Wednesday, September 25, 2002

TOWARDS A CITIZENSHIP OF IDEAS?

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, a professor at the University of Chicago, brings ancient philsophy to the present in her critique of modern education and the worldview it tends to inculcate. Her article, "Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism" first appeared in a 1994 issue of The Boston Review followed by 29 replies from a wide range of individuals, including Ann Norton, Robert Pinsky, Hilary Putnam, Benjamin R. Barber, Immanuel Wallerstein, Amy Gutmann, Paul Berman, David A. Strauss, Charles Taylor, and Michael Waltzer, among others.

Following the events of September 11th, 2001, Nussbaum, assisted by The New Democracy Forum, turned her essay and some of the replies into a book on the limits of patriotism, entitled For Love of Country. Her argument begins with an appeal to Socratic wisdom in criticizing the tendency for Americans to be less informed-- even ignorant-- about other cultures, economies, histories, etc. The fact that Bush officials can pull the wool over the public eye with statements like-- "Saddam has been aggressively pursuing regional domination for twenty years now"-- indicates how little we really know about world history. Do most Americans remember that the US government supported Saddam's war with Iran at the time? Do they remember that Saddam was touted by American leaders as "the good guy" because his Ba'ath Party maintained a secular agenda? Granted, the US government has a consistent record of bad foreign policy partly because voters lack the historical and philosophical knowledge revelant to making wise, informed decisions. But is that really an argument for "cosmopolitanism"?

To point to the flaws in Nussbaum's argument is not to disagree with her astute diagnosis of the problem. Truly, all the emphasis on the study of US history or the US constitution or the US commitment to democracy and civil rights assumes that there is not really much to learn about Them (i.e. the rest of the world). This makes it far too easy to fill the descriptive vacuum with falsities or over-burdened genetalizations, as adequately emphasized by Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations. Worse still is that it becomes far too easy for a government to define Them in accordance with its own interests when Americans citizens lack education to challenge these mass-media distributed sound-bites.

Especially fascinating is Nussbaum's linking of Stoic doctrine with "cosmopolitanism". She points out that Stoic philosopger and Roman emporer Marcus Aurelius spent an ample amount of time studying human beings. Aurelius remarked upon the first lesson gained from this study, namely, "not to be a fan of the Greens or the Blues at the races, or the light-armed or heavy-armed gladiators at the Circus".

Aurelius' ability to establish an objective distance between himself and the object of his study commands respect, but it seems incredibly difficult to follow his lead in a world where the politics of World Cup football is a more popular conversation topic than philosophy or theory. Perhaps Nussbaum relies too much on abstract universalism as a prime motivator. For while it does seem to be attractive to the elite, the wealthy, and the academic, abstract universalism-- if contextualized-- emerges from the hands of the general public, or working classes, in almost unrecognizable form (Americanism, maybe).

So where do the public intellectuals line up around Nussbaum's critique of patriotism? Richard Rorty's defense of "patriotism" recieved affirmation from the neo-conservative publication The Weekly Standard. The Right generally sympathizes with Rorty's attempt to reconcile patriotism with the percieved superiority of American values, though David Horowitz, as usual, insists on being slightly exceptional.