ROBERT J. ZIMMER: Well,
it's a great pleasure
to welcome all of you
here, this afternoon,
for a wonderful tradition at
the University of Chicago--
the annual Nora and
Edward Ryerson Lecture.
There are many lecture
series at the University.
This lecture is made
possible by a request
from trustee Edward L. Ryerson
Jr. And it's very unusual.
It's unusual in the
sense that the lecturer
is selected by a faculty
committee of the university
based on the nominations
from faculty colleagues
from across the
entire university.
Being chosen as a
speaker for this series
is quite a remarkable statement.
First of all, the faculty
of the University of Chicago
is comprised of so many persons
doing such remarkable work
across a broad spectrum
of intellectual pursuits,
that being singled
out inevitably
testifies to the extraordinary
importance of the speaker's
work.
But beyond their broad-based
and deep achievements,
the faculty of the
University of Chicago
are a group of unrelenting
standards and uncompromising
judgment.
Thus, the Ryerson
lecturer reflects
the highest aspirations
and standards
of the community of scholars
of the University of Chicago.
This year's Ryerson
lecture, as you know,
is Professor Martha Nussbaum--
the Ernst Freund Distinguished
Service Professor
of Law and Ethics.
Martha is a 1969 graduate
of New York University.
Then she received
her PhD in 1975
from Harvard University-- an
unusually good year for PhDs
from Harvard
University, I will say.
Before coming to the
University of Chicago,
she served on the faculty of
Harvard University and Brown
University, held a position
as research advisor
to the World Institute for
Development Economics Research
in Helsinki, and was
a visiting faculty
member at many universities,
including Oxford and Stanford.
Now, Martha is both
an extraordinarily
original and energetic scholar,
and presence in the academy,
and public intellectual in
the highest and best sense.
The breadth of her
work, and the scope
of her intellectual
engagement are remarkable.
From ancient Greek
and Roman philosophy,
to modern moral and
political philosophy,
from issues of feminism
around the world,
to matters of human
development in the context
of economic and
political development,
and global justice,
Martha always
brings a fresh, challenging and
highly influential approach.
The breadth of her work is
reflected in her appointment
within the University
of Chicago.
She's a faculty member with
either a full or associated
membership in the law school,
the Department of Philosophy,
the Department of
Classics, the Department
of Political Science,
the Divinity School,
the Committee on Southern
Asian studies, and the college.
From the founding
of the university,
William Rainey Harper, followed
by many persons over the years,
and many of us at
the University today,
spoke of the wholeness of the
university, of it being one.
And there's no
person who embodies
this ideal, and this quality
of the University of Chicago,
more than Martha Nussbaum.
Martha has been a
prolific writer,
publishing a long list of
books, essays, and articles
that have simultaneously
gathered great recognition
in the Academy, and have
captured the public attention
by bringing imagination
and academic rigor
to a set of issues that
resonate powerfully within,
and beyond, the academy.
Her books include The
Fragility of Goodness,
The Theory of Desire,
Cultivating Humanity, Sex
and Social Justice, Hiding from
Humanity, and numerous more.
Her most recent book is
Liberty of Conscience--
In Defense of America's
Tradition of Religious
Equality, which will connect to
the topic of her lecture today.
Her books have won a wide array
of awards, which I won't list.
She's been a leader in numerous
scholarly and international
organizations.
She's been awarded 32
honorary degrees by university
and colleges around the world.
As you can gather from this
very abbreviated description,
Martha is a unique phenomenon.
Those who know
her appreciate how
the energy behind all her
very visible accomplishments
is reflected in the energy
that she brings to engagement
and discourse with
colleagues and students,
and her commitment to the ideal
of the University of Chicago.
It is therefore most
fitting that the faculty
of the university have chosen
Martha Nussbaum as a reflection
of their highest aspirations,
and to follow others before her
as she presents the
2008 Ryerson lecture.
Her topic today is Equal
Respect for Conscience--
The Roots of a Moral
and Legal Tradition.
So it is both my great pleasure,
as a president and personally,
to present you the 2008 Ryerson
lecturer, Martha Nussbaum.
Thank you very much, Bob.
And I want to thank
everyone who invited
me to give this lectureship.
It's a great honor to do it.
And so, I'm looking forward
to hearing from all of you
in the question period.
I'm going to focus on the
part of this project of mine
that's about Roger Williams.
And I'll tell you
something about why when I
get to that point.
So I want to start
by setting the stage
by reading you two short
quotations from Roger Williams.
The first is from the opening
of his great book, The Bloody
Tenent of Persecution,
published in 1644.
Sixthly, it is the will
and command of God,
that since the
coming of His son,
the Lord Jesus, a permission
of the most paganish, Jewish,
Turkish, or anti-Christian
consciences and worships,
be granted to all men, in
all nations and countries.
The second is from
a letter he wrote,
toward the end of
his life in 1670,
to the governors of
Massachusetts and Connecticut--
who, unlike Rhode Island, had
official, established churches.
He says, yourselves pretend
liberty of conscience,
but alas, it is but
self, the great God self,
only to yourselves.
Life was tough for the settlers
of 17th-century New England.
They responded to
hardship by trying
to gain God's favor for their
colonies, which required,
as they saw it, establishing
and sternly enforcing
a religious orthodoxy.
By punishing or banishing those
who disobeyed in word or deed,
they hoped to cast impurity
from their common life.
The idea that a
good community would
be one that allowed all people
to seek God in their own way
took root only gradually,
and with great struggle.
So this lecture
traces that struggle,
focusing on the life and
ideas of Roger Williams,
founder of the colony
of Rhode Island,
and seminal philosophical
thinker about religious liberty
and fairness, whose ideas
shaped our ethical and legal
traditions.
Three aspects of Williams's
thought deserve our attention.
First, he develops a
distinctive and highly emotional
view of conscience as a seat
of emotion, imagination,
and ethical choice, through
which each person seeks
meaning in his or her own way.
Conscience is the
source of our equality,
and it is worthy of equal
respect, wherever it is found.
Political principles,
he argues, must
be based on that equal respect.
Second, he argues that
equal respect for conscience
entails protecting an
extensive sphere of freedom
around the individual,
And. that this protection
must be impartial,
imposing no orthodoxy.
To impose orthodoxy upon
the striving conscience
is nothing less
than what Williams,
in a memorable and repeated
image, calls soul rape.
Third, Williams then argues
that a civil peace among people
who differ in religion
requires a moral consensus that
is, itself, impartial, giving
the ascendancy to no creed more
than any other.
Such a consensus is
available because there
is a part of the
moral sphere that we
can share, while differing in
ultimate religious commitments.
Williams dramatizes this
idea, from the start,
by making his major work a
dialogue between two friends
called truth and peace, in
which truth acknowledges
the importance of reaching an
accommodation that's ethically
grounded for political
purposes, with people whom
one believes to be in error.
I've chosen to focus
on Roger Williams
today, both because his
ideas played a formative role
in our ethical and
legal traditions,
and also because I believe
them to be of great importance
to contemplate today, as
we face related problems
of religious tension,
both in our own nation
and in the larger
world around us.
If we think through
his ideas, we
learn not only where
we have come from,
but also something
about where we might go.
Throughout my
career, I've turned
to major texts in the history
of philosophy in this way--
both as sources of
illumination about history,
and often, at least, as sources
of ethical and political
illumination.
When we wrestle with
difficult problems,
we need conversation partners
who are complex and deep.
Wrestling with
ideas from the past
is often more
fruitful, in that way,
than reading journal
articles written yesterday.
This lecture is
atypical of me only
in that most of
the conversations
that inform my work and
political philosophy
have been with ancient
Greek and Roman texts.
Such ancient ideas, however,
will end up playing a role,
here, since stoicism was a
major source for Williams,
who began his career as a
budding classical scholar.
So section 1 is called
This Wild and Howling Land.
That's a quote from
a Williams letter.
Life in New England was
fragile and exposed.
The wind, the seas, the forests,
the deep snows, all of this
was very strange to
people accustomed to life
in England, whether
urban or rural.
But oh poor dust
and ashes, Williams
wrote of himself
and his fellows,
like stones once
rolling down the Alps,
like the Indian canoes,
or English boats,
loose and adrift.
