‘Love and Politics: Persistent Human Desires as a Foundation for Liberation’ by Joan Braune reviewed by Joan Braune

Reviewed by Joan Braune

About the reviewer

Joan Braune, Ph.D., is Lecturer in Philosophy at Gonzaga University. She is author and co-editor of …

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Nicholas offers a critique of Alasdair MacIntyre’s philosophy and an expansion of MacIntyre’s “Revolutionary Aristotelianism” to include a critique of alienation from “eros.” In this review, I will discuss each of the three parts of the book, then offer some general comments, including why I feel the book ultimately implies a backwards-looking nostalgia—i.e., a political strategy that primarily relies on return to something lost in the course of capitalist development—despite pushing MacIntyre’s philosophy in an ostensibly more Marxist direction.

In Part I, Nicholas critiques MacIntyre for not engaging the Marx’s concept of alienation sufficiently, and discusses MacIntyre’s three themes of practices, narratives, and traditions. Although MacIntyre rarely uses the word “alienation,” Nicholas suggests that an equivalent can be found in MacIntyre’s critique of “emotivism,” a moral relativism that arises from the separation of facts and values. Because persistent human desires (facts) are not relevant to morality (values) under capitalism’s worldview, our values become separated from us; these ideas are reified and they tyrannize us, and we use them to manipulate each other. Although emotivism seems more like an effect or an aspect of alienation, rather than synonymous with it, Nicholas is surely right that alienation and the severing of the human person from values are connected.

Nicholas then discusses MacIntyre’s “Revolutionary Aristotelianism,” focusing on MacIntyre’s themes of practices, narratives, and traditions, all of which Nicholas agrees can help overcome emotivism/alienation. Practices, like cooking and medicine, foster certain virtues or “internal goods.” Practices are supported but also threatened by institutions (like cooking schools and hospitals). MacIntyre wants a society where humans can more freely engage practices in community and grow in the virtues that practices instill.

Narratives are “quests” for unity in one’s life. Reflecting on one’s life narratively forces one to overcome the compartmentalization of life facilitated by capitalist alienation, such that one might be a prison executioner but also a Christian who opposes killing, according to one of Nicholas’s examples (79).

Traditions are “socially and historically embedded argument[s] over fundamental agreements, especially about the good, with outsiders and insiders” (81). MacIntyre does not see traditions as static but as evolving conversations. By engaging in arguments over the nature of the good, exploring human nature as it changes historically, and resisting commodification, traditions challenge alienation (83).

In Part II, Nicholas stretches MacIntyre’s philosophy in a direction that is more embodied and affective. He addresses three “lacunae” in MacIntyre’s Revolutionary Aristotelianism: (1) the absence of a theory of how human nature is historically malleable; (2) the absence of an analysis of racism and sexism; and (3) the absence of an analysis of alienation from nature. He concludes Part II with a chapter on birthing in hospitals (obstetrics) as an example of alienation from nature.

Nicholas appreciates MacIntyre’s focus on human nature but believes it must be supplemented by Marx’s insights on the historical malleability of human nature. He also believes that MacIntyre is too dismissive of love and sees love as a barrier to reason.

Nicholas then explores the domination of nature, first looking at commercialized fishing and then at the impact of the domination of nature on women. The mass rape of enslaved Black women was the most dramatic example of exploiting and extracting new generations of labor from women. Emerging modern worldviews that saw women and birth as “natural” and the natural as needing to be dominated by “science,” also led to oppression of women.

Hospital births in the United States, Nicholas argues, are alienating to women as well as less safe than home births with midwives. (Not only women give birth. Nicholas is more focused on women giving birth, however, in the context of the domination of woman and nature). Obstetric practice treats pregnancy as an illness and the baby as a commodity. All aspects of the process, including frequently unnecessary C-sections, epidurals, and the lifting of women’s legs into stirrups, are designed to make birth more “efficient” and easier for doctors, yet oppose the natural rhythms of birthing.

Finally, Part III and the Epilogue concern eros as a life-generating force that seeks and produces “new loves and new beauties.” Drawing from Lakhota indigenous philosophy, Nicholas argues that nature is a living being, and that eros is divine, an energy within all things that must be respected.

Nicholas draws from various sources in constructing his definition of Eros. He draws from Plato the idea of eros as “generative,” as well as linking eros to Aristotle’s activity (energeia). However, he insists that a more bodily understanding of eros is needed than provided by Plato or Aristotle: “our thought is necessarily bodily” as well as “passionate and generative” (174). Although Nicholas draws on Herbert Marcuse and Audre Lorde, Nicholas places comparatively little emphasis on pleasure as part of eros’s liberating power; rather, it is eros as love and as generative that feature prominently.

Nicholas links eros and nature, and argues for a worldview that does not separate culture and nature but sees the human person as part of nature and related to nature. He criticizes Judaism and Christianity for advocating “dominion” over nature. Finally, he concludes by returning to midwifery, which he argues conceives nature as active and energetic.

