Love and Moral Psychology in Global Politics:
A Kantian Reworking of Rawls and Nussbaum[1]
PÄRTTYLI RINNE·
Academia Kantiana, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal
University, Russian Federation / Aalto University, Finland
Abstract
For
both John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum, the concept of love plays a significant
role in moral psychology. Rawls views the sense of justice as grounded in
parental love, and continuous with love of mankind. Nussbaum’s recent defence
of patriotism revives the emotion of love as essential for political contexts.
I argue that love ought to play a substantial part in the shaping of global
politics, and that a moral psychology of love based merely on a combination of
Rawls’s and Nussbaum’s accounts fails to produce an adequate ground for conceptualizing
moral motivation with respect to addressing transnational concerns of justice.
I contend that by critically synthesizing Rawls’s and Nussbaum’s conceptions of
love and moral psychology with resources from Kant’s ethics, it is possible to
develop a more attractive, and potentially politically effective, conception of
love of human beings in the framework of political liberalism.
Keywords
love,
moral psychology, Rawls, Nussbaum, Kant, political liberalism
Abstrakti
Rakkauden
käsitteellä on tärkeä rooli John Rawlsin ja Martha Nussbaumin
moraalipsykologioissa. Rawlsin mukaan oikeudentunto perustuu
vanhempainrakkauteen ja on samalla jatkumolla ihmiskuntaan kohdistuvan
rakkauden kanssa. Nussbaumin hiljattainen patriotismin puolustus elvyttää
rakkauden tunteen olennaisena poliittisille viitekehyksille. Argumentoin, että
rakkauden pitäisi näytellä merkittävää osaa maailmanpolitiikan hahmottumisessa,
ja että rakkauden moraalipsykologia, joka perustuu yksinomaan Rawlsin ja
Nussbaumin käsitysten yhdistelmään, epäonnistuu tuottamaan tarkoituksenmukaisen
perustan moraalisen motivaation käsitteellistämiseksi suhteessa ylikansallisiin
oikeudenmukaisuuteen liittyviin huoliin. Väitän, että syntetisoimalla
kriittisesti Rawlsin ja Nussbaumin käsityksiä rakkaudesta ja
moraalipsykologiasta Kantin etiikan resurssien kanssa, on mahdollista kehittää
viehättävämpi, ja kenties poliittisesti tehokas käsitys ihmisrakkaudesta
poliittisen liberalismin puitteissa.
Asiasanat
rakkaus,
moraalipsykologia, Rawls, Nussbaum, Kant, poliittinen liberalismi
1.
Introduction
I argue that love ought to play a substantial role in
the shaping of global politics, and that by critically synthesizing certain
moral psychological notions from Rawls, Nussbaum, and Kant, it is possible to
conceptualize a moral psychology for a politically effective love in a global
context.[2] The
resolution of contemporary global problems, such as climate change and rising
income inequality especially in developed countries, requires not only
multi-national, institutional co-operation, and individual understanding and
acknowledgment of responsibility for the direct and indirect consequences of
one’s actions, but also (or so I argue) love
of human beings, understood as an attitude related to a duty of
benevolence, which attitude involves respectful attachment to other human
beings, and active, rational concern for their central capabilities.
For both John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum, the concept
of love plays a significant role in moral psychology. Rawls views the sense of justice
as grounded in parental love, and continuous with the love of mankind.
Nevertheless, Rawls holds that an inclusive love of mankind is ‘supererogatory’
or ‘saintly’, and hence cannot be demanded of individuals let alone of
institutions (Rawls 1971, p. 191f.; pp. 476-479). Nussbaum’s recent defence of
patriotism revives the emotion of love as essential for political contexts. For
Nussbaum, love is the emotion which denotes intense attachments to other
persons, institutions, and ideals. According to her, love is a basic
requirement for being effectively motivated to strive for justice. In her plea
for a more humane and just society, Nussbaum calls for ‘love of one’s country’
to overcome narrow self-interest. (Nussbaum 2013, pp. 14-17)
While freedom and justice form the core value basis
for public institutions in the liberal framework, it appears that love may be
indispensable for enabling the adequate functionality of these
institutions. Following the work of Rawls
and Nussbaum, this paper defends the view that there is an interplay between
the policies of public institutions and the emotional dispositions of citizens
in a given political context, and that relatively intense emotional attachments
to concrete or ideal objects facilitate action with respect to those objects.
In other words, human emotions participate in the shaping of politics, and we
take better care of what we love.
If we think of certain problems within our current era
of escalating globalisation, however, things like the tax-evading schemes of
multinational corporations, say with respect to resource trading in African
countries, or the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the Syrian Civil
War (of whom at least 100000 have been civilians), or the refugees from the
same war drowning in the Mediterranean, the victims of international crime
industries like human trafficking, or the potentially hundreds of millions of
climate refugees/climate immigrants we are anticipating because of unmitigated
global warming - all kinds of existing or emerging capability deprivations or
violations of basic human rights - my question is: is ‘love of one’s country’
really the best moral psychological way to deal with these kinds of issues? If
love is required for there to be sufficient motivation for agents to act out of
concern for others, as Nussbaum holds, then would it not be better to
conceptualize love in more global terms? This might be the case especially if
we want a moral psychology that is efficacious in tackling global problems, the
solution of which does not necessarily serve the short term (economic and
political) interests of our own country. Rawls thinks that the sense of justice
is generally a sufficient source of motivation, whereas Nussbaum argues that if
moral and political edification focuses on using nationalistic representations
to promote altruistic and inclusive sentiments within a nation, this
edification will eventually (or even ‘naturally’) lead to effective concern for
the entitlements of citizens of other nations as well.