Where stop we, until
infinite mercy stop us?
In his remarkable book, Key
Into the Language of America,
a study of Native American
life and languages,
Williams ponders
the Indians' ability
to co-exist with impermanence
and constant vulnerability
in what he calls this
wild and howling land.
Astonishingly, he
says, the Indians
don't mind picking up and
moving on to a new place,
whenever climate, or insects,
or inclination moves them.
Quote, I once, in travel,
lodged at a house,
at which, in my return,
I hope to have lodged
again there the next night.
But the house was
gone in that interim.
And I was glad to
lodge under a tree.
The Europeans of
Massachusetts reacted
to insecurity by enforcing
orthodoxy of religious belief
and practice.
John Cotton, pastor of the
first church of Boston--
one of Massachusetts' most
influential religious leaders,
and Roger Williams' lifelong
intellectual adversary--
wrote copiously in defense
of religious persecution,
arguing that it was
necessary for civil order.
It was also God's
will, he said, in order
to separate the diseased
element of society
from the healthy element.
Heretics and dissidents are
like Satan in our midst.
Even if they behave peaceably,
they are enticements to sin.
He urged imprisonment,
banishment,
and other harsh penalties
for the unorthodox.
Such reactions to
insecurity are sadly
familiar in America's history.
In situations of uncertainty,
we're all too ready
to project the causes of
instability onto other people,
grabbing hold of John
Cotton's seductive
metaphor of a stain in our
midst that must be removed
if we are to resist corruption.
What makes Roger Williams
of particular interest today
is not just the high quality
of his philosophical work.
It's also the way
in which he offers
an attractive alternative
to the paranoid response
to insecurity, urging on his
readers' attitudes of mercy,
gentleness, reasonableness,
and civility--
words, all of which, recur
with obsessive frequency
throughout the two great
philosophical treatises
that are his major works.
Second section,
Williams' Rhode Island.
So my aim, here, is to
study Williams's ideas.
But since he was a political
leader, as well as a thinker,
his work must be assessed in
the context of his career.
Williams was born
in England and 1603
to a prosperous merchant family.
He grew up in London near
the Smithfield Plain,
where religious dissenters were
sometimes burned at the stake.
As a young man, he
attracted the attention
of the eminent jurist
Lord Cook, Chief Justice
of the King's bench.
Cook then arranged for
the young man's education
at Sutton's Hospital, the
future Charterhouse school,
and then, after that,
at Pembroke College
in Cambridge University,
where Williams received
his AB in 1627, after a
classical education that
focused on natural
law theories based
on ancient Greek and
Roman stoicism, which
suffuse Cook's work, and which
were much in vogue at the time.
Williams quickly impressed
by his remarkable flair
for languages, mastering
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French
and Dutch.
In fact, it was in this way
that he made John Milton's
friendship, teaching
Milton Dutch in return
for receiving Hebrew
lessons from Milton.
On graduation,
Williams took orders
in the Church of England.
And in 1629, he accepted
a chaplaincy at Otes
in Essex, the manor house of
Sir William Masham, grandfather
of the Sir Francis Masham who
was Locke's patron at Otes
in the 1690s.
In 1630, a leading
Puritan reformer
was placed in the pillory.
One of his ears was cut off.
One side of his nose was split,
and he was branded on the face
with the letters "SS,"
meaning sower of sedition.
Later, the other side
of his nose was split,
and his other ear was cut off.
And for good measure,
the man was then
imprisoned for the
rest of his life.
Williams, who
witnessed these events,
and who was already very
critical of the Anglican
establishment, decided that he
could not remain in England,
and he set sail
for North America.
At first, Williams was warmly
welcomed by the leaders
of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Although Boston found his ideas
about the individual conscience
too radical, he was welcomed
by the congregation at Salem.
But he soon published a pamphlet
attacking the colonists' claims
to the Indians' property.
He wrote sarcastically,
and he added
a comment, quote, "Christian
kings, so-called, are invested
with right, by virtue
of their Christianity,
to take and give away the lands
and countries of other men,"
unquote.
The officials of Massachusetts
Bay then hauled him into court,
but took no action
when Williams agreed
to withdraw the pamphlet.
He continued, however,
to teach, orally,
the falsity of the
colonists' property claim.
He also urged resistance
to a proposed loyalty oath
to be taken by all colonists.
During this period, Williams
spent some peaceful months
at Plymouth, where he pursued
his study of Indian life
and languages.
By 1635 and 1636,
the authorities
saw that Williams was
bent on continuing
his divisive teaching.
They ordered his arrest.
Tipped off in advance, he fled.
Looking back on the incident
from Providence in 1670,
he describes it this way.
"I was unkindly, and
un-Christianly, as I believe,
driven from my house and
land, and wife and children,
in the midst of
New England winter,
now, about 35 years past.
I steered my course
from Salem, though,
in winter snow,
which I feel yet,
until these parts, wherein
I may say, as Jacob Peniel.
That is, I have seen
the face of God."
In keeping with his
sense of deliverance,
Williams called the newfound
settlement Providence.
A key part of the new settlement
was respectful friendship
with the Indians.
Williams had always treated
them like human beings--
not beasts or devils.
He respected their dignity.
When the great Narragansett
chief, Canonicus
who spoke no English,
broke a stick 10 times
to demonstrate 10 instances
of broken English promises,
Williams understood his
meaning, and took his side.
When the colonists then objected
that the Indians couldn't
own land, because
they were nomadic,
Williams described their regular
seasonal hunting practices,
arguing that these practices
were sufficient to establish
a property claim--
a legal argument that
strikingly anticipates
very recent litigation
over aboriginal land claims
in Australia.
Linguist that he was, he
reports having at this period,
quote, "A constant,
zealous desire to dive
into the native's
language," unquote.
And he learned several
of the languages
by actually living
with the Indians
for long periods of time.
When Williams arrived
later as a refugee, then,
his dealings with
the Indians had long
prepared the way for a
fruitful relationship.
Chiefs Massasoit and
Canonicus welcomed him
like an old friend, because
he had befriended them
before he needed them,
and he continued to do so.
One of the key provisions of
the charter of Rhode Island
was, quote, "It shall
not be lawful to,
or for, the rest of the
colonies to invade or molest
the native Indians," a provision
that Williams, particularly,
sought from the crown, and
when granted, applauded,
noting that hostility
to the Indians,
quote, "Hath hitherto
been practiced
to our continual and very great
grievance and disturbance,"
unquote.
Throughout his life, Williams
continued these friendships.
As he wrote to the
governor of Massachusetts,
explaining his refusal
to return, quote,
"I feel safer down here,
among the Christian savages
along Narragansett Bay, than I
do among the savage Christians
of Massachusetts Bay."
Now, Williams wasn't
talking about conversion.
He, in fact, never tried
to convert the Indians.
He was talking
about moral decency.
He's fond of noting examples
of Indian decency and honesty,
contrasting their behavior with
that of his white neighbors.
This experience of finding
integrity and goodness
outside the parameters
of orthodoxy,
surely shaped his evolving
views of political principles.
And there was already
something antinomian
about Williams, something that
led him to those friendships
in the first place--
a respectful curiosity about
the varieties of humanity
that's the paradigm of something
valuable in our history,
as a nation of strangers
and immigrants,
though that value is
now under great stress.
Williams immediately provided
for religious liberty
in the new colony.
Rhode Island soon became
a haven for people
who were in trouble elsewhere.
Baptists, Quakers,
and other dissidents
soon joined the
Puritan dissenters.
In 1658, 15 Portuguese Jewish
families arrived in Newport.
They enjoyed the same religious
liberty granted others--
an astonishing fact,
given that Jews in Britain
gained full civil
rights only in 1858.
In 1643, Williams
set sail for England
to secure a charter
for the new colony.
During the sea voyage, he wrote
his book about Indian language.
And while in England,
he wrote The Bloody
Tenent of Persecution.
A democratic charter
was obtained,
and liberty of
conscience made official.
In 1652, Rhode Island
passed the first law
in North America
making slavery illegal.
