The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis

'A manifesto for hope'Literary ReviewFrom one of the world's most celebrated moral philosophers comes a thorough examination of the current political crisis and recommendations for how to mend a divided country.For decades, Martha C. Nussbaum has been an acclaimed scholar and humanist, earning dozens of honours for her books and essays. In The Monarchy of Fear she turns her attention to the current political crisis that has polarized America since the 2016 election.Although today's atmosphere is marked by partisanship, divisive rhetoric, and the inability of two halves of the country to communicate with one another, Nussbaum focuses on what so many pollsters and pundits have overlooked. She sees a simple truth at the heart of the problem: the political is always emotional. Globalization has produced feelings of powerlessness in millions of people in the West. That sense of powerlessness bubbles into resentment and blame. Blame of immigrants. Blame of Muslims. Blame of other races. Blame of cultural elites. While this politics of blame is exemplified by the election of Donald Trump and the vote for Brexit, Nussbaum argues it can be found on all sides of the political spectrum, left or right.Drawing on a mix of historical and contemporary examples, from classical Athens to the musical Hamilton, The Monarchy of Fear untangles this web of feelings and provides a roadmap of where to go next.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1: Introduction 2: Fear, Early and Powerful 3: Anger, Child of Fear 4: Fear-Driven Disgust: The Politics of Exclusion 5: Envy's Empire 6: A Toxic Brew: Sexism And Misogyny 7: Hope, Love, Vision Acknowledgments

About the Author :
Martha C. Nussbaum is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freud Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She also holds associate appointments in classics, divinity, and political science, and is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a board member of the Human Rights Program. Nussbaum is the author of several titles, including The Fragility of Goodness (1986), Sex and Social Justice (1988), Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (2004), Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (2006), Anger and Forgiveness (2016), and Aging Thoughtfully (2018) with Saul Levmore. In 2016, she received the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy.

Review :
Review from previous edition Nussbaum develops her analysis of fear, anger, disgust and envy with a rich array of examples from literature and the law (two longstanding areas of interest for her). And the results are illuminating. ambitious new book ... Nussbaum's fundamental idealism is undiminished by the coarseness of our time. One of the virtues of this slender volume is how gradually and scrupulously it moves, as Nussbaum pushes you to slow down, think harder and revisit your knee-jerk assumptions. A fascinating book ... boy, does Nussbaum write well. It's incredibly readable. New readers get what amounts to a vivid introduction to a lot of [Nussbaum's] recent work ... A manifesto for hope and mutual sympathy is a welcome change from the dystopian tone of much contemporary political commentary. [Nussbaum's] writing over 30 years has done so much to bring human impulses into the realm of political discourse. When she argues that we can reduce social envy by increasing what is constituted as a universal 'right' ... or connects Nelson Mandela's magnanimous treatment of his enemies to his freedom from bodily disgust ... it's clear that she has given more thought to such processes than virtually anyone else alive. Nussbaum is one of the most accomplished political and moral philosophers of our time...there is almost no domain of political and moral life and thought that her work and apparently endless curiosity have not explored. Nussbaum is an elegant and lyrical writer, and she movingly describes the pain of recognizing one's vulnerability... A philosopher considers Trumpism through the lens of history, classical thought, and a bit of Hamilton. Like any clearheaded thinker, Nussbaum was unsettled by Trump's election, but she's troubled also by the way people of all political persuasions have succumbed to fear and mindless fear-slinging. She tries to keep Trump at arm's length and focus instead on what philosophers and psychologists going back to antiquity have had to say about fear...its role in stoking anger, disgust, and envy, and how those emotions in turn perpetuate divisive politics (sexism and misogyny especially). That approach gives this important book both up-to-the-moment relevance and long-view gravitas...An engaging and inviting study of humanity's long-standing fear of the other.