In this paper, I argue that a moral psychology of love
based merely on a combination of Rawls’s and Nussbaum’s conceptions of moral
psychology and love, fails to produce an adequate ground for conceptualizing
moral motivation with respect to global or transnational concerns of justice. I
contend that to effectively confront the most pressing global problems of our
time, what humanity needs politically is a more direct rational and emotional
engagement with representations of the planet Earth and of our species as a
whole in terms of love. I argue further that there are resources in Kant’s
ethics and moral psychology for conceptualizing this kind of love of human
beings in an ethico-political context. In particular, I aim to show that Kant’s
notions of ‘universal love of human beings’ [allgemeine Menschenliebe]
and ‘friend of human beings’ [Freund der
Menschen], which are founded on the concept of rationally commanded
benevolence towards others, are fruitful in this respect.[3] I propose that by utilising
these notions, it is possible to conceptualize politically relevant motivation
with a global scope, such that the conceptualisation of the motivation in
question avoids relying on the category of the ‘supererogatory’, is more
universalistic in scope than the politics of love proposed by Nussbaum, and can
be emotionally appealing despite building on a Kantian thought of ‘duty’.
The article is divided into two main parts. In the
first part I explicate more precisely how Rawls and Nussbaum hold the views
that I ascribe to them above, and in the second part I articulate what I call a
‘Kantian reworking’ of Rawls’s and Nussbaum’s conceptions of love. The upshot
is a revised, ethico-political Kantian concept of ‘love of human beings’.
Three caveats are in order. First, the main question
of the article is: What kind of moral psychology, from the perspective of
political liberalism, would be effective in addressing contemporary global
problems understood in terms of various capability deprivations? Within this
article, my aim is not to give any detailed qualification of these problems
themselves, nor do I discuss, or attempt to qualify, the specific empirical
mechanisms or required actions through which these problems could be solved.
Second, I derive certain notions of love from Rawls
and Nussbaum, which reveals my underlying commitment to the doctrine of
political liberalism and the capability approach as Nussbaum has developed it.
Even though I criticize some of these notions of love in order to arrive at a
moral psychological concept of love of human beings, I do not challenge the
basic frameworks, nor do I consider alternative frameworks, where it would be
possible to conceptualize, maybe in a significantly different way, the kind of
love that could be effective in a moral psychology framed in part to answer the
question of how to care about solving transnational problems.
Third, the way I use the term ‘Kantian’ within the
context of this article is rather thin: it merely means an approach which uses
certain propositional or argumentative structures drawn from Kant’s philosophy
- in this case from his ethics. Since my focus is the moral psychology of
citizens within political liberalism, I am not discussing Kant’s own political
philosophy or Rawls’s ealier ‘Kantian constructivism’, nor do I mean to imply
further Kantian commitments beyond what I articulate.
2.
Rawls and Nussbaum on Love and Justice
Taken together, we can summarize Rawls’s and
Nussbaum’s moral psychologies of love through the following five propositions:
1. Love grounds moral psychology (Rawls, Nussbaum).
2. The emotion of love is necessary for one to
effectively care (such that the care guides one’s actions) about justice
(Nussbaum).
3. Love of humankind is as such null or at best
supererogatory (Rawls).
4. Love of humankind cannot provide strong (or
politically relevant) motivation (Nussbaum).
5. Love of one’s country is the proper moral
psychological way to approach global concern (Nussbaum).
In the first section I explicate these propositions by
looking first at Rawls’s understanding of love, and then Nussbaum’s.
2.1 Rawls
In chapter VIII of A
Theory of Justice, Rawls presents a moral psychological account of how an
individual’s sense of justice will develop in a well-ordered society, where
institutions are reasonably just.[4] According to Rawls, the key
moral psychological component for the stability of a reasonably just political
society is the sense of justice, which is ultimately grounded on parental love.[5]
In terms of developmental moral psychology, Rawls sketches a three-stage
account of an individual’s moral development (and of her sense of justice in
particular), such that the sequence proceeds according to the stages Rawls
calls ‘the morality of authority’, ‘the morality of association’, and ‘the
morality of principles’.
In general, Rawls holds that ‘love clearly has among its main elements
the desire to advance the other person’s good as this person’s rational
self-love would require’ (Rawls 1971, p. 190). In the first stage, which
according to Rawls takes place mainly within the family[6],
the parents love the child, and the child learns to reciprocate, not through a
plainly rational process, but initially through instincts and desires: ‘given
that family institutions are just, and that the parents love the child and
manifestly express their love by caring for his good, then the child,
recognizing their evident love of him, comes to love them.’ (Rawls 1971, p.
490) The second stage, ‘the morality of association’, develops as the child
becomes older and enters society, and sees that others are doing their share in
participating in various co-operative endeavours outside the family. After the
early attachments of love, participation in a just social arrangement creates
civic fellow feeling: ‘[the] person
develops ties of friendly feeling and trust toward others in the association as
they with evident intention comply with their duties and obligations, and live
up to the ideals of their station.’ (Rawls 1971, p. 490) In the last stage,
moral desires, or the desire to be fair and to act justly, become motivated by
a person’s attachment to principles and institutions of justice themselves:
[O]nce the attitudes of
love and trust, and of friendly feeling and mutual confidence, have been
generated in accordance with the two preceding psychological laws, then the
recognition that we and those for whom we care are the beneficiaries of an
established and enduring just institution tends to engender in us the
corresponding sense of justice. (Rawls 1971, pp. 473-474)
Clearly, thus, in Rawls’s
moral psychology the sense of justice is grounded on parental love, and
developed through the agent’s gradually evolving recognition of social
reciprocity mechanisms, such that the scope of the agent’s care and concern
gradually expands from loving family relations to social associations
generally, reaching finally a sense of justice motivated by the agent’s
rational-affective attachment to the principles of justice. From the
perspective of love there is, still, however, a fourth ‘step’ in Rawls’s moral
psychology, where love is directed to a ‘plurality of persons’ with a ‘greater
intensity and pervasiveness’ than would be required by the sense of justice
(Rawls 1971, pp. 191-192). This is ‘love of mankind’, and according to Rawls
‘the sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.’ (Rawls 1971, p.