Meanwhile, John Cotton's angry
reply to The Bloody Tenent,
published in 1647, led Williams
to produce another work,
about 100 pages longer
than the first one--
which was already
about 400 pages long--
refuting all of
Cotton's arguments.
Published in 1652
in London, it bears
the unwieldy title
The Bloody Tenent
yet More Bloody-- by
Mr. Cotton's endeavor
to wash it white in
the blood of the Lamb,
of whose precious blood, spilt
in the blood of his servants,
and of the blood of millions
spilt in former and later wars
for conscience's sake, that most
bloody tenant of persecution
for cause of conscience,
upon a second trial,
is now found more apparently,
and more notoriously, guilty.
It's really there.
The civil wars and
the restoration
made it necessary to
renegotiate the charter,
and Williams again
went to England,
and found in Charles II a
ready ally for his experiment
in religious liberty.
The Barbados had already
permitted religious liberty,
but by omission and
policy, rather than
by explicit written guarantee.
Rhode Island, however,
was the first case
of an official written
policy of religious liberty,
and Williams writes
with amusement
of how shocked the King's
ministers were by the charter.
But quote, "Fearing
the lions roaring,
they couched against
their wills in obedience
to his Majesty's
pleasure," end quote.
The charter was
shocking, indeed,
not only in its odd provision
regarding the Indians,
but above all in its clause
regarding religious liberty,
which goes like this--
no person within the
said colony, at any time
hereafter, shall
be, in any wise,
molested, punished,
disquieted, or called
in question for any
differences in opinion
in matters of religion,
and do not actually
disturb the Civil
Peace of said colony.
But that all and every
person and persons,
may from time to
time, and at all times
hereafter, freely and
fully have and enjoy his
and their own judgments
and consciences in matters
of religious concernments,
throughout the tract
of land hereafter mentioned.
They behaving themselves
peaceably and gently,
not using this liberty to
licentiousness or profaneness,
nor to the civil injury or
outward disturbance of others.
Any law, statute, or
clause therein contained,
or to be contained, usage,
or custom of this realm,
to the contrary hereof, in
any wise notwithstanding.
OK.
So what does the clause protect?
Belief in the expression of
opinion in religious matters,
clearly.
But Williams,
throughout his writings,
was very careful to insist
that acts of worship
should also enjoy protection.
In fact, in his own
writings, we rarely
encounter the word belief
without also finding
the word worship or practice.
He introduces The Bloody
Tenent with the announcement
that consciences and worships
are all to be permitted.
Elsewhere, he uses phrases
such as, "For either
professing doctrine or
practicing worship, doctrine
or practice, holdeth or
practiceth," and so on.
It's a bit unfortunate that
the charter is less precise.
But we can understand the
latitude of its protection,
from the other
direction, as stopping
where civil disturbance begins.
Williams was no
John Stuart Mill.
He thought that the
business of civil government
included not only protection
of individuals from harm
to their rights by
others, but also
the maintenance of public
order and public morality.
Thus, like virtually
everyone at the time,
he favored laws
against adultery,
and other so-called
morals laws--
not, however, on
religious grounds.
His idea of public morality
keeps it, deliberately,
quite distinct from religious
norms and justifications.
The final provision in the
charter is very interesting.
The charter guarantees
liberty of religious belief
and practice, even when a
law or custom forbids it.
In other words, if
law says that you
have to swear an oath before
God to hold public office,
this law is nullified
by the charter.
Moreover, it appears that
the charter nullifies
the applicability of
laws to individuals,
when such laws threaten
their religious liberty.
If a law says that people
have to testify on Saturday,
and your religion forbids
this, then that law
is non-applicable in your case.
In other words, it would
appear that Williams
has forged the legal
concept of accommodation
on grounds of conscience.
Laws of general applicability
have force only up
to the point where they
threaten religious liberty,
and public order and
safety are not at stake.
This policy was stated
explicitly by Williams
in a later letter, comparing
the colony to a ship
at sea, on which
Christians, Jews, pagans,
and Muslims have all embarked.
He says that the
captain of that ship
is entitled to require
anything that's
connected to the ship's safety
and that of its passengers.
But otherwise, there is
to be the widest possible
religious liberty, alike
for all passengers.
Next section-- this conscience
is found in all mankind--
Williams's defense
of religious liberty.
Behind this important
political achievement
is a body of thought as
rich on these issues as that
of John Locke, and
considerably more
perceptive concerning
the psychology
of both persecutor and victim.
At its heart is an
idea or image on which
Williams focused with deep
emotion and obsessional zeal--
the idea of the
preciousness and dignity
of the individual
human conscience.
Conscience, for
Williams, plays role
that the directive
faculty of moral choice
played in the ancient stoic
authors whom he studied.
It is, basically, a faculty
of searching and choosing.
Although, for
Williams, it includes
imagination and emotion, as
well as ethical reasoning.
It is, Williams holds, the
main source of our identity
as agents.
He says, it is, indeed, the man.
Williams has his own
intense religious beliefs,
and they entail that most
people around him are wrong.
Error, however, does
not mean that they
don't have the precious
faculty of conscience, quote,
"This conscience is
found in all mankind--
in Jews, Turks, papists,
Protestants, pagans, etc."
And although truth
is important, truth
is not the basis of respect.
What Williams reveres
is the faculty itself--
the capacity for
searching and choosing.
Like the ancient stoics, he
holds that this faculty exists
in people of all religions.
He's fond of lists, and
usually includes Jews, Muslims,
Catholics, pagans, prominently
including the Indians, and even
atheists, whom he
calls anti-Christians.
He insists that all
consciences deserve not only
respect, but equal respect.
So everyone has, inside him or
herself, something infinitely
precious, something that
demands respect from us
all, and something,
in regard to which,
we are all basically equal.
Williams now argues that
this precious something
needs extensive space
to unfold itself
and to pursue its own way.
To respect human
beings is, therefore,
to accord that sort of space
to each and every one of them.
He expresses indignation
that someone, quote,
"That speaks so
tenderly for his own,
hath yet so little
respect, mercy, or pity
to the like conscientious
persuasions of other men.
Are all the
thousands of millions
of millions of consciences,
at home and abroad, fuel
only for a prison, for a whip,
for a stake, for a gallows?
Are no consciences to breathe
the air but such as suit
and sample his?"
These images are revealing.
They tell us that
Williams thinks
of consciences as delicate,
vulnerable, living things--
things that need to breathe,
and not to be imprisoned.
Here, to my mind, Williams
makes decisive progress
beyond the stoicism of
his classical education.
Stoic thinkers treat the
moral faculties of a person
as invulnerable, rock hard.
They can't be damaged
by worldly conditions.
A slave, they say, is not
less free, internally,
for being a slave.
So it would appear
external coercion is not
all that important.
Stoics, therefore,
have difficulty
drawing political conclusions
from their arguments
about human dignity.
Williams, by contrast, sees
that the conscience is not
invulnerable.
It can be prevented from acting
and it can also, more deeply,
be damaged or defiled
by what happens to it.
This insight is
necessary, I think,
for a workable doctrine
of political liberty.
Williams has the
keenest sensitivity
to any damage to
this precious thing,
comparing persecution
repeatedly to soul rape.
And it is soul rape, he
says, when any person
is limited with respect to
either belief or practice
so long as he is not violating
civil laws or harming others.
Quote, "I acknowledge
that to molest any person,
Jew or Gentile, for either
professing doctrine,
or practicing worship,
it is to persecute him.
And such a person, whatever
his doctrine or practice,
be true or false, suffereth
persecution for conscience,"
end quote.
To be more precise, Williams
has two distinct images
for persecution--
rape and imprisonment--
corresponding
to different types of
damage to the conscience.
Persecution is like
imprisonment in that
people whose faculty of
conscience is undamaged
still need breathing space
to act on their conscience's
promptings,
searching for meaning
through whatever forms of prayer
worship or speech they select.
But persecution
is also like rape.
It goes into a person's depths
and does terrible damage.
Williams thinks
that being forced
to affirm what you
don't believe can
harm the soul in
its very capacity
to strive, deforming
and weakening it,
though it never destroys
the basis of equal respect,
because it never extinguishes
the capacity for striving.
