Scruples
More on that Moyers-Nussbaum interview. As always when Nussbaum talks about religion, there are squashy places. The interview is like a pear with a lot of bruised spots.
[W]hat I love are [Roger Williams’s] metaphors for the way that freedom is taken away. I mean, there are two metaphors. One is the imprisonment of the soul. And the other, even deeper, is the rape of the soul. And he keeps saying it’s soul rape when people try to get people to believe something that they don’t really believe. So the only way we can avoid doing that kind of violence to conscience is to give it lots of space to unfold itself. Not just [not] persecuting people, but really bending over backwards to be sensitive to their religious needs.
I don’t think that’s true – depending on what she means by trying ‘to get people to believe something that they don’t really believe.’ If she means trying to force people to believe something by pure command, then – well, then I still don’t agree, but I disagree less than I do with the alternative. I agree that that does a kind of violence to people’s mental lives (I wouldn’t call it ‘conscience’ because I think Nussbaum is using conscience to mean religious belief, which is a stealthy way of privileging religion), but I don’t agree that bending over backwards is the only way we can avoid it; we can just not try to force people to believe something by pure command. But if by trying ‘to get people to believe something that they don’t really believe’ she means argument of any kind, then I don’t think that does do violence to people’s mental lives, or their consciences, and I don’t believe there’s any need to avoid doing that. I’m afraid she might mean that – which would be depressing.
[W]hat our whole history has shown is…that people can get along together and respect one another, even though they have differences about religion, because they can recognize a common moral ground to stand on. They can recognize values like honesty, social justice, and so on.
Well, yes and no. Or up to a point. Or sometimes but it depends. In short, that’s too easy. Some people can sometimes get along together because they can recognize a common moral ground – but not all people and not always. ‘Social justice’ for instance – people disagree about what social justice is, and lots of people are convinced it means nothing but taking all their money away and giving it to coke-addled women with 57 children, so that they hate the very sound of it. The people at Yearning for Zion ranch don’t recognize a common moral ground with people like, say, me. (And the history of the US isn’t entirely one of getting along, I have to say. A little spat called The Civil War comes to mind. So does slavery, so does the genocidal policy toward Native Americans, so do various other quarrelsome moments.)
And George Washington wrote a letter to the Quakers saying, “I assure you that the conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with the greatest delicacy and tenderness.” And what he meant is you’re not going to have to serve in the military. And I respect that. And unless there’s a public emergency, we’re just not going to do that kind of violence to your conscience. So, I think we have understood that lesson.
But that won’t do as a lesson, because that example won’t do as a general principle, because it’s an easy one. It’s no good trying to make a case for policy X by offering the easy examples and ignoring the hard ones. It’s no good at all, because the problems don’t arise with the easy examples, they arise with the hard ones, so citing the former and ignoring the latter is entirely the wrong thing to do. It’s like saying ‘the bridge is strong enough because look, this bicycle made it across,’ when cars and trucks and buses are also going to be crossing the bridge.
In short it’s a cheat. The problem is, the Quaker scruple is much too easy to ‘respect.’ Most people do understand and respect and sympathize with conscientious scruples about killing people, even if they don’t agree with particular instantiations of them. But that is not the case with all religious ‘scruples’, to put it mildly. Saudi authorities have ‘scruples’ about allowing women to do almost anything without written permission from a male guardian. I don’t respect that. I don’t think it should be treated with any delicacy and tenderness at all; I think it should be reviled. The Vatican has ‘scruples’ about condoms which cause it to forbid all Catholics to use them, which to the extent that it is obeyed will inevitably cause the deaths of countless women and children. I feel absolutely no need to treat that stupid, irrational, ill-founded ‘scruple’ with delicacy and tenderness. I think it’s vicious, obstinate, and murderous.
And the fact that Nussbaum picked an easy example instead of a hard one tips her hand, because if she picks an example that atheists and secularists can understand just as well as theists can, then she’s not really talking about religious scruples at all, she’s just talking about scruples. What is specifically religious about scruples against killing people? Nothing. So what does religion add to the scruples that mean we should treat them with the greatest delicacy and tenderness? Nothing. At least nothing that I can think of – do tell me if you can think of any.
No, I think it’s one or the other but not both, whereas Nussbaum wants to pretend it can be both. I think it’s either a good scruple whether you’re religious or not, or it’s a bad scruple. I can’t think of any that are good scruples that are also necessarily religious. Can you?
Well, bless you, Ophelia!
That’s just my point, don’t you see? That’s where Martha goes deep! And then Betrand Russell comes along and says, “I don’t believe in your god, but I can’t go out there and shoot people,” and they don’t respect him, they put him in jail. (Well, the British did, but it was thrown at him when he came to New York too.)
What does religion add to scruples ‘that mean we should treat them with the greatest delicacy and tenderness?’ Depth, Ms Benson, depth! And don’t pretend that you go down that far, because you don’t believe!
Well, of course I see, Eric – I’ve written long posts disagreeing with Nussbaum about this kind of thing before. I just meant she’s not in the same category as Chris Hedges, to say the least. But she does have this sentimental optimistic thing about religion going, and I do think she tends to put a heavy thumb on the scale as a result. (I think she does have something specific in mind with the deep idea of human dignity – I don’t think that’s pure rhetoric – even if it is rhetoric too.)
“[W]hat I love are [Roger Williams’s] metaphors for the way that freedom is taken away. I mean, there are two metaphors. One is the imprisonment of the soul. And the other, even deeper, is the rape of the soul. And he keeps saying it’s soul rape when people try to get people to believe something that they don’t really believe. So the only way we can avoid doing that kind of violence to conscience is to give it lots of space to unfold itself. Not just [not] persecuting people, but really bending over backwards to be sensitive to their religious needs.”