476) What separates the two is that love of mankind advances the common good in
a way that ‘is supererogatory, going beyond the moral requirements and not
invoking the exemptions which the principles of natural duty and obligation
allow.’ (Rawls 1971, p. 476) Rawls states that the morality of love of mankind
is ‘not one for ordinary persons, and its peculiar virtues are those of
benevolence, a heightened sensitivity to the feelings and wants of others, and
a proper humility and unconcern with self.’ (Rawls 1971, pp. 478-479)[7]
As Rawls obviously holds that love of mankind is ‘continuous’ with the sense of
justice, and that therefore love of mankind assumes the principles of justice
(Rawls 1971, p. 191), love of mankind, too, is from a moral psychological
perspective grounded in parental love. Unlike justice, however, love of mankind
is not morally demanded of individuals, and is thus contingent on individual
psychological features.[8]
To understand how exactly
Rawls thinks that love of mankind is supererogatory, it is necessary to
contrast love of mankind with the kind of beneficence that Rawls thinks is not
supererogatory, i.e. the natural duty of ‘mutual aid’. This moral duty, which
according to Rawls would be chosen in the original position, is the duty to
assist those who are in need or under difficult circumstances. Rawls justifies
this principle mainly on the basis that it creates trust and confidence in the
good intentions of others, and that a society where no one cared to help others
‘would express an indifference if not disdain for human beings that would make
a sense of our own worth impossible.’ (Rawls 1971, p. 339) The limits of the
duty of aid express more precisely Rawls’s notion of the supererogatory nature
of love of mankind: ‘For while we
have a natural duty to bring about a great good, say, if we can do so
relatively easily, we are released from this duty when the cost to ourselves is
considerable.’ (Rawls 1971, p. 117; see also p. 438) In the case of protecting
someone from ‘great harm or injury’ the requisite act is a natural duty
‘provided that the sacrifice and hazards to the agent are not very great.’
(Rawls 1971, pp. 438-439) In the Rawlsian picture, love of mankind thus denotes
those moral psychological features of individuals that make them act on the
duty of aid even in the case where acting on the duty cannot be done
‘relatively easily’ or when acting on the duty involves ‘considerable cost’ to
oneself or (in the case of saving someone from great harm or injury) ‘very
great sacrifice and hazards’. If helping others cannot be done relatively
easily, without considerable cost to oneself, or without very great sacrifice
and hazard (in the case of saving someone from great harm), according to Rawls
there is in such cases no binding duty to help others.[9] Even though I find Rawls’s
discussion appealing, I take issue with his moral psychological account of love
of mankind. Before explicating my criticism, however, I wish to broaden our
image of the moral psychology of love in post-Rawlsian liberal theory with the
views provided by Martha Nussbaum.
2.2 Nussbaum
Whereas Rawls’s account of love belongs to a somewhat
idealized model depicting how an individual’s sense of justice would develop in
a just (or ‘well-ordered’) society, Nussbaum emphasizes, that her normative
account of love is addressed specifically to ‘real, imperfect societies that
aspire to justice.’ (Nussbaum 2013a, p. 15) Drawing from, and expanding on Rawls,
Nussbaum holds that ‘all of the core emotions that sustain a decent society
have their roots in, or are forms of, love’ (Nussbaum 2013a, p. 15). According
to Nusbaum’s basic definition, love means ‘intense attachments to things
outside the control of our will’ (Nussbaum 2013a, p.15). More than Rawls, she
emphasizes the motivational aspect of love in effecting the demands of justice.
To do the work of justice, love has to be relatively ‘intense’: ‘the
principle-dependent emotions envisaged by Rawls, if not complemented and
infused by love of this sort, will lie too near the surface of the mind to do
the job he has in mind’ (Nussbaum 2013a, p. 15). What is clearly similar in
Rawls’s and Nussbaum’s conceptions of love is that they both associate love
with a concern for others. Nussbaum further maintains, just like Rawls, that
prosocial ‘[p]ublic emotions are a source of stability for good political
principles, and of motivation to make them effective.’ (Nussbaum 2013a, p. 134)
There is an interplay between political principles, institutions, and the
emotions of individuals. Tax and welfare policies, for instance, embody the
emotion of sympathy, but in a way that is more stable than individual sympathy.
Nussbaum writes: ‘When laws and institutions already embody the insights of
good emotions, they facilitate the experience of those same emotions.’
(Nussbaum 2013a, p. 135)
Whereas for Rawls love is always ‘personal love’ in
the sense that love is directed to persons (be it one’s nearest and dearest or
an undefined plurality of persons, as in the case in ‘love of mankind’), for
Nussbaum the objects of love can be ‘things’[10] more generally, including
especially a general representation of the basic co-operative scheme of one’s
society, i.e. the idea of one’s ‘nation’ or one’s ‘country’. Indeed, in
Nussbaum’s recent discussion concerning the relationship between love,
politics, and justice, the most important notion becomes unabashedly something
Nussbaum calls ‘love of one’s country’ or ‘critical patriotism’. On the other
hand, in contrast to Rawls, there is hardly any notion (supererogatory or not)
of universal love of humankind to be detected in Nussbaum’s book Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for
Justice.[11] This is not to say that Nussbaum would
reject global concern, but it does show the scope of her conception of love as
a moral psychological, motivationally relevant notion.