So what's needed is, first,
protection for consciences
so they can grow undefiled, and
second, protection of a space
around the conscience so it
can venture out into the world
and conduct its search.
Persecution is therefore
a terrible error, one
of the worst there can ever be.
Williams explicitly
says that it's a worse
error than being a heretic.
And, in fact, persecution
is a doctrine, quote,
"Which no uncleanness, no
adultery, incest, sodomy,
or bestiality can equal.
This ravaging and forcing,
explicitly or implicitly,
the very souls and
consciences of all the nations
and inhabitants of
the world," end quote.
Williams doesn't believe
that the offenses
to which he compares
persecution are trivial.
Indeed, he's inclined to favor
the death penalty for adultery.
So we can see how strong
his objection to persecution
is, if it's worse
than those things.
Most rulers, in all
ages, he concludes,
have practiced violence
to the souls of men.
Now, one of Williams's
reasons for hating persecution
is instrumental.
If you for someone, it
hardens their opposition,
preventing their
voluntary conversion.
He makes this point
often when he's
in ad hominem debate
with John Cotton,
and it was a common
Protestant argument-- one
that Locke later makes central.
One can't read
Williams, however,
and doubt that he
also thinks damage
to conscience an
intrinsic wrong--
a desecration of what is most
precious about the human being.
Williams has insisted that
this precious something is
in us all, and is
worthy of equal respect.
Therefore, it's a heinous wrong
to give it freedom for some,
and then to deny this
same freedom to others.
Again and again, he hammers
home the charge of partiality
and unfairness.
Magistrates, he says, give
liberty with a partial hand
an unequal balance.
How, quote, "will
this appear to be
equal in the very idea of calm
and peace and righteousness,"
end quote.
s his own marginal summaries
of his argument in the book,
particularly in the later work,
keep recurring to this theme,
saying things like, unchristian
partiality, gross partiality
to private interests, gross
partiality, the bloody tenant
of persecution.
Williams, therefore, has a
keen nose for special pleading
and unfairness.
And he sees it
everywhere restrictions
on religious liberty are found.
He suggests that the
error of the persecutor
is a kind of anxiety-ridden
greed, which is hypocritically
disguised as virtue.
Each person, anxious
and insecure,
aims to carve out special
protections and privileges
for himself by
attacking in others what
he values most in his own life.
In his letter to the
governors of Massachusetts
and Connecticut,
that I read earlier,
he indicts them for a
hypocritical and unfair set
of principles-- for
worshipping, in effect,
only the great god, self.
If persecution is the worst of
errors, liberty of conscience
is, Williams repeatedly
states, a most
precious and invaluable jewel.
The proponent of liberty does
not engage in special pleading.
Even though he
believes he's right,
he has an even-handed spirit of
love and civility to all men,
grounded in respect
for their freedom.
In one remarkable
passage, William
states that persecution
is not only, quote,
"To take the being of
Christianity out of the world,
but to take away all
civility, and the world,
out of the world, and to lay
all upon heaps of confusion."
What does he mean by saying
that persecution takes
the world out of the world?
I think he's expressing the
view that the spirit of love
and gentleness, combined
with the spirit of fair play,
are at the heart of our
worldly lives with each other.
Take these things away, and
you despoil the world itself--
you make it nothing but
a heap of confusion.
Williams is, as you can
see, an emotional writer.
His style is deeply
subjective and passionate.
Nonetheless, it's not
implausible to find themes
in his writings that anticipate
some central ideas of Immanuel
Kant, a century later.
At the heart of the thought
of both men are two ideas--
the duty to respect humanity as
an end, wherever it is found,
and the duty to be fair, not
to make an exception for one's
own case.
Indeed, respecting
humanity entails
not making an
exception of oneself,
just as Kant asks
a person to test
the principle of
his or her conduct
by asking whether it could,
without contradiction, be
made a universal law
for all human beings.
So Williams's critique of
the leaders of Massachusetts
and Connecticut is that their
idea cannot pass a test of that
sort.
They love freedom, but
only for themselves.
They could not will
persecution as a universal law,
and their selfishness makes
them not willing to will freedom
of conscience, which
would pass the Kantian
test as a universal law.
Kant's second test for
our ethical principles
is one that he calls
the formula of humanity.
He asks us to test our
principle by seeing
whether it treats humanity as
an end rather than a mere means.
We are to ask whether we're
really showing respect
to human beings, or
whether we're just
using them as objects
in the pursuit
of our own selfish ends.
This complaint, too,
is a constant theme
in Williams's writing.
The conscience is
precious, but people
use other people's
consciences to serve
their own anxious
and greedy ends.
Kant's third way of
scrutinizing principles
invokes the idea of autonomy.
We are to ask
ourselves whether we
can view our principle
as a law that we
could give to ourselves.
There is no precise echo
of this in Williams,
but his insistence on the quest
of the individual conscience,
and the priceless value
of freedom in this quest,
is in great sympathy with
Kant's way of thinking.
For both, the source
of moral worth
is ultimately in
our own freedom,
and that freedom
must be respected.
For both, doing the
right thing because
of obedience to a law
imposed from without
has no moral worth at all.
Finally, Kant speaks
of good principles
as constituting
a realm of ends--
a virtual society of free beings
who respect one another as
equals.
I believe this is
basically what Williams
is after when he says that
persecution takes the world out
of the world.
It destroys the basis
of human fellowship
in respect, freedom,
and civility.
Williams, then, lies
at the beginning
of a tradition of thought
about religious fairness
that resonates to the present
day in John Rawls's work
on liberty and respect.
And Williams has
an extra measure
of psychological
insight, helping
us see why persecution
is so attractive,
and what emotional attitudes
might be required to resist it.
Next section-- a model of
church and civil power.
If Williams had offered only
an account of conscience
and its fair,
impartial treatment,
he would already have
made a large contribution
to our understanding
of religious liberty.
He accomplished,
however, much more--
developing an elaborate account
of the proper jurisdictions
of religious and
civil authority that
anticipates Locke's
more famous account,
and that still offers
helpful guidance.
In this part of
his work, Williams
is replying to a model
of church and state
proposed by John Cotton.
Truth asks peace.
What book do you have there?
And then, Peace pulls out
the Cotton manuscript,
and she reads from it the
claim that the church must
hold high authority
in the civil realm,
and should be superior
to all civil magistrates
if peace is to be preserved.
The 200 pages that
follow contain
Williams's alternative model.
According to Williams,
there are two separate sorts
of ends and activities
in human life.
Corresponding to these are two
different sorts of authority.
Civil authority concerns,
quote, "The bodies and goods
of subjects," end quote.
This is exactly the
characterization
that Locke later gives.
Civil authority must protect
people's property and bodily
security, and it may
use force to do so.
Its foundation
lies in the people,
and it is they who
choose civil magistrates.
The other sphere of life is
that of the soul and its safety.
Churches have this sphere
as their jurisdiction,
with the proviso that their
only proper means of addressing
the soul is persuasion.
The two sorts of authority,
civil and spiritual,
can co-exist
peacefully together.
Peace is in jeopardy
only to the extent
the churches overstep
their boundaries,
and begin to make civil law, or
interfere with other people's
property or liberty.
Williams now tells us
that there is, of course,
a way in which the civil state
needs to make laws respecting
religion.
Namely, it has to make
laws protecting it,
saying, for example,
quote, "That no persons--
papists, Jews,
Turks, or Indians--
be disturbed at their
worship, a thing which
the very Indians abhor
to practice toward any,"
end quote.
Such protective laws
are not only permitted,
they're also
extremely important.
He calls them the Magna Carta
of the highest liberties.
But there is, he continues,
another type of law respecting
religion that's very
different-- the sort of law that
establishes or forbids
acts of worship,
says who can and can't
be a minister, and so on.
To say that these should
be civil laws, quote, "Is
as far from reason as that
the commandments of Paul
were civil and earthly
constitutions," end quote.
John Cotton, however,
makes two claims
that Williams must
answer if he's to defend
his radical position well.
First, he makes a claim
about peace and stability.
People simply can't live
at peace with one another,
unless some religious
orthodoxy is established.
In response, Williams invokes
both reason and experience
on his side.