Nicholas’s book is ambitious in scope, drawing from all eras of philosophy and a diversity of thinkers, including non-male and non-white philosophers. This book is a significant development over Nicholas’s first book, which constituted a relatively uncritical defense of MacIntyre. Nicholas’s work has benefited from his increased engagement with Marxism, Critical Theory, feminist theory, and indigenous philosophy.

I have three main critiques.

First, Nicholas’s emphasis on eros in birthing is framed as a feminist argument, but a vision of eros as the human telos and as bodily, life-generating, and close to nature may have unintended consequences for women. According to the book, eros is the power through which nature generates life. Of course, people do more than one thing to create and sustain life – Nicholas also classifies culture as life-generating and erotic. But birthing seems important under this definition, as the first act of human life production. As many women are potential birthers, this might locate women in a place of prime importance in relation to the human telos, but, in connection with the emphasis on the return to an undominated nature, may also recapitulate understandings of women as spiritually connected to nature or maintainers of nature that were more popular among feminists in the 1970s than today.

Secondly, Nicholas sees a return to “practices,” such as midwifery, as challenging capitalism. This reflects what I take to be a problem in MacIntyre (or at least MacIntyre’s later work) that I do not believe Nicholas’s critique sufficiently overcomes. Namely, there is a search here for some morally pure, traditional thing that can lead us out of capitalism, instead of seeing everything under capitalism as containing contradictions, and the clash of those contradictions as the birthplace of revolution. There is no narrative, practice, or tradition that is not impacted by capitalism. We can see this in the case of midwives themselves.

A “natural birth” is a commodity for purchase, just like hospital birth in some countries. Midwives advertise, and in fact a whole “lifestyle” is sometimes marketed alongside delivering babies, from cloth diapers and essential oils to snake-oil products marketed as alternatives to vaccines. Some midwives are now part of the far-right QAnon movement. Far from releasing energies suppressed or dominated by capitalism that could lead to capitalism’s overcoming, these midwives are defending a reactionary politics in the name of what they deem to be more “natural.”

We can see further how commodification enters “practices” in the more extreme case of the “free birthing movement.” Free birthing not only rejects obstetrics but also certified midwives, advocating instead that birth should be a product of the birther alone. Online free-birthing training programs (which are not free) offer to teach people how to assist free births. Not surprisingly, free birthing has led to numerous avoidable deaths (Evans, 2020).

For most of human history, birthing has been social and familial. Friends and family make sure the pregnant person is well cared for and as comfortable as possible, may stand by and say, “Push!” or “You can do it!”, and assist by bringing clean blankets and towels. They support the new parents and care for the infant to give the person giving birth a chance to rest. So-called free birthing ignores the social, interdependent character of birthing. It professes to be “natural” and empowering, but it abstracts birthing from social interdependence, and it too sees infants as products, in this case however as the sole property of the birther, a kind of child-manufacturing entrepreneur.

In short, revitalizing “practices” like midwifery will not overcome capitalist alienation. Practices are always already distorted by alienation and commodification.

Finally, Nicholas misestimates the depth of Marx’s thinking about nature. He finds Marx useful on alienation but less so on the domination of nature. Marx foresees a future in which the division between the natural and the human will be overcome: “Fully developed naturalism is humanism, and fully developed humanism is naturalism.” Marx’s historical materialism sees reality as an ongoing process of human thinking, experiencing, and making. Just as there is no practice untouched by capitalism, human beings only encounter nature through the categories and with the tools bequeathed to them by history.

If human beings are indeed shot through with some love-like, life-embracing force, this expresses itself in history, including in social movements. It is in social movements that we might be more likely to find the life-loving (biophilic, in Erich Fromm’s terms) experience, which may be present in but also surpasses what Marx called our “animal functions” (eating, drinking, and procreating). Marx’s historical vision is teleological (though not in my view determinist). The working class has the potential to become nature and history conscious of itself, i.e., to become a subject. Although Nicholas’s concept of eros involves potential and generativity, it is unclear whether eros is headed anywhere or could evolve or shift, or whether instead it should be recaptured through a return to nature, culture, and practices. (Nature, cultures, and practices do change according to Nicholas, but his narrative seems to be one in which capitalism is more of a fall from grace, without acknowledging dialectically the ways in which capitalism also opens up new possibilities that could lead to its transcendence.).

In conclusion, Nicholas is probably right that MacIntyre needs to talk more about alienation, the malleability of human nature, and the value of love. Nicholas is also right that overcoming the alienation from nature produced by modern capitalism requires engaging a diversity of traditions, including indigenous, feminist, and Black liberationist thought. I am less convinced that Nicholas’s concept of eros serves as a bridge between these two concerns. Conceived as an enduring force in nature by Nicholas, it would seem to follow that eros does not evolve, and thus it seems to be an incomplete expression of the potential change in human nature to which he points. I am even more skeptical about the ability of “practices” under capitalism to play a privileged role in overcoming alienation or opening up new and more liberated expressions of human nature.

 

21 December 2021

References

  • Evans, Robert. 2020 How the Internet Spawned a Baby-Killing Cult Behind the Bastards https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/how-the-internet-spawned-a-baby-killing-59399788/

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