Nussbaum’s patriotic position is subtle, and obviously
meant to accommodate both local and global concern. In 2011, she emphatically
holds on to a relatively strong notion of a shared, global responsibility: ‘I
argue that the whole world is under a collective obligation to secure the
capabilities to all world citizens, even if there is no worldwide political
organization.’ (Nussbaum 2011a, p. 167) According to Nussbaum, the duties
corresponding to the entitlements of world citizens are to be fulfilled in the
first instance by their own nations, and secondly by richer nations,
multinational corporations, international agencies, non-governmental
organisations, and also by individuals (see Nussbaum 2011a, p. 93, p. 116, p.
167). Clearly, responding to the demands related to the entitlements of world
citizens is a complex, collaborative endeavour involving many kinds of agents,
and requiring various kinds of interaction and co-operation of different agents
on national and international levels.
On the basis of Political
Emotions it seems that the main reason for Nussbaum’s apparent dismissal of
global forms of love is that she thinks that such forms of love are
unrealistic. Drawing in part from 19th century nationalists like
Giuseppe Mazzini, Nussbaum argues that ‘a decent public culture cannot survive
and flourish without’ the cultivation of ‘love of country’ (Nussbaum 2013a, p.
21). Because of de facto egoism and
local loyalties in current societies, ‘unmediated cosmopolitan sympathy’ is too
distant as a goal (Nussbaum 2013a, p. 56). According to Nussbaum the nation is
required as a ‘fulcrum for leveraging global concern’ (Nussbaum 2013a, p. 17).
In thinking of what kind of representations can be effective for inducing
concern for others, Nussbaum asserts that only nationalistic representations
can have motivational power: ‘[A]ny successful construction of political
emotion must draw on the materials of the history and geography of the nation
in question.’ (Nussbaum 2013a, p. 14) According to Nussbaum representations
that appeal to global sentiments cannot motivate sufficiently: ‘It makes no
sense to suppose that strong motivation can be generated by art, music, and
rhetoric that are a common coin of all nations, a sort of Esperanto of the
heart.’ (Nussbaum 2013a, p. 14) Nussbaum’s contention is that nationalistic
love which promotes inclusion and dignity within a particular nation, will
eventually lead to these ideas prevailing within international relationships.
Her examples of how this can happen come especially from Lincoln’s and M.L.
King’s speeches, which appeal to national sentiments and ideals within the
nation, but end on more global notes. In Political
Emotions, Nussbaum’s only statement with respect to a love that goes beyond
the borders of one’s nation relates to King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, where
according to Nussbaum ‘critical patriotism melds naturally into a striving for
global justice and an inclusive human love.’ (Nussbaum 2013a, p. 239) The
implication of all this seems to be that Nussbaum thinks that without a strong
and explicitly stated patriotism, which appeals to the history of a nation, any
notion of meaningful or motivationally adequate global love is hopeless.
I believe these considerations show that Rawls and
Nussbaum do indeed hold the positions concerning love and moral psychology
which I ascribed to them in the beginning of this section. Accepting
propositions 1 and 2, I will now move on to criticize propositions 3-5. Through
my argument, I will offer a Kantian reworking of the moral psychological
framework of love expressed by the propositions.
3.
A Kantian Reworking of Rawls’s and Nussbaum’s Notions of Love of Humankind
My argument will proceed in three steps. In the first
step I argue that if Nussbaum is correct, and an attitude of love is indeed
required in order for one to effectively care for justice (proposition 2), then
conceiving love of humankind as supererogatory in the way Rawls does
(proposition 3), creates significant problems for inducing moral motivation in
transnational cases. In the second step I propose an alternative
conceptualisation of love of humankind as an attitude related to a Kantian duty
of benevolence (and beneficence). This attitude combines rational and affective
elements within the context of a liberal ethico-political moral psychology (I
call this alternative notion ‘love of human beings’). In the third step I
criticize, in the light of recent empirical research, Nussbaum’s ideas
according to which love of humankind cannot provide politically relevant
motivation (proposition 4) and love of one’s country is the proper (and only
feasible) moral psychological way to approach global concern (proposition 5).
Overall, my argument will provide a reworking of Rawls’s and Nussbaum’s
positions with respect to the moral psychological notion of love in a political
context. I am not out to simplistically reject Nussbaum’s notion of ‘patriotic
love’, but rather to supplement it with a new conceptual scheme for ‘love of
human beings’.