People with false
religious views, he says,
may be perfectly
decent citizens.
We can see this all the time.
People do live
together peacefully,
as long as they respect one
another's conscience space.
Life with the Indians
provides a handy illustration.
What really breaks the
peace is persecution,
quote, "Such persons only
break the city's or kingdom's
peace who cry out
for prison and swords
against such who
cross their judgment
or practice in religion."
Cotton's second argument
concerns competence.
He claims that being
a good citizen,
and being a good
civil magistrate,
are inseparable from
having the right religion.
We simply don't
want our public life
to be run by sinners,
because they're making
very important decisions.
And if they are sinners, they
will do so sinfully and badly.
Here, Williams makes one of
his most interesting and novel
arguments.
God, he says, has created
different sorts of things
in the world, and
there are, quote,
"diverse sorts of
goodness," end quote,
corresponding to these
different sorts of things.
He illustrates this
point at great length,
talking about the goodness of
artifacts, plants, animals,
and so on.
But one of the ways that God
creates diversity in the world
is to create a type of, quote,
"Civil or moral goodness," end
quote, that is commendable and
beautiful in its own right,
and that is distinct
from spiritual goodness.
It can be there
in its full form,
and be beautiful, even if the
person is in religious error--
even, quote, "Though
godliness, which
is infinitely more beautiful,
be wanting," end quote.
What's needed to be a good
subject in a civil state
is the moral sort of goodness.
And it's that sort,
as well, that we want
from our civil magistrates.
Later, returning
to the point, he
insists that the foundation
of the magistrate's authority,
quote, "Is not religious,
Christian, et cetera,
but natural, humane,
and civil," end quote.
From many activities in
human life, he continues,
a worldly foundation
is all we want.
Quote, "A Christian captain,
Christian merchant, physician,
lawyer, pilot, father,
master, and so,
consequently,
magistrate, et cetera,
is no more a captain, merchant,
physician, lawyer, pilot,
father, master,
magistrate, et cetera,
that a captain,
merchant, et cetera,
of any other conscience
or religion."
You see his style,
and why it took him
500 pages to express this.
Particularly
surprising, I think,
is his casual mention of
father as one of the roles
whose duties can
be fully executed,
independently of
spiritual enlightenment.
In short, for Williams,
the civil state
has a moral foundation, But a
moral foundation need not be--
and must not be--
a religious foundation.
The necessary moral virtues--
and honesty is one
to which Williams
devote special emphasis--
can be agreed on and
practiced by people
from many different
religious doctrines.
To be sure, he adds,
a person's religion
will connect these moral
virtues to higher ends.
But so far as the moral
sphere, itself, goes,
orthodox and dissenters,
religious and non-religious,
can agree.
It's not fanciful to see, here,
an adumbration of John Rawls's
idea of civil
society as involving
a set of moral principles,
concerning which,
people from different so-called
comprehensive doctrines
can join in what Rawls calls
an overlapping consensus.
Like Williams, Rawls stresses
the political society
has a moral foundation.
But he holds that this is a
part-- a module, he calls it--
that can be linked to
different religious doctrines
in a variety of different ways.
Although religious
people will certainly
feel that their
religion provides
the moral principles with
their highest ends, or deepest
sources--
and here, again, he's
agreeing with Williams--
they can nonetheless agree about
the moral terrain in a way that
is, for political
purposes, free-standing--
that is, not requiring
the acceptance
of religious orthodoxy.
So we don't have,
exactly, a wall
of separation between
people's religions
and their political principles.
Williams used that phrase
once, but uncharacteristically,
and only in a letter-- not
at all in his major writings.
We do have separation of
jurisdictions between church
and state, but where
people are concerned,
they will rightly see the
morality of public life
as one part of their
comprehensive doctrine--
a part, nonetheless, that
they can share with others,
without converting
them to what they
take to be the true religion.
This idea, I think, is
a much more helpful idea
to think with than
the, in some way,
crude idea of separation,
which might suggest
that the state
doesn't have anything
at all to do with the deep
ethical matters that are
so central to the religions.
The state needs to be
built on moral principles.
And it would be weird
and tyrannical to ask
religious people
to accept the idea
that these moral
principles are utterly
separate from their own
religious principles.
The idea of an
overlapping consensus--
or to put it in Williams's way,
the idea of a moral and natural
goodness that we can share,
while differing about ultimate
religious ends--
is an idea that helps us think
about our shared life much
better than the unclear
idea of separation.
We must respect one another's
freedom and equality,
the deep sources of conscience
that lead us through life.
We will only do this if we
keep religious orthodoxy out
of our common political life.
But we can, and must, base
that life on ethical principles
that, for many of us, also
have a religious meaning
and a religious justification.
All we need do when
we join with others
in a common political
life is to acknowledge
that someone might have those
virtues, in the way that's
most relevant for
politics, while not sharing
our own view of life's
ultimate meaning.
If we once grant that, then
Williams's other argument
concerning
impartiality will lead
us to want a state that has
no religious orthodoxy--
that is, just in that sense,
separate from religion.
Looking back at the
history, I think
we ought to agree with Williams.
We should, and
often do, separate
a person's specific religion
from the kind of goodness
we look for in, in fact,
a doctor, lawyer, teacher,
even an adoptive parent,
that we so obsessively focus
on the religions of
political candidates,
as contrasted with
their moral virtues--
virtues that we can all share--
is a fact of American
political life
that we should regret
an attempt to change.
But we can make our
account more precise, now,
if we compare Williams's
thought to that of Locke.
Locke probably new
Williams's work,
and he wrote his
Letter Concerning
Toleration, published in
1685, at Otes in Essex--
the same noble house where
Williams was employed.
His arguments bear
a close resemblance
to Williams's, in the general
nature of their conclusions
about the role of the
state, and in their focus
on what Locke calls equal
and impartial liberty.
Nonetheless, there are six
significant differences,
all of which, I
believe, should make
us prefer Williams's approach.
First, Locke seems to
think that equal liberty is
compatible with a
religious establishment.
Williams is keenly
aware of the dangers
of religious
establishment as threats
to both liberty and equality--
to liberty because the
dominant sect will easily
slip into curbing the
conscience space of minorities,
to equality because the very
existence of an orthodoxy
makes a statement that
citizens are not fully equal.
Here, Williams, I think,
anticipates a famous argument
of James Madison's--
establishment means
that we don't all
enter the public square on what
Madison calls equal conditions.
At the time of the founding,
the central argument
against establishments was
this equality argument.
And directly or not, it
was Williams's argument.
Second, Williams gives us, in
his discussion of conscience,
an account of the moral basis
of the political doctrine,
telling us what equal
respect is all about,
and why it is so important.
There's nothing like
this in Locke, at least
not in the letter.
Third, Locke and Williams have
subtly different positions
on accommodation-- that
is, on the question
whether laws applicable to
all could, and should, contain
exceptions for people with
special religious requirements.
Locke is in favor of the
exceptionless rule of law,
provided that the laws
themselves are neutral.
Some laws maliciously
target minorities.
And those laws must go.
For example, if it's legal
to speak Latin in a school,
it must be legal to speak
Latin in a church, he says.
If it's legal to bathe in
water for the sake of health
or recreation, it must be
legal to bathe in water
for the sake of baptism.
But there, Locke draws the line.
If there's any
non-malicious law that
has the incidental effect
of burdening minorities,
then the person whose
conscience poses
an obstacle to his
obeying that law
had better follow
conscience, says
Locke, because eternal
salvation is probably more
important than going to jail.
But he will have to go
to jail, or pay a fine.
Williams, as we've seen,
is subtly different.
He allows exceptions to general
laws for conscience's sake,
up to the point where the
person's conduct would threaten
peace and public safety.
In so holding, he
anticipates a norm
that soon became general
in the state constitutions,
by the time of the founding.
They all had free exercise
clauses with similar peace
and safety overrides.
Madison actually favored an
even more protective standard.
He wanted the law
to say that there
would be no burden
to conscience,
unless the Constitution
itself is in jeopardy.
The practices of
the new colonies
involve granting such
conscience-based exemptions
without legal penalty.
Jews did not usually have
to testify on Saturday.
