Transcript for Interview with Martha Nussbaum

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0. Introduction

I grew up in a time of peace. And yet, just in the last two years, the world has become kinetic, with Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine and more conflicts on the horizon. The world has not been this close to the brink of war since the fall of the Soviet Union. The English composer Benjamin Britten's War Requiem is made for times just like ours. Britten composed the piece to commemorate the Second World War, to immortalize painful lessons about war through music and art. Because the only way we can avoid a repeat of history is to learn from it.

My guest today is the legendary Martha Nussbaum, who will help us understand what Britten wanted to communicate to future generations through his masterpiece and how we should think about war today.

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Johnathan Bi: Tell us about Benjamin Britten's War Requiem and why you decided to write a book about it.

Martha Nussbaum: Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me to talk about this book. It's an unusual thing within philosophy, I think even in aesthetics, most philosophers are talking about fine art or film, and very few are talking about music. But I've, I guess classical music has always, since I was six years old, been a very important part of my life. I have both gone to lots of concerts and operas, but I also sing. And so really, it's just woven into the fabric of my life. And I love the War Requiem. This work stood out for me as a work that makes a major statement about not only war and peace, but about the human heart and what we should be like if we are going to be responsible citizens of a troubled world.

Johnathan Bi: Right, so the War Requiem was written in the 1960s, right, to commemorate World War I and World War II. And so it's Benjamin Britten's reflections on these World Wars. And I think that's quite a relevant topic today because I grew up, I was born in 1997, and for the first two decades of my life, I knew basically a world completely in peace. And yet in the last two years, with both Russia and Ukraine, as well as Israel and Palestine, a lot of the world has spiraled back into war, which is very frightening. So what do you think the War Requiem has to say to our age today and also specifically to the participants in those conflicts?

Martha Nussbaum: Well, let me make just one small correction. It was written officially. His commission was to rededicate Coventry Cathedral after its bombing in World War II. So it premiered in 1962, and it was about the Second World War. Now, the connection to World War I comes from the fact that he chose to set the text to Wilfred Owen's Poems which were written about World War I. And that actually creates, as I say in the book, quite a serious problem, because I think the Second World War is a just war, if ever there is a just war. Most of Britten's compatriots did, too. All kinds of artists and writers like Iris Murdoch, W. H. Auden, they were all involved in the war effort. And in the US of course, even Pete Seeger, who was certainly a famous lefty pacifist in some ways. He enlisted in the army right away, and he wrote this song, "Dear Mr. President," telling Franklin Roosevelt to get into the war, kill Hitler, et cetera. So World War I was very different. It was pointless. Wilfred Owen's point is that it's the big capitalists who are making war on each other, and it has nothing to do with concerns of the common people and the common soldiers being used as pawns in these games that have nothing to do with them.

So I think Britten was kind of mingling the two in a way that I find quite problematic. But in any case, that's the connection. Now, in the end, I think what his focus is on the future and about how nations that have been at war should reconcile and move to the future with cooperation and alliance. And so in that case, it doesn't matter. You know, the difference between the two world wars doesn't matter so much. And what he did was to cast the leading roles, an Englishman, a German and a Russian. Well, the Russian wasn't. The Soviets wouldn't allow her to perform at the premiere. But that was Britten's hope. And so the idea was, these great powers now need to decide how to conduct themselves. So we will have a world at peace.

Now, as for today, well, of course, I grew up during the Vietnam War, so I'm not like you. I was born in 1947, so. But, you know. And in between, of course, there was the Korean War. But don't forget, in your lifetime, there have been many other wars. The war in Bosnia and Serbia and all kinds of smaller wars in Africa. So it just isn't the case that it's only Ukraine that's made us aware that war is not at an end.

And I think the idea that people had, particularly after the League of Nations was formed after World War I, that we would end war for all time. I think by now, everyone thinks that's a naive idea, and if we can strengthen international cooperation, we might make wars less frequent and less devastating. But no one thinks that war will ever be at an end. So we have to be prepared for how to think about it.

1.  The Philosophy of Pacifism

Johnathan Bi: I see. Well, we're going to focus the rest of the interview to talk about how we should relate to war and almost like a philosophy of war. And partially, if my understanding is correct, the reason that Britten equated the world wars, was because of his completely pacifistic stance. So in his mind there is no just war. Right? No violence, no use of force is justified. And like you, I find that to be a somewhat implausible position. But before we critique it, I was wondering if you could steel man the position a bit. I was wondering if you'd give us possibly the best defense or the best justification of where he was coming from.

Martha Nussbaum: Well, he was part of a group in Great Britain, I think this has never been so common in the US who followed Gandhi. Some of them actually went to study with Gandhi and Gandhi really did think that. He thought no use of violence, even to kill a marauding animal or a rabid monkey is ever justified. He goes into great detail about this. Even personal self defense is not justified. And so he's very extreme. And very few of the students of Gandhi go quite that far.

For example, Gandhi therefore not only didn't eat meat, but he was a vegan. And most followers of Gandhi and Britten ate plenty of meat and never paid attention to that part of it. So what Gandhi was smart about was saying to the Indians, don't fight back the way the British do. Make them look silly, make them look small, stand up and be proud and take the blows without violence. And that was not only his normative view, but it was a very effective strategy. But that was a particular situation where he was dealing with the British who were actually not very thuggish. I mean they were pretty thuggish, but they weren't prepared to kill millions of people.

He tried to apply the same tactics to Hitler and he said it really doesn't matter whether Hitler wins or loses, but what I want to do is to convert Hitler by the power of non-violent love. And at that point it becomes ridiculous. Right. But it was only because he didn't care who won the war that he could even say that. And of course most people thought it really did matter quite a lot who won the war.

So I think the best defense is in many situations it is actually a good strategy and it's an effective strategy as well as being more pleasant in the sense that you're not spiraling into more and more violence. But it certainly wasn't a good strategy with Hitler. And it was, you know, I mean, here's Pete Seeger saying, "give me a gun," you know, and that seems to be a reasonable strategy when you're talking about Hitler. So I do think Britten hadn't even really, he was a very, he was brought up with privilege. He was a very spoiled young man. And I think he just really didn't face the world realistically.

Johnathan Bi: I see. But to dig into this philosophical underpinning of Gandhi and therefore Britten's, is the idea that our inner peace, our internal sanctity, is so important that it is worth not defiling with external action.

I studied a lot of Buddhist philosophy, and you read, for example, when the Muslims invaded India, and this is why Buddhism was wiped out, a lot of the Buddhists just sat in the temple and just waited to be slaughtered. Because behind that act of nonviolence, there was also a metaphysical view of reincarnation—not only am I not doing violence, I'm going to get reincarnated in to possibly a better form—So what are the philosophical underpinnings behind this complete pacifistic view?