3.1 The Problem of Supererogatory Love of Humankind
From the perspective of Nussbaum’s criticism and
elaboration on Rawls’s moral psychology, there are two main problems with the
way Rawls conceives of love of mankind as supererogatory, both of which
problems have to do with the question of moral motivation. First, remember that
Rawls holds that love of mankind is directed to a plurality of persons or the
common good, and that as a moral disposition, love of mankind is ‘not for
ordinary persons’ (Rawls 1971, p. 479). In Rawls’s well-ordered society, the
sense of justice is a sufficient moral motive, and Rawls does not specifically
address the question of motivation concerning real, imperfect societies, or his
international duty of aid. Nussbaum holds that the sense of justice is not a
sufficient motive in real societies, and she argues that the sense of justice
has to be infused with a more affective disposition of love in order to bring
about (stable) justice (see Nussbaum 2013a, p. 15). If Nussbaum is correct here
(as I think she is), then the first problem with Rawls’s conception of love of
mankind is simply this: if love is required for effective moral motivation in
real societies, and love of mankind is not for ordinary persons, then there is
no feasible concept of love in Rawls’s framework, such that could support moral
motivation in cases where justice requires international or transnational
concern. Nussbaum thinks that nationalistic
love is fit for this job, and I take issue with her arguments in the last
section. The second problem with Rawls’s conception of love of mankind as
supererogatory concerns the subjective dimension of how agents interpret what their duty is. Remember
Rawls’s criteria for supererogatory beneficence: a beneficent action is
supererogatory (and thus expressive of Rawlsian love of mankind) if in a case
where it would otherwise be a duty to help others, the requisite action cannot
be undertaken ‘relatively easily’, without a ‘considerable cost to oneself’, or
in the case of saving others from ‘great harm or injury’ without ‘very great
sacrifice and hazard’ to oneself. As Rawls, when it comes to duty, associates
the notion of love (which, following Nussbaum’s argumentation, is the core
motivational concept) with supererogation, in cases where it is unclear whether
or not some action will be conceived as a duty, agents will lack motivation to
perform the action in question. Consider Nussbaum’s demand that richer nations
should give 2% of their GDP to poorer nations as part of the duty to secure
capabilities to all world citizens (Nussbaum 2011a, p. 167). Now assume that
the policy-makers of richer countries have a Rawlsian moral psychology. Persons
who accept the Rawlsian international duty of assistance (see my fn. 9) and
whose moral psychological framework includes the Rawlsian criteria of
supererogation, and who therefore do not consider
themselves duty bound in terms of ‘love of humankind’ (as love of humankind is
not for ordinary persons), will be prone to make the interpretation that giving
2% of their nation’s GDP will be a ‘considerable cost’. Further, to make
feasible a scheme where 2% of the nation’s GDP is internationally redistributed
might well include raising the de facto overall
taxes of the richest fraction of individuals within the nation (or raising
taxes internationally through the co-operation of nations). As according to
Rawls the difference principle does not as such apply to the international
case, the richest fraction will presumably consider any internationally
motivated raise in their taxes a ‘considerable cost’[12], and their objections will
mean that the task for policymakers to implement the raise in taxes may not be
‘relatively easy’.[13] Of
course, in the clearest cases of emergency, say a humanitarian catastrophe,
Rawls’s duty of assistance/aid will prescribe effective actions of beneficence.
But in international cases where the bounds of duty are not so clear (as with
the case of how to secure capabilities to all world citizens), Rawlsian moral
psychology leaves too much space for supererogation, and lacks motivational
efficacy. Especially as according to Rawls the difference principle is not
applicable to the international case, the Rawlsian sense of justice (with its
accompanying duties of ‘mutual aid’ and ‘assistance’) is too far removed from
non-ideal theory concerning the entitlements of world citizens, unless backed
up by a more robust moral psychological notion of an attitude of inclusive
love. As it is plausible to assume that most of humanity (including
policymakers and other people in positions of de facto international power) belongs to the set of ‘ordinary
persons’, what would be required of any politically feasible notion of ‘love of
humankind’ is that the notion could in principle be adopted by ‘ordinary
persons’. In order to avoid the basic problem of supererogation, the notion
should involve or be related to a duty, and for reasons of stability, it should
be connected to fundamental capability entitlements of world citizens (or a set
of human rights or basic goods defined in some other way). This kind of concept
of ‘love of human beings’ will be sketched out on a Kantian basis in the next
section.
3.2 Love as a Duty
I propose to conceive of love of human beings as an
attitude related to a duty of benevolence (and beneficence), which attitude
incorporates affective concern for others and leads to beneficence
corresponding with the capability entitlements of world citizens. I must
emphasize at the outset, that when proposing love of human beings as an
attitude related to a duty, I am not implying the comprehensive doctrine of
cosmopolitanism that Nussbaum rejects, nor am I saying anything (at this point)
about the priority rankings between the duty of love of human beings and other,
more particularistic duties. For the sake of argument, let us assume Nussbaum’s
notion that world citizens’ rights claims related to capability entitlements
are grounded in ‘bare human birth and minimal agency’ (Nussbaum 2011a, p. 63)
or the citizens’ ‘humanity’,[14] and
that the governments of richer nations have a duty to assist poorer nations, if
the poorer nations, by themselves, cannot secure the capabilities to their
citizens (Nussbaum 2011a, pp. 169-170). What I am after here is a notion of
love of human beings, which can be incorporated into the capabilities approach,
and which can provide much needed motivational support for the cases where duty
has to be understood in international terms. I will articulate this notion of
love of human beings using certain conceptual elements and inference structures
drawn from Kant’s moral philosophy, and like I have already emphasized, my
procedure does not imply further commitments to Kant’s moral metaphysics. As will
be made clear below, my notion will in fact be somewhat different from Kant’s.