Sects that objected to
oaths didn't have to swear.
Quakers and Mennonites were
exempted from military service.
Most remarkably, and only
in Rhode Island, Jews
were exempted from
the incest law
if they wanted to contract
uncle-niece marriages
on religious grounds.
Those laws remained valid,
and religious minorities just
didn't have to obey them.
In the early days
of the republic,
George Washington wrote
a letter to the Quakers
explaining his stance,
as first president,
concerning their conscientious
refusal of military service.
He writes, "I assure you, very
explicitly, that in my opinion,
the conscientious
scruples of all men
should be treated with great
delicacy and tenderness.
And it is my wish and desire
that the laws may always
be as extensively
accommodated to them,
as a due regard
for the protection
and essential interests of the
nation may justify and permit."
This is pure
Williams, and it's far
from what Locke's stricter
notion of the rule of law
would permit.
The contrast between
Williams and Locke
is still with us in the
form of divergent standards
that have played a role in
recent Supreme Court debates.
The Williams idea
was long a hallmark
of free exercise jurisprudence
in the form of what
has come to be known
as the Sherbert test,
after an important
1963 case involving
a woman who was fired because
her Seventh Day Adventist
beliefs forbade her
to work on Saturday,
and was then denied unemployment
compensation on the grounds
that she had refused
suitable work.
The Court, finding in her favor,
said the government may not
impose a substantial burden
on a person's free exercise
of religion, without what
they called a compelling state
interest.
The case had an important
equality aspect.
The fact that Saturday,
and not Sunday,
was the required day, put
unfair pressure on this minority
woman--
pressure that the majority
did not have to face.
This was our legal
standard for some years.
But in 1990, the
Lockean position
took control, with Justice
Scalia's controversial opinion
in a case involving Native
American peyote use.
Scalia said that laws
must rule exceptionlessly,
so long as they were neutral
and not discriminatory.
Scalia, like Locke, is very
interested in legal neutrality.
Thus, when a Florida
community passed an ordinance
forbidding ritual
animal sacrifice,
he was in favor of
striking it down, holding
that the fact that
they allowed animals
to be slaughtered in
all sorts of other ways
showed that they
were discriminating.
They were simply targeting
the Santeria worshippers.
But he doesn't believe the court
should go beyond this to insist
on the protection of
conscience against laws
that are not hostile--
although he's willing
to allow legislatures
to pass such laws if they want.
What this conflict over
accommodation is really about
is the equality of minorities
in a majority world.
Rules about work days, drugs,
and a host of other matters
inevitably favor the majority.
So alcohol is legal
and peyote isn't.
Sunday is the usual day of rest,
and Saturday isn't, and so on.
Williams understood
the vulnerability
of minority conscience in
a world of majority rule.
And his more protective standard
should, I believe, be restored.
Fourth, Locke argues
from Protestant premises
most of the time.
He seems uninterested in
finding arguments for toleration
that all citizens can share.
Williams alludes to
Christian norms at times,
but he tries very
hard to develop
an independent ethical argument
for his political principles,
based on the dignity and
vulnerability of conscience,
the equal worth of
all consciences,
and the need of all
consciences for ample space.
Williams was used to arguing
with people who did not share
his religious views,
as Locke often wasn't.
So he finds ways of
arguing that don't
presuppose the correctness
of his position.
The fifth difference
between Locke and Williams
lies in the way in
which they conceive
of the space of the political.
Locke speaks in terms of
separation of jurisdictions.
For him, religion and politics
just don't overlap at all.
For Williams, the different
religious doctrines
meet and overlap in
a shared moral space.
Each religious person will
connect this moral space
to his own religious
goals and ends.
But within that space,
we're all able to speak
a common language, and
share moral principles.
As I've argued,
this idea of overlap
is ultimately more fruitful
than the idea of separation.
Williams doesn't
ask religious people
to give up ways in which
their religion links politics
with faith.
He simply asks people to live
and talk together in the shared
space, without
compromising equality
by introducing religious
doctrines into the institutions
they create and sustain.
Sixth, and last, Locke
is not distinguished
as a moral psychologist,
and he has just nothing
to say about why people
persecute others.
Williams does,
tracing persecution
to anxious insecurity,
and the accompanying
desire to create security
by lording it over others.
He has a keen sense both of the
inner life of the persecutor,
and of the inner vulnerability
of the persecuted,
to something that
is very like rape--
an inner shattering of the
soul's integrity and peace.
He also understands,
clearly, how
people engage in
special pleading
to favor their own case, while
appearing to defend morality
itself.
On balance, then,
I would give Locke
the prize for succinct,
clear writing,
but Williams the prize
for philosophical insight.
Last section, another
quote from the work,
is called Truth and
Peace-- their meetings,
seldom and short.
Williams's work and
career construct
the basis for a politics
based on equal respect
for conscience.
But he was too shrewd to
expect that this goal would
be attained easily or quickly.
At the end of The Bloody
Tenant, Truth and Peace
remark that they don't actually
spend very much time together.
So often, they
observe, they meet up,
lovingly, but then are
abruptly parted by hypocrisy
and selfish partiality.
They have, however,
a surprise ally.
At the very end of the
work, a third character
makes her appearance.
But lo, says Peace, who's here?
Truth replies, our sister,
Patience, whose desired company
is as needful as delightful.
Patience utters not a single
word, but she's clearly there.
In his book on Indian
languages, Williams
wrote eloquently of the
patience of the Indians,
who can sit silently for ages,
waiting for what they want.
Quote, "Every man hath
his pipe of their tobacco,
and a deep silence they
make, and attention give,
to him that speaketh."
To his impatient world,
Williams commends this example.
Now, at the close of
his great dialogue,
he represents patience
as, in effect, an Indian--
silent after the
prolixity of her sisters,
waiting for a time
that may be very
long in coming, a time of equal
respect for people who differ.
Notice the psychological
insight in Williams's choice
of words, whose desired company
is both needful and delightful.
For the anxious self-focused
people Williams described,
spent on control, patience
may possibly be attainable,
but it's a painful virtue.
What the anxious
person really wants
is for others to do what the
anxious person has already
decided they should do.
So waiting for them to
be themselves, and live
the way they choose
to live, is stressful.
To view and experience patience
as not only needful, but also
delightful, is the
attitude of someone
who actually enjoys the
other person's freedom--
finding lack of control over
the other person's choices
and actions not an
inconvenience to be endured,
but a source of
exhilaration, and even joy.
Given human weakness,
such an attitude,
which we might aptly
call political love,
is a complex and
delicate achievement--
a virtue manifested here only
in an open-ended silence.
In that silence, after the
close at so much speech,
rests Williams's
hope for the future.
Now, we have, I think,
about 20 minutes
for questions and answers.
And I want to begin by
calling on some students,
because it's such an
important part of my work
to get the criticisms of the
students that I work with.
And I've learned so much on
this project, and any other one,
from them.
So I think I'll just
look around and see
who would like to go first.
Daniel?
Say, introduce yourself
and your department.
AUDIENCE: Hi, my name's Daniel.
I'm a graduate student in
the philosophy department,
and I-- you want me to stand up?
All right.
I just wanted to
invite you to say more
about the relationship
between conscience
and truth, and in
particular, about your idea
that the capacity
for searching, which
is constitutive of conscience,
has intrinsic value.
And so, my question, I guess,
takes the form of a challenge.
So from a first
person perspective,
when I evaluate
my own conscience,
I have the intuition
that it's failed me--
that it's not
working as it should.
And maybe, I'd even
say, it doesn't
have a heck of a lot of value.
For me, if I realize I haven't
been tracking the truth--
if it's if it's failed me,
and my ethical principles
are just off base.
And so, you might wonder
why should I then value
someone else's
conscience when I take
them to be off base-- assuming,
let's say, in this case,
that I know they're off base?
And you might think
that acknowledgment
of this sort of worry
is implicit in the idea
that we need an overlapping
consensus that's
made up of reasonable
comprehensive doctrines.
Right?
So we need a common moral base.
And what makes
freedom of conscience
such an attractive idea
is that we've already
built into the notion
that everyone already
has the basics right
when it comes to ethics.
