitly, but again: can fiction be "about" something? Is Joyce's Ulysses really "about love", as Nussbaum stipulates, or is it a lot more that that? Is not Ulysses rather about, well, everything in the book called Ulysses?
In this book, compassion and love are the core themes. Nussbaum adduces a wealth of literature, fiction and non-fiction, to explain how these two emotions dominate both personal and public life. Each of her arguments makes a point, but also jeopardizes to weaken another. Love is such a complicated concept (and Nussbaum deals with all possible ramifications of it) that at the end one wonders whether anything succinct can be said about it. Compassion is a value of enormous significance in public life, but is so rife with contradictions that no political philosopher (let alone politician) would base her theory on it.
This book, indeed, is very hard to summarize. It may be significant that it does not have a conclusion. In philosophy, Great Thinkers have tried to get to the heart of things. They have come up with simple catchwords - such as alienation, abandonment, human flourishing, righteousness, existential angst, and much more - to offer us something of a grip on the bewildering experience of life. In their methodology, as Nussbaum points out, they have often overlooked or sidelined the vicissitudes of emotional life. But "mining the full wealth of personal experience" (Nussbaum's words) may produce so much debris, valuable as it is, that it becomes impossible to find that one small nugget of gold.
The many hours I spent on reading this book certainly have felt rewarding. It merits a four star appraisal for its combination of forceful intellectual stimulus, fascinating erudition and engaging moral debate. To deserve five stars it might have needed more than just the solid editing that another customer reviewer suggested. It should have had some definite clue, something that would have guided the reader from the outset. The map of experience displayed in this book threatens to become as large as the landscape.
This book is a real treat for everyone who is an avid reader, even if not by far as well-read as Nussbaum. In signaling that emotions are paramount she responds to the frustrations which many of us will have felt about what is sadly lacking in so much formal philosophy. But the book is not a philosophical breakthrough, since Nussbaum has not come up with a (refutable, falsifiable, debatable) answer to the philosophical question of "what it is really all about".
Rating: 5
Summary: the intelligence of emotions
Comment: I read "Upheavals of Thought," by leading social philosopher Martha Nussbaum, several months ago and I have to say that this book was one of the most intellectually stimulating and life-changing books I have ever read, if not the most. I was going through a period of emotional crisis in my own personal life at the time I read it and I had also confered with other books of similar nature, such as "Noonday Demon," in an effort to understand the emotions I was experiencing. However, "Upheavals of Thought" seemed right on target as far as explaining why I felt the way I felt and also how I can use what I was feeling to make ethically-informed decisions in the future and live a more self-aware and enlighthened life.
The range of topics that Prof Nussbaum covers in "Upheavals of Thought" are too expansive and detail-laden for me to give any completely informed synopsis here. Suffice to say, however, that the reader will find rigorous but clearly-written discussions of, among others, music, film, literature, classics, psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, ethics and, more importantly, how these subjects illuminate our understanding of the emotions, particularly our capacities for compassion and love. There are even revealing discussions about Martha's personal life and, specifically, her relationship with her mother. At a time when the nation is grappling with feelings of sorrow and uncertainty, this truly groundbreaking book is both timely and invaluable.
Rating: 4
Summary: I Think, Therefore I Feel
Comment: Drawing on her vast knowledge of philosophy, psychology and literature, Martha Nussbaum takes us on a tour of the emotional landscape that ranges from the agora in Athens to the world of lab rats and electrodes. Her goal is to convince us that our emotions are cognitive appraisals of the world around us. If we master this idea, we improve our chances of building a life that's ethical, passionate and compassionate.
The argument unfolds in three sections. In Need and Recognition, Nussbaum defines emotions as evaluative judgements about the world based on our ideas of what we deem important for our own flourishing. After elaborating on this definition, she refines it by sparring with the -ologists who argue for the physiological origins of emotion. She addresses in a convincing way the question of how pre-verbal beings such as infants and non-verbal beings such as animals can make sophisticated evaluative judgements. The section on infant emotions plunges the reader back into those wild storms of bliss and rage that come from having all that you need to survive exist beyond your direct control.
Part II, Compassion, describes the process of extending one's definition of self-interest beyond the boundaries of one's own skin. She is particulary good on how shame and disgust, if not mastered, distance you from other people and prevent you from being imaginatively connected to a larger world.
Ascents of Love, the third part, traces evolving views of erotic love and it's here that Nussbaum's arguments start to soar. She demonstrates how the Platonic and Christian ascents of love solve the "problem" of loving specific individuals: you render the human irrelevant by ascending to the abstractions of ideal form or love of god. Nussbaum argues brilliantly for a view of erotic love that encompasses the ideal and real people as well. Her writing peaks in the chapters on Mahler and Joyce. She depicts Mahler's second symphony as a paean to human striving as a reward in itself, and Joyce's Ulysses as a heroic reclamation of the body in all its waywardness and fecundity from the life-denying clutch of the Catholic Church.
This book is important because it convincingly places control of our emotions within our own cognitive grasp. As masters of our emotions, we just might live a better life. One wishes the prose was less plodding in places, and the text less bristly with footnotes, but persevere. The views from the peaks are magnificent.
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Title: Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education by Martha Craven Nussbaum ISBN: 0674179498 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature by Martha Craven Nussbaum ISBN: 0195074858 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 1992 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain by Antonio Damasio ISBN: 0151005575 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: The Therapy of Desire by Martha C. Nussbaum ISBN: 0691000522 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 16 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The Fragility of Goodness : Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy by Martha C. Nussbaum ISBN: 0521794722 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 15 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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