In The
Metaphysics of Morals Kant argues that there are two ends that are also
duties: one’s own perfection and the happiness of others.[15] The first prescribes the
cultivation of one’s natural faculties and one’s moral will, and the second
prescribes active rational benevolence towards others. Kant calls the duty to
promote the happiness of others the ‘duty of love to other human beings’ (AA 6:
448). It can ‘also be expressed as the duty to make others’ ends my own’ (AA 6: 450). Making others’
ends one’s own should be interpreted such that one strives to help and to facilitate the others’ pursuit of their ends, as their rational self-love would require (given that their ends are
not immoral). The inferences with which Kant justifies the existence of the
duty of love to others are notably simple in their structure, and in my view,
deserve to be highlighted in contemporary discussion concerning the role of
love in conceptualizing moral motivation. First, there is an inference to
justify, in terms of duty, a global attitude of benevolence, which Kant also
calls ‘universal love of human beings’ [allgemeine
Menschenliebe]: ‘I want everyone else to be benevolent toward me […]; hence
I ought also to be benevolent toward everyone else.’ (AA 6: 451) According to
Kant, our maxim of self-love, i.e. the notion that we want to be happy or want
things to go well for ourselves, is plausible only on the condition that the
maxim qualifies as a universal law, which in this case means that the maxim
must be conditioned such that it takes into account the happiness of everyone
(i.e. the happiness of oneself and of others). Should one try to universalise
the rejection of benevolence for others, one would also be denied the
benevolence one wants from others, which would introduce a contradiction in
willing into the maxim of self-love (see AA 5: 34). At bottom, Kant’s basic
inference regarding the duty of benevolence seems to be a variation of the Golden
Rule, and the inference relies on idealized reciprocity conditions that could
in principle appeal to any reasonable person who accepts the Rawlsian sense of
justice, or any variation of the Golden Rule, irrespective of whether or not
they subscribe to the moral metaphysics underlying Kant’s categorical
imperative. For Kant, this inference – ‘I want everyone else to be benevolent
toward me, therefore I ought to be benevolent toward everyone else’ - yields a
thin notion of love of human beings, which benevolent love according to Kant is
‘the greatest in its extent, but the
smallest in its degree’ (AA 6: 451).
At the outset of this broadest case of love for all human beings one’s interest
in the well-being of others is minimal, and it borders on indifference: ‘the
interest I take is as slight as an interest can be.’ (AA 6: 451) In the next
step of Kant’s conception of the duty of love, however, the duty becomes
somewhat more demanding. Kant introduces a distinction between ‘benevolence’
and ‘beneficence’, such that ‘[b]enevolence is satisfaction in the happiness
(well-being) of others; but beneficence is the maxim of making others’
happiness one’s end’ (AA 6: 452). The inference with which Kant justifies the
notion of beneficence as a duty is similar to the inference justifying the
universal duty of benevolence: ‘To be beneficent, that is, to promote according
to one’s means the happiness of others in need, without hoping for something in
return, is everyone’s duty. For everyone who finds himself in need wishes to be
helped by others.’ (AA 6: 453) According to Kant, beneficence toward those in
need is therefore a universal duty of human beings. In sum, Kant’s notion of a
duty of love, which he essentially identifies as ‘practical love’, signifies active, rational benevolence towards others, which leads to beneficence to
others in need.
I think these citations bring out the basic benefits
that Kant’s conception of the duty of practical love has over Rawls’s notion of
love of mankind. Whereas Rawls’s love of mankind is ‘not for ordinary persons’,
Kant’s love of human beings is at bottom a duty of everyone toward everyone,
and as practical love, it is a duty
to help others in need (and to cultivate[16] a benevolent disposition).
Further, as a moral psychological attitude related to the duty of benevolence
(and beneficence), Kantian love of human beings cannot be equated with Rawls’s
duty of mutual aid.[17] Since
a Kantian conceptualisation of the duty to help others yields a conception of
the duty (and the related attitude) in terms of love, the Kantian
conceptualisation is much more promising for a philosophical framework which
thinks of moral motivation and the striving for justice in terms of love, than
a notion according to which global love or love of mankind is ‘not for ordinary
persons’.[18] Note
also that the Kantian inference structures that I have quoted above make no
claim that the duty of love would be somehow more fundamental than some other
duties (for instance the duty to respect the freedom of others, or duties to God
in a religious comprehensive doctrine). I argue merely that by using the
Kantian inference structures, it is possible to conceptualize the existence of
such a thing as the duty of love and the moral psychological attitude of love
of human beings related to the duty.
I should make three further, interrelated remarks.
First, it is not at all clear from the above quotations from Kant, how to
perform the duty of love to others in cases where resources are limited and it
is not possible to be beneficent to everyone in need. How much is one to do,
and how to deal with cases where the duty of love imposes conflicting demands
on the agent? Since what is primarily prescribed in the duty of love are the
maxims of benevolence toward everyone and beneficence toward those in need, the
duty as such leaves the specific means and measures of fulfilling the duty
undetermined. The agent is left with latitude concerning how the maxims are to
be specified. The duty of love of human beings prescribes a minimum amount of
attachment or affectionate love toward all human beings (taking a minimum of
delight in their well-being)[19], and a
sufficiently effective measure to help those in need. The duty of love is not,
however, an impartialist duty in the sense that the agent who harbours love of
humankind would have to denounce all particularistic loyalties, or that there
could not be any affectionate privileging when it comes to the fulfillment of
the duty to help others. The latitude should not be interpreted as a permission
to relinquish the globality of the maxims; love of human beings being a ‘wide
duty’ merely allows one to limit the global maxims with a certain amount of
more local affectionate concerns. In Kant’s own words: ‘[A] wide duty is not to
be taken as permission to make exceptions to the maxim of actions but only as
permission to limit one maxim of duty by another (e.g. love of one’s neighbor
in general by love of one’s parents)’. (AA 6: 390)[20] In this way, the Kantian
duty of love of human beings does not invoke supererogation, and it clearly
cannot be thought in terms of a strong, impartialist cosmopolitanism, where a
required loyalty to ‘all humanity’ would always trump other duties, and which
cosmopolitanism would leave no room for local allegiances. Therefore, the Kantian
duty of love cannot be identified with the kind of cosmopolitanism which
Nussbaum (e.g. 2008) rejects.