But that when we get
rid of that idea,
it seems less
compelling to think
that the ability to
strive, in and of itself,
has intrinsic value.
MARTHA NUSSBAUM: Yeah.
Well, I think this is
a very hard question,
and I'm not going to be able
to answer it entirely, here.
But I guess, look, what
I think is that there's
a kind of tacit premise in the
argument, which is that this
is not an easy matter.
It's something like
Rawls's account
of the burdens of
judgment-- that
is, that life is mysterious,
it's very complicated,
and we're all
struggling to do it.
If it was very, very
easy to find the truth--
like just learning
that 2 plus 2 is 4,
and some people got it right,
and other people didn't-- then
it might seem that you could
just be feeling impatient with
them, and think, well, then
they're just broken toys.
They can't get it right.
So I think he needs to
think that it's very, very
difficult to get it right, and
that we probably don't even
know for sure that we're right.
I think he also believes that.
And so, that being the case,
the faculty with which we engage
in this difficult
and delicate struggle
is a very precious thing,
because the task is
so daunting, we have the need
for a faculty that is, itself,
very complicated and subtle.
And so we all have that faculty
that's complicated and subtle.
And so, whether the person has
penetrated the fog of being
or not, it's deserving
of respect-- something
like that, I think.
Yeah, Dasha?
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Thanks very much for the talk.
MARTHA NUSSBAUM: Say your
name and your department.
AUDIENCE: I'm sorry.
I'm Dasha [INAUDIBLE].
I'm in the Philosophy
Department as well.
So my question is something
related to this faculty
that we have to have.
And really, I want to
ask you to say something
about the relationship
between love and toleration.
So really, my
question is something
like, is something as deep
and, I want to say intimate,
but but something
as engaged as love,
really required for
citizens, for instance,
in how they treat one another?
So you spoke, in
the last paragraph,
of this notion of
political love.
And I just wonder whether
respect for conscience
really demands that much
of citizens-- demands
love-- as opposed
to just toleration.
And so, I wonder what
you think toleration is,
and why that's not sufficient.
MARTHA NUSSBAUM: OK.
There are really
three things, not two.
I think there's toleration,
there's respect,
and then there's love.
Toleration-- I think, rightly--
Williams, and most of
the American tradition,
rejected is too
grudging and stingy.
In fact, one of the things
that George Washington said,
at some point, was,
it is now no more
that toleration is spoke
of as if it were something
like, by the exercise
of superior authority,
that others were allowed to
enjoy their natural rights.
So I think the Americans thought
that it was a matter of right.
And therefore, toleration
was too [INAUDIBLE].
And they didn't like that
word, and they rarely used it.
So we have respect, really, in
Williams, not just toleration,
and respect is
much more positive.
It's the acknowledgement of
the entitlement of all people
to this space around them.
So then, the question
is, why do we
need anything more than that?
Why does it need to be supported
with these other psychological
attitudes?
Now, here's something,
looking at Rawls,
as you've done so much, I think
you can sort of see that Rawls
tries hard to think
about political stability
without these deeper
psychological attitudes,
and then, ultimately,
says, really, we
can't do it without
something more like love.
And so, in the third part
of Theory of Justice,
he works out an account, which
he then got dissatisfied with.
He then withdrew it.
But I think one
problem with the way
he did it, even then, is
that it was too abstract,
and not connected to particular
experiences, particular images.
So right now, I should
say, I'm writing a book
on patriotism,
which is coauthored
with another student who
is unable to be here,
unfortunately.
But what we're working on is
the role of these memories,
symbols, songs, poetry in
creating the underpinnings
for a decent society.
Now, of course, there
are many, many ways
in which those
appeals to emotion
could go badly wrong
in political life.
And I think for that
reason, liberals
have tried to prune that away--
thinking we'd better try to
base it on rational principles
alone.
But I think if you want to
get people to really overcome
the ills of racism, for example,
you wouldn't have done it
by just some million arguments.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s
inspiring and passionately
moving rhetoric, which
was full of love,
and appeals to love and joy, in
the very texture of the words,
and the way you were asked
to see America as a beautiful
place-- a place that you loved,
a place that was sensuous,
the curvaceous
slopes of California,
and all the things that he
thinks up to, to get people
interested in America--
I think those appeals to
passion are an essential source
of political stability, and
of the willingness of people
to sacrifice for a common end.
So anyway, that's what
we're going to try to say.
And we're also going to try
to say that it's not just
one of these serious
and stirring things,
but it's also jokes,
and humor, and so on.
That's what Jeff
Israel is an expert in,
and so he's going
to write that part.
But anyway, these things
are an important part
of the texture of
political life.
And if you try to
make people do things
that are fine on the basis of
high-minded principle alone,
I don't think it
would last very long.
I think I'll open it to other--
oh, a law student.
Good.
Elsa [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: I am Elsa.
I'm a student at the law school.
I would like to
have more precisions
about the idea of protection of
space around one's conscience.
Because, if I understood well,
Williams insists on the fact
that we're agents
that act and move,
so that we deserve
the protection, not
only of our beliefs, but also
of our practice and worship.
And I was thinking about,
it's the case in France
where, now, the
law forbids to wear
all visible religious signs
in public institutions
like universities.
So I was wondering if we
should make a distinction,
not for their beliefs, but
for as a practice religious
practice-- we should make a
distinction between the public
space, the private space, the
worship space-- like churches,
and synagogues, and mosques--
and the public space.
Because it may be justified
by the maintenance
of the public order, or
an equality agreement.
I would like to know what
you think about that.
MARTHA NUSSBAUM: Yeah, well,
I do have views about this.
I mean, I hesitate to say other
nations should simply pick up
the tradition that America
has worked out over the years,
because each nation has its
own problems to confront,
and its own tradition.
And obviously, the problem
that the French tradition has
confronted, so aggressively,
is clerical authority,
and trying to push
that to one side
was the goal of
the secular state.
But still, I guess the
thing is to say, well,
you can do whatever
you like in private,
but in the public space we're
going to have these rules,
seems to me to be not
really fair to people,
because the public space is
shaped by majority norms.
And as I say, you got to
pick some day off from work.
You got to pick some
drugs that will be legal,
and others that
will not be legal--
unless you have a policy of
total legalization of drugs,
of course.
But in general, you're going
to make the choices that
favor the majority, and
you probably won't even
notice you're doing that.
Well, once you do
that, then the minority
is in an unfair position.
And, of course,
the French policy
is a case of that,
because Christians are not
penalized by this dress code.
It does forbid large
Christian crosses,
but Christians are
not religiously
required to wear large
crosses-- or indeed any cross.
But Jewish yarmulkes,
and Muslim headscarves,
are regarded by many,
in those religions,
as religiously required.
So I think it's quite
an unfair policy.
And I think of similar
things in Belgium,
where, let's say, government
employees in Antwerp--
well, in the Netherlands,
this is-- but also in Belgium,
things have happened.
But in Antwerp,
government employees
may not wear these articles
of clothing on the job.
So if they want to work for the
government-- and, of course,
the public sector is a very
large part of the employment
in those nations--
then they just have to violate
their religious requirement.
And I think what this tradition
I'm talking about says,
is that, number one, that
violates your conscience.
But number two, it does
so in an unfair way,
because the majority would
never have made that law if they
themselves would have to
suffer violation of conscience
for that.
Alex.
Another law student.
AUDIENCE: I'm Alex,
another law student.
Williams seemed to
believe that if morality
is divorced from religion,
then there will be agreement.
But this is often not the case.
So why is it not soul
rape to force a person
to comply with a moral judgment
with which she does not agree?
MARTHA NUSSBAUM: Oh,
that's very good.
Well, obviously,
he himself is not
guiltless along these lines,
because he makes many very,
what we now regard as hasty and
controversial moral judgments.
And he thinks of them as
part of public reason,
rather than expressing a
particular particularistic idea
that we might want
to watch out for--
such as the harsh laws
against adultery. and sodomy,
and so on.
So I think we should always be
skeptical about moral judgments
that impinge on someone
else's comprehensive doctrine,
in Rawls's sense--
their sense of what
has most meaning in life,
what is most worth pursuing.
