Upheavals of Thought : The Intelligence of Emotions

Rating:
Summary: What it is all about
Review: 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:
Summary: The Logos of Pathos
Review: There is a major strand of Western philosophical thought that views emotions as opposed to reason, as if the passions were external, irrational forces pushing one around like a leaf in a storm. Then there is the strand that Nussbaum represents, that sees emotions (grief, fear, compassion, love, etc.) as fundamentally cognitive, adaptive expressions of an organism's assessment of its environment, vital to all our pragmatically rational endeavors. Nussbaum develops her thesis in three stages: first defending it philosophically, discussing the grounds of emotional response in biology, culture, and individual development; second, by exploring the rammifications of her cognitivism for ethical and social thought, and finally, by using her thesis as a critical lens through which to reread literary discussions of love ranging from Plato's Symposium to Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
Reading this work, one gets the impression that Nussbaum writes like she thinks; as philosophical writing goes, her style is quite lucid, but she has a tendancy to tell the reader she will "shortly" address topics that then do not appear for another hundred pages or so. She is nothing if not thorough, but it wouldn't have hurt if the whole book had been divided into two volumes, the second concentrating on the literary discussion. Moreover, in the first, philosophical half of the book she is too humble: if her treatment of emotions is correct, then two hunderd years of Anglo-American metaethical thought is overthrown, in so far as much of it stems from Hume's assesment of values as emotive and thus non-cognitive. This book should be read in conjunction with Hilary Putnam's The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy.

Rating:
Summary: The Logos of Pathos
Review: There is a major strand of Western philosophical thought that views emotions as opposed to reason, as if the passions were external, irrational forces pushing one around like a leaf in a storm. Then there is the strand that Nussbaum represents, that sees emotions (grief, fear, compassion, love, etc.) as fundamentally cognitive, adaptive expressions of an organism's assessment of its environment, vital to all our pragmatically rational endeavors. Nussbaum develops her thesis in three stages: first defending it philosophically, discussing the grounds of emotional response in biology, culture, and individual development; second, by exploring the rammifications of her cognitivism for ethical and social thought, and finally, by using her thesis as a critical lens through which to reread literary discussions of love ranging from Plato's Symposium to Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
Reading this work, one gets the impression that Nussbaum writes like she thinks; as philosophical writing goes, her style is quite lucid, but she has a tendancy to tell the reader she will "shortly" address topics that then do not appear for another hundred pages or so. She is nothing if not thorough, but it wouldn't have hurt if the whole book had been divided into two volumes, the second concentrating on the literary discussion. Moreover, in the first, philosophical half of the book she is too humble: if her treatment of emotions is correct, then two hunderd years of Anglo-American metaethical thought is overthrown, in so far as much of it stems from Hume's assesment of values as emotive and thus non-cognitive. This book should be read in conjunction with Hilary Putnam's The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful!
Review: This book presumes that you have a deep, broad acquaintance with philosophy, literature, music and psychology, setting the bar high enough to deter all but committed and highly educated readers. Those undaunted by this barrier will find themselves amid an awesome tour de force of philosophical inquiry. Author Martha Nussbaum uses the ancient foundations of stoicism as a platform for a theory about emotions that, curiously enough, elevates and honors emotions - the same unruly forces that the Stoics eradicated. Yet, unfortunately, Nussbaum wrote her 700-plus pages so dryly that she makes even the story of a lonely man rescuing a little stray dog as bloodless and dusty as a mummy. Recounting her mother's death, she betrays the flicker of a tear, but quickly dries it with the towel of analysis. It seems strange that a study of the emotions should be so barren of emotional content. However, we assure persevering readers who keep digging through the dry sands of this book that they will discover some marvelous intellectual architecture buried deep beneath.

Rating:
Summary: A major work
Review: This is not a full review but merely a note of warning against taking seriously the earliest kneejerk reviews below, including the listing of this book as a "disappointment" before it was even published, by some idiot who admits to not having read it. Take a look instead at the editorial reviews which recognize this as a major work in an important area of contemporary inquiry, by a leading moral philosopher who is the object of much envy for her ability to write in lively and engaging prose. It merits serious attention for the philosopher/psychologist and the lay reader.