Wednesday, 11 November 2015

The Human Rights Case for Migration

Migration is a meta-human right: a right that other human rights depend upon. Since some governments are malevolent or simply incapable of protecting human rights, a commitment to human rights requires a commitment to the freedom of individuals to move to countries where they can live a decent life. Refugees - homeless, futureless - present an international moral emergency that trumps the usual considerations of national statecraft such as fiscal implications and political risk for governing parties.

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

The Joy of Reading

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Every week or so a literature professor publishes an eloquent essay about what literature is good for. Here's a nice example. The backdrop is the decline of literature degree programmes in the Anglophone world. This is why you need us!, they argue, somewhat plaintively.

These essays tend to circle around the same handful of arguments. An especially prominent theme, most frequently associated with Martha Nussbaum's defence of the humanities, is that literature is good for us because it promotes empathy, and the practice of empathy is the heart of liberal ethics and the functioning of civilised society.

Unfortunately, defending literature in this way multiplies rather than reduces philistinism. By mistaking means and ends it excludes the very heart of the matter from consideration. The joy of literature is transmuted into duty. This is in line with how professional academics understand literature - as their daily work, albeit work that they love. But if this is how the people who claim to love literature talk about it, no wonder reading is in decline.