And with regard to
those things, we'd
better be willing to
listen to others very,
very carefully to make sure
that, even though it's not
religious, there's not
something similar going on--
like a persecution of somebody
for their comprehensive
doctrine.
So I agree with you, that the
big problem to be watched out
for, and that he
was probably not
sufficiently sensitive to that.
But then, I think
he also does hold--
and here I do agree with him--
that we can find a basis
for a political state--
some basic principles
of political morality--
on which we can agree, and
present good arguments that
are convincing to people of
all comprehensive doctrines,
and that that's an
enterprise that probably
has to be engaged in at a
high level of abstraction.
And then, we might
make mistakes when
we try to apply it to
more concrete instances.
But at least that
far, we can go,
and say what the moral
shape of our state is.
And then, we might
even use those insights
to overturn some of the laws.
I mean, sodomy laws
would run afoul
of the notion of, perhaps,
equal respect for conscience.
OK.
Let's see.
Others.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Hi.
[INAUDIBLE]
Mark [INAUDIBLE],
philosophy student.
So this is kind of on a similar
theme to that last question.
I was interested in
the first difference
you drew between
Locke and Williams,
where you quoted
Williams, approvingly,
as thinking that liberty
and equality were naturally
going to be threatened by
a religious establishment.
And I wondered whether
the problem that Williams
was seeing was religious
establishments, per se,
or a kind of
pernicious orthodoxy
which could be produced
by, one might think,
by a secular establishment,
just as well as a religious one.
This comes from someone
living in a country where
they established [INAUDIBLE].
So certainly, I have
Muslim who, I think,
might say that it's, at
least, not obvious to them
that a secular state is likely
to protect their liberty
and equality better
than a Christian one.
So I wonder if you could
say more about that issue.
MARTHA NUSSBAUM: OK.
First of all, of course a
secular state can go wrong,
and it can impose an orthodoxy.
And, of course, we've see
this in Marxian regimes
all over the world.
So I don't doubt that.
But, I guess, a lot
depends on how much
importance one attaches
to the symbolic domain.
Because I think a
lot of Europeans
find it weird that
Americans are so concerned
about statements, of standing--
that they make such
a big deal over,
let's say, a public display
that has a certain character.
And they would say, well,
so long as liberty is not
really threatened,
and so long as there
is this kind of benign
establishment-- as, of course,
you do have in Britain, and many
other European countries-- well
then, that might
be perfectly fine.
But see, the way the Americans
thought-- and Madison
articulated this, I think,
very, very well in the Memorial
and Remonstrance is that
what he was talking about,
in attacking the
Virginia assessment,
was a policy that was so benign
that you would have regarded
it as totally unexceptionable.
Namely, they were going to
tax all citizens of Virginia
for the support of the
established Anglican church.
But if you had some
other religion,
you could divert your tax
payments to that religion.
And if you were a
Quaker or a Mennonite,
you didn't have to pay at all.
OK.
So it was a very benign policy.
Nonetheless, he thought that,
just by making the statement
that the Anglican Church
is the official church,
it's the orthodox one,
they were creating
an in-group and an
our-group, basically,
and saying that we don't
all enter the public square
on equal conditions.
Now, some people
who write on this
do poo-poo that
excessive sensitivity
to the symbolic domain.
But I guess I
don't, because I do
think that there is an injury
to equal self respect that
consists in, again and again,
seeing these images that
denigrate you.
And I have to say, the
long periods of time
I've spent in Britain, I
felt Jews aren't really
fully equal in Britain,
because they're
so much in the
texture of public life
that makes a statement that
this is a Christian nation.
I mean, that's got to
do something to you,
and your feeling about
your citizenship.
And even if it doesn't
do it subjectively--
because you've become inured
to that-- nonetheless, it's
something we ought to attend
to and worry about, I think.
Yes.
Back there.
AUDIENCE: First of all,
thank you for your comments.
They were very enlightening.
My name is Julius Rhodes.
I'm a doctoral
candidate in philosophy
at Loyola University.
And I wanted to, maybe,
take a little bit
of a different approach, or get
your thoughts on this issue,
relative to Williams--
his discussion around
minority-majority rights,
religious exception,
and what is now,
or what you refer to, as
the issue of accommodations.
When I think about the
issue of disability rights,
I sometimes feel as
though individuals
who are disabled in some
way are not even looked
upon as a minority--
as maybe some other
marginalized group.
And I'd like to
get your feelings
on where you think Williams
would be on the discussion
relative to disability rights.
MARTHA NUSSBAUM: First
of all, thank you
for coming all the way
down here for the lecture.
I mean, I have
written extensively
on disability rights in
frontiers of justice.
But it's a little hard
to connect to Williams,
because he's so
obsessive about this one
issue of religious toleration.
And he's not particularly
interested in other-- well,
he was certainly interested in
anti-slavery legislation, too.
And he was interested in
ethnic and racial fairness.
But I have no memory
of anything he ever
said, with regard to disability,
except his own arthritis.
I mean, that was the
reference to the winter snow,
which he feels,
yet, 35 years later.
The interesting thing
is that, in those times,
because medical science had not
progressed very far, in a way,
disability was more
integrated into society
than it was at a later date.
I think Foucault is
right about that.
That is to say, that if you
read 19th-century novels, even--
Wilkie Collins for example,
and then, Dickens's David
Copperfield-- people
with mental disabilities,
even, who are fully integrated
into both families and society.
They're not warehoused
in institutions.
And it was only with the advent
of these allegedly benign
institutions that that
category began to be created.
And you, instead of
having Mr. Dick who's
a member of your family,
and David Copperfield,
you would have a
Mongoloid idiot.
So people would lose
their proper names,
and they would become
warehoused in these categories.
So I think that
Williams, in a way,
lives before the most
awful phase of the problem
of disability gets going.
But in any case, I think
the problem does have
big philosophical significance.
The significance it had for
me in Frontiers of Justice
was that we have to
challenge the model
of political
principles as deriving
from a social contract between
adults who are free, equal,
and independent.
So, I mean, that's basically
where I take that idea.
And I think we need a different
image for our cooperation
as citizens, and
why we get together.
And maybe, here we would
return to this idea
of political love
as something that we
need to appeal to in order to
explain why societies would
accept, as equals,
people who are not
going to pay their way--
to put it in the way of
crude political rhetoric.
And they won't repay
the costs that we
are going to have to put
in to educate them to reach
their full human potential.
So I think we do need something
that's much more like love
in order to motivate people
to make that sacrifice--
to give a child
with Down syndrome
a full education that maximizes
the potential of that child
for life, and for citizenship.
At this point, we have
time for one more question.
MARTHA NUSSBAUM:
It wasn't Arnold.
One more.
Yes, here.
AUDIENCE: How would you
deal with the interaction
between a doctrine
of accommodation
and intelligent design, or
other foolish [INAUDIBLE]?
MARTHA NUSSBAUM: Yeah.
I'll repeat it, in case
people didn't hear,
because he didn't have the mic.
How would I relate the
doctrine of accommodation
to the problems with
intelligent design?
And I do talk about that.
That's one of the
contemporary problems
I address in the last
chapter of this book.
And it's not so much,
I guess legally,
it comes not under the
free exercise clause,
so much as under the
Establishment Clause.
And so, the problem
that it raises
is that to teach
intelligent design--
not to teach it as history.
I mean, I think we could
perfectly well teach it
as part of comparative religion,
or the history of religion.
But to teach it as science is
to make a statement, I believe,
that establishes one
sectarian religious doctrine
in a way that the
demotes others.
So I think it is right that
the court has repeatedly
found these various attempts,
like creation science,
and so on, to be
unconstitutional on the
Establishment Clause grounds.
And most recently,
the intelligent design
has not reached the
Supreme Court yet.
But the Dover,
Pennsylvania case,
we had a wonderful opinion
where the judge there
really went to town, and made
all the theoretical argument
about the legal arguments, the
scientific arguments, and even
the philosophical arguments,
he worked out extremely nicely.
So I think that he gave a
good basis for future opinions
in this area, just
thinking about what
might be wrong with teaching
that as the scientific truth.
So I guess that has to
be the last question.
So thank you all.