I’m sorry..WHAT??
“SOUL RAPE”??
This pear isn’t just bruised, it’s completely rotten, and fit only for consignment to the compost heap.
Yes, Ophelia, I see what you mean. I have admired Nussbaum too. My problem is that, if, in the end, she cashes it in in terms of the rhetoric used here with Bill Moyers, was it really deep, after all? Isn’t there something, as Andy Gilmour has said, a bit obscene (and shallow) about someone who talks about soul rape?
I’ve just read a rather nice paper about the way pain has been regarded through much of Christian history. (I’ll supply the reference if anyone really wants to look at it.) And the thing was, that pain was something located, not in the body, where it was felt, but in the soul. Very deep, that! I guess that’s what worries me about Ms. Nussbaum in this case. She talks the greatest kind of sense, sometimes, in her books (I’ve read two, I think, some time ago, though I can’t remember the titles — one about hiding or shame or something — so my reading must have been rushed — but they seemed so reasonable and assured, but surely this kind of thing is really over the top — isn’t it?)
Have you ever bitten into a pear that looks so sweet and delicious on the outside, and when you bite into it, it’s rotten right through — they rot from the core out, you know, bruises really don’t tell you anything at all — well, when I read Nussbaum’s interview with Moyers, I felt that I had just bitten into that kind of pear.
Gah, yes, I have bitten into that kind of pear. So tragic, so disappointing, when it looks so good on the outside.
But I’m not sure I mind the soul rape figure as much as you two do – because I do think there’s something profoundly presumptuous and demanding about trying to command people to believe (say) in a deity. I don’t suppose that’s exactly what Roger Williams had in mind – but I don’t know, perhaps it is. The interview is basically a defense of secularism, so it could be.
Yeah, the shame book is called Hiding From Humanity – I reviewed it for TPM, as it happens.
Yes, I do think this kind of thing is over the top. It’s a sort of vice of Nussbaum’s – this unctuous tone she gets at times. I wish she wouldn’t…
Yes, it is rather disgusting, biting into rotten pears, that is. But there are other things rotten besides pears and the state of Denmark.
But, can you really command someone to believe? I was raised in a Christian school, and after twelve years it was very deeply embedded, belief and fear. But it wasn’t like rape. It was, dare I say it, deeper than that? In the end, I believed, and I couldn’t not believe. And people gave it lots of room to unfold itself. And it was cruel and destructive, and I’ve spent a whole lifetime trying to shed it. I feel the guilt and the fear now as I write this.
No one, aside from Dawkins, has really grabbed this bull by the horns. No, I tell a lie, Nicholas Humphrey did it in a speech — remind me — about children’s rights (at Oxford?). Anyway, it’s far more serious than any attempt to force beliefs on adults. It’s done slowly, insidiously, and with far greater effect.
“So the only way we can avoid doing that kind of violence to conscience is to give it lots of space to unfold itself. Not just [not] persecuting people, but really bending over backwards to be sensitive to their religious needs.”
Well, bless my soul! And so we’re to bend over backwards to be sensitive to the religious needs of all those very deep and serious men on the Mormon slave ranch. Or all those men in Saudi Arabia, or in Texas, where women are held in bondage to Islam. It makes me sick. This religious subterfuge is really rotten in the middle, no matter how deep the sweetness may seem to go from the outside.
Conscientious scruples?! My God! What rot at the centre of that pear!
Well the odd thing is – I know she doesn’t mean that. Her Sex and Social Justice has a lot of material on the subject of religion as oppressor of women – and she’s not a fan. But she worded things in such a way in that interview that she completely neglected to rule them out. Now, it was just an interview – but the trouble is she’s talked that kind of sentimental cant in other places too. It’s all very odd. She doesn’t think all ‘religious scruples’ deserve respect, yet she often says just that, or almost just that – she omits ‘all’ but she doesn’t actually say she doesn’t mean all. I don’t know if it’s intentional omission, or sentimentality run amok, or what.
The commanding belief I had in mind was all the routine atheist-hostility – Bush Senior saying atheists aren’t citizens, that kind of thing. That implies ‘believe or else’ to me. An implicit command – you have to believe and if you don’t we’ll feel free to cast aspersions on your character.
But, excuse me, please note: Martha Nussbaum does not believe in God and is not religious in any conventional sense.
BILL MOYERS: [W]hen you say the word God now, and it’s all through your book. What’s in your head?
MARTHA NUSSBAUM: Well, I am kind of agnostic about what that really means. And I guess what I do think is that there’s some moral basis to life that makes us dignified beings, not mere bundles of matter. And that’s why we deserve respect for one another…there’s something spiritual about us whether we give that a religious interpretation or not. And so, it’s that sense of there being dignity to life that I associate with the word God.
She identifies religion with a sort of fuzzy-minded, generic, well-meaning sentimentality–of which she approves. And, of course, she prefers soft, cuddly religions. I on the other hand believe in God but also believe that we are nothing more than mere bundles of matter without any dignity whatsoever, that “respect” is a cheap substitute for material improvement, and that the sort of “spirituality” Nussbaum promotes is a crock. With bien pensents like this we theists don’t need enemies.
I repeat: the problem is not religion as such–belief in the existence of supernatural beings and cultic practice–but the idiotic, destructive moral views with which it gets hooked up and even more than that with the patronizing sentimentality of Nussbaum and other friends of “spirituality” who congratulate themselves on speaking with the vulgar.
True, true. I was thinking of adding a brief post asking why call a sense of dignity ‘God’ at all, but didn’t get around to it.
You know we don’t agree about the supernatural beings (but you’re one of my favorite theists!), but I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t like the patronizing sentimentality schtick.