Second, Kant himself thinks of the duty of love as an
‘imperfect duty’ or a ‘duty of virtue’. Besides leaving latitude as to how the
maxims related to the duty are to be specified and what actions taken, Kant’s
concept of a ‘duty of virtue’ involves the notion that there is, strictly
speaking, no right on the part of the other, to which the duty would
correspond: ‘Fulfillment of them [imperfect duties, duties of virtue] is merit […] = +a; but failure to fulfill
them is not in itself culpability […]
= -a, but rather mere deficiency in moral worth = 0’. (AA 6: 390) In
other words, while the duty of love imposes demands on the agent, most
importantly the demand to set for oneself the end of the happiness of others,
in Kant’s own conception of the duty there is no corresponding entitlement on
the part of the recipient, and fulfilling the duty places the recipient in a
state of moral debt. According to
Kant, the cultivation of virtue means, that in her disposition or frame of
mind, the agent brings the wide duties closer to strict duties of right. This
means that even though for Kant, the recipient of beneficence is not entitled
to the help as a matter of right, the agent cultivates virtue by representing
the situation to herself in such a way that there is a right claim (or
something like a right claim) involved (see AA 6: 390; 6: 453; cf. 27: 416).
This is not the way I conceive of the duty of love in
the context of this article. Following Nussbaum in the way she conceptualizes
global entitlements, I propose the duty of love to be understood as
corresponding to the entitlements of world citizens. A basic problem in the
global, or international case is that there is an asymmetry between the
capabilities conceived as global rights (or human rights), and the fact that
there is no single political organisation or legal apparatus that could enforce
these rights. I therefore contend that the duty of love binds all minimally
competent agents, who are able to comprehend the basic content of the duty: to
harbour at least minimal benevelonce for all, and to help those in need (i.e.
at least those who lack central capabilities). From this perspective, the duty
of love can be understood as a moral psychological vehicle, which may (through
its prescribed attitude of love of human beings) induce motivation for
responding effectively to capability entitlements, also in cases where it is
not simple to identify a particular agent who obviously has the duty that
corresponds with the entitlement in question.
Thirdly, what I do accept from Kant, is the normative
notion of moral (psychological) progress. The duty of love should be understood
as closely connected to the notion of being a ‘friend of human beings’ [Freund der Menschen]. A friend of human
beings is first of all ‘one who takes an affective interest in the well-being
of all human beings (rejoices with them) and will never disturb it without
heartfelt regret.’ (AA 6: 472; see also 27: 430) This interest amounts to
adopting the duty of benevolence, but Kant adds the further condition that in
its proper meaning, being a friend of human beings includes ‘thought and
consideration for the equality among
them, and hence the idea that in putting others under obligation by his
beneficence he is himself under obligation’ (AA 6: 473).[21] In the Vigilantius lecture
notes on ethics (from 1794), Kant warns, in a tone reminiscent of Nussbaum’s
critical discussion of cosmopolitanism (see e.g. Nussbaum 2008), about the
risks involved in being a friend of human beings. Obviously, sectarian
loyalties are prone to cause one to close one’s heart toward outsiders, and to
detach oneself from an allegiance to the generality of humankind. But, according
to Kant, ‘the friend to all humanity, on the other hand, seems equally open to
censure, since he cannot fail to dissipate his inclination through its
excessive generality, and quite loses any adherence to individual persons, so
that only love of country seems to figure as the end in view, though there is
no denying that the great value of human love rests in the general love of
humanity as such.’ (AA 27: 673) I take it that this kind of position could be
compatible with Nussbaum’s view. As the unpublished Vigilantius lecture notes
predate The Metaphysics of Morals
(1797), however, we must take it that Kant’s considered official position
clearly affirms the global notion of a ‘friend of human beings’, but as the
lecture notes testify, Kant does not reject patriotism as such. In harmony with
Kant and Nussbaum, a rejection of patriotism is not my aim either. The notion
of being a friend of human beings adds to the duty of love (and the attitude of
love of human beings) the requirement to acknowledge and respect the
fundamental equality of human beings. What I have done with respect to Rawls’s
and Nussbaum’s conceptions of love, is that I have formulated an arguably
better developed moral psychological notion of love of human beings (using
resources from Kant), according to which love
of human beings is a rational-affective attitude of concern for other human
beings, as related to a duty of love which corresponds to capability
entitlements of world citizens (without succumbing to strong impartialist
cosmopolitanism).
3.3 The Question of Motivation
In the last section I argue that the kind of love of
human beings sketched out above is a better basis for conceptualizing
transnational moral motivation than the patriotic love favored by Nussbaum. If
love is required for adequate motivation to care about justice, then for
solving problems which require concern beyond one’s own nation, it would be
better to have a concept of love, which reaches beyond one’s own nation. Now
remember Nussbaum’s positions according to which love of humankind cannot
provide strong (or politically relevant) motivation, and that love of one’s
country is the proper moral psychological way to approach global concern.
Even if one accepts my basic conceptual reworking of
Rawls’s and Nussbaum’s conceptions of love of humankind, there is still,
however, the question of whether the thin framework of the duty of love of
human beings can have motivational power. How could weak universal love be
intensified to effectively respond to global problems or to meet global
capability demands? The question of motivation is not merely conceptual, and
goes beyond the Rawlsian notion of moral psychology. What I wish to point out
in this final section is that Nussbaum’s dismissal of motivationally adequate
global love in favor of patriotic love is in fact a problematic stipulation
related to her patriotic position. As empirical plausibility is essential for
Nussbaum’s philosophical position and
argument on the moral psychology of patriotic love, I am warranted in holding
that the philosophical discussion concerning real moral motivation related to
the conceptual devices of moral psychology should be informed by empirical
science. There is some scientific evidence that active global concern can be
motivated by non-nationalistic representations (Faulkner 2017a; see also
Bruneau et al. 2015; Cameron 2017), and some evidence that increased in-group
empathy actually predicts reduced altruism and increased hostility towards
out-groups (Bruneau et al. 2017).
