A Critique of Martha Nussbaum’s Liberal Aesthetics

• Published date: 01 June 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231194734
• Author: Katie Ebner-Landy
• Date: 01 June 2024

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231194734

Political Theory

2024, Vol. 52(3) 374 –403

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917231194734

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Article

A Critique of Martha

Nussbaum’s Liberal

Aesthetics

Katie Ebner-Landy1

Abstract

While we are familiar with socialist and fascist aesthetics, liberalism is not

usually thought to permit a political role for literature. Nussbaum has

attempted to fill this lacuna. She sketches a “liberal aesthetics” by linking

three aspects of literature to her normative proposal. The representation of

suffering is connected to the capability approach; the presentation of ethical

dilemmas to political liberalism; and the reaction of pity to legal and political

judgment. Literature is thus hoped to contribute to the stability of liberal

democracies.

For over 25 years, individual works by Nussbaum on the value of literature

have been critiqued on aesthetic grounds: for not dealing with form, for

denying the polyphony of texts, for having a limited conception of readerly

identification, and for using an elitist and generically limited selection of

material. As of yet, no criticisms have, however, considered the full oeuvre

of Nussbaum’s defense of literature, and none have examined this aspect of

her work in light of her political philosophy.

By placing the aesthetic and political aspects of Nussbaum’s work in

conversation, this article investigates the proposed relationship between

literature and liberalism. It argues that each component of Nussbaum’s

liberal aesthetics contains a political danger: foreclosing discussion of

intergenerational responsibility; obscuring questions about which doctrines

are permissible in the public sphere; and encouraging stereotypes of

marginalized people. Literature, understood like this, may risk exacerbating

present tensions within liberalism, rather than bolstering its stability.

1Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Katie Ebner-Landy, Society of Fellows, Harvard University, 78 Mt. Auburn St, Cambridge, MA

02138, USA.

Email: kebnerlandy@fas.harvard.edu

1194734PTXXXX10.1177/00905917231194734Political TheoryEbner-Landy

research-article2023

Ebner-Landy 375

1. This paper follows Nussbaum in interchangeably using the terms “sympathy,”

“empathy” and “compassion” when referring to the effects of literature in gen-

eral (see for example Nussbaum 1996, xvii), but “pity” when referring to ancient

Greek poetics. On the differences between these concepts, see Kimball (2004).

Though Nussbaum has expanded to consider other emotions in her later work,

sympathy represents a throughline, and thereby offers a prism through which to

assess the emotional parts of her arguments.

Keywords

Martha Nussbaum, aesthetics, liberalism, politics and literature, Aristotle

The cornerstone of Martha Nussbaum’s approach to the ethical and political

potential of literature relies on three distinct characteristics. First, that litera-

ture represents people suffering from bad luck and therefore provides the

clarification of the kinds of suffering to which a human life is vulnerable.

Second, that literature reveals the complexity of lived dilemmas, showing us

how misguided oversimplified theoretical approaches to ethics can be. Third,

that literature sparks reactions of sympathy, cultivating our imagination and

encouraging better forms of judgement of other people’s lives.1 These three

components constitute an aesthetic of liberalism, a kind of liberal aesthetics,

because they each have a liberal political corollary in Nussbaum’s works. The

representation of luck and fragility assists the creation of the capability

approach: a vision of well-being developed by Nussbaum and Amartya Sen.

The representation of hard decisions is a model of what Rawls (1993) and

Larmore (1996) have called “political liberalism”: the notion that since “rea-

sonable disagreement” about human life and its goals proliferates within

modern societies, their political principles must be capable of broad accep-

tance and should not be “built on metaphysical, epistemological, or even ethi-

cal foundations of the sort that divide citizens” (Nussbaum 2003, 25–27). The

inspiration of empathy is thirdly how policymakers and judges should engage

with citizens in liberal democracy. This is why “democracy needs the human-

ities,” in Nussbaum’s (2010) words.

For over 25 years, individual works by Nussbaum on the value of litera-

ture have been critiqued on aesthetic grounds: for not dealing with form

(Mouze 2021), for denying the polyphony of texts (Eaglestone 1999), for

having a limited conception of readerly identification (Dickstein 1996), and

for using an elitist and generically limited selection of material (Bell 1998;

Eldridge 1997). As of yet, no criticisms have, however, considered the full

oeuvre of Nussbaum’s defense of literature (which encompasses at least six