Nussbaum is correct that there is no global culture
which could be appealed to when creating, for instance, art, music and rhetoric
to induce political emotions. She is also correct that in the contemporary
world, to work effectively, mechanisms of global justice require people to be
at least somewhat attached to institutional frameworks within their own
nations. It does not follow from these considerations, however, that there
could be no motivationally effective representational vehicles of global
concern, that do not primarily appeal to patriotic feelings.
In what is one of the very few empirical studies on
this topic, Nicholas Faulkner showed that if American participants who read an
article about a child-labourer in an Ethiopian sweat-shop, were also asked to
imagine how the child feels and how his life must be like, they were
significantly more willing to do voluntary work for an organisation that aims
to end child-labour, than participants who were not asked to take the child’s
perspective (Faulkner 2017a).[22] The study indicates that empathy can operate
irrespective of nationalism or patriotic love, and that information on global
injustice, coupled with empathy, can induce transnational moral motivation. It
is thus possible to conceive of representational mechanisms that do not make
reference to patriotic love or the history of one’s own country but
nevertheless have a motivationally positive effect. True, these kinds of
emotions can be fleeting, but I see no principled obstacle why they could not
be stabilized with education and sustained representational strategies that
emphasize justice and a minimum of love towards all human beings.
To give another kind of example, we also know from the
case of space travel, that when astronauts see the planet Earth from space,
they experience great awe, a dissolution of national boundaries and a strong,
particularistic sense of care for the whole planet. They see the pale-blue
Earth alone in the vast darkness, with a paper-thin atmosphere protecting it,
and they feel that the planet and the life that it contains are fragile and
need active care and support. Some report being filled with compassion and love
for all humanity. (Yaden et al. 2016, p. 3) When the astronauts return to
Earth, they may become environmentalists or peace activists. The psychologists
call this experience ‘the overview effect’ (see White 1987;[23] see also e.g. Yaden et al.
2016). The overview effect clearly shows that it is possible to be strongly
motivated by non-nationalistic representations - and one does not have to go
all the way to space to get a sense of the overview effect. One may arrive at
an emotionally aware understanding of the motivational power of the overview
effect by merely representing it in speech based on the reports of others, and
by one’s own sense of what the planet Earth looks like from outer space. I see
no reason why these kinds of representations could not be used as vehicles for
supporting and strengthening motivation in a philosophical and educational
discourse on global, political love, for instance together with factual
information on global injustices and emotive narratives of individuals affected
by injustice or the lack of central capabilities. In the sphere of rhetoric and
art, someone who is not motivated by the nationalistic speeches of Lincoln,
which Nussbaum favours, might well find inspiration in, say, John Lennon’s
non-nationalistic vision, which by means of popular music calls us to ‘imagine
all the people sharing all the world’, thus expressing an ideal of inclusive
love without patriotism. For both the conceptual reasons discussed previously,
and the kinds of empirical reasons mentioned above, it appears reasonable to
think that the patriotic love endorsed by Nussbaum is by no means a necessary
foundation for active global concern.
Further, there
is recent scientific evidence according to which increased in-group empathy
predicts reduced altruism and increased hostility towards outgroups (Bruneau et
al. 2017). In a series of three experiments, U.S. citizens regarding Arabs, Hungarians
regarding refugees, and Greeks regarding Germans, Bruneau et al. showed that
more nationalistic (or ‘parochial’) empathy[24] corresponds with reduced
out-group helping behaviour, increased support for anti-immigrant and
anti-refugee policies, and endorsement of passive harm for out-groups.
Increased out-group empathy has the opposite effect. Even if inconclusive,
these results strongly suggest that in order to promote out-group helping
behaviour and reduce the gap between in-group and out-group empathy, it would
be better not to increase love of one’s country or even overall empathy, but
rather to focus on increasing out-group empathy and social identification with
out-groups. Nussbaum’s assumption according to which ‘critical patriotism melds
naturally into a striving for global justice and an inclusive human love’
(Nussbaum 2013a, p. 239) appears problematic in the light of empirical
research. More research is still needed to form a scientific picture of how
transnational moral motivation works from an empirical moral psychological
perspective.
Even though we are naturally more prone to in-group
than out-group empathy (Cikara et al. 2014; see Cameron 2017), based on what we
currently know about human psychology, it makes sense to try out motivational
strategies that do not rely on nationalistic sentiments. As Nussbaum has argued
so well, stories, music, theatre, and other kinds of emotional messaging are
required to create communal political love (Nussbaum 2013a; see also Cameron
2017). Unlike Nussbaum claims, however, this love does not necessarily have to
be nationalistic. Narratives that highlight the personalities, hopes, thoughts,
and dreams of individual out-group members can be particularly effective in
mitigating parochial empathy (Bruneau et al. 2015) and increasing out-group
empathy (Faulkner 2017a). An improved understanding of empirical empathy
mechanisms will certainly be beneficial for the moral psychology of love of
human beings. If we think from the perspective of transnational concern, even
though emotional messaging will vary according to culture or audience, it is
plausible to assume that non-nationalistic messages of political love can be
created, and that these messages can provide support for an attitude of love of
human beings as related to a duty of love, which demands that one ought to
strive to secure the central capabilities for all world citizens. The aim of
this paper has been merely to conceptualise such an attitude of love of human
beings using Kantian resourses in the moral psychological framework of
political liberalism (as exemplified by Rawls and Nussbaum).
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