Dignity, Dependence, and the Economy of Need – Matalyn Vennerstrom

The Dignity of Dependence is a wierd ebook for a “feminist manifesto.” Leah Libresco Sargeant holds that contraception, regardless of being “a performance-enhancing drug for workplace life” is a web destructive for ladies. She abhors abortion. By chapter eight she is defending (and even recommends!) girls taking their husbands’ final names. The writer is nicely conscious that her model of feminism is unusual. Her Different Feminisms Substack has lengthy mirrored her divergences from the mainstream. However, her ebook isn’t polemical, nor directed primarily at mainstream feminists.

The ebook is addressed to all of us “dependent rational animals,” to borrow a phrase from the late Alasdair MacIntyre, whom Sargeant salutes. Like MacIntyre, Sargeant takes as a right the Aristotelian definition of man as a rational animal and takes on the additional process of describing and defending the dignity of our dependence. Sargeant claims that the autonomy-based ultimate of freedom lengthy championed by feminists is simply too slender. It’s primarily based on a masculine mannequin, and but the best is flawed even for able-bodied males. Autonomy-based feminist theories don’t simply misunderstand girls; they replicate deep misunderstandings of the human being, per se. Maybe the strangest and neatest thing about this explicit feminist manifesto is that it isn’t actually about girls (or inadvertently about males). It’s about human beings. Because the writer places it: “the elemental query is whether or not our view of individuals is massive sufficient.” 

In being prepared to revisit the query of what a human being is, Leah Libresco Sargeant has poised herself to perform one thing spectacular. As a result of she stands outdoors of the liberal individualist paradigm and seeks a “bigger” view of humanity, she is open to the richer philosophical anthropology of the individual. Sargeant doesn’t make it her enterprise to totally expound a personalist anthropology in these pages, however her emphasis on dependence and relationship as deeply tied up with human dignity strongly implies it. She adopts a personalist perspective in making the declare that as human beings, “Our ties to others should not an impediment to self-actualization, they’re the muse for the genuine self” and thus “we’re outlined extra by {our relationships} than our liberty,” the place liberty is narrowly outlined within the destructive sense as a “freedom from” obligations to others. 

As a political thinker whose enterprise it’s to attend rigorously to underlying philosophical anthropologies, I wanted she would say extra about this seemingly elementary piece of her challenge. Sargeant does a whole lot of implying, however not sufficient explicating on this level; and an identical lack of readability persists on one other key philosophical level: Sargeant doesn’t satisfactorily undertake the duty of explaining her understanding of the connection of dignity and dependence instructed within the title. 

Neither does she supply an express rebuttal of second-wave feminism. She realizes that thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan see the work of care as inherently shackling, however she devotes little time to them, preferring to put herself in dialogue with present-day feminists like Eva Feder Kittay, who likewise sees “the notion of independence as itself problematic and the very fact of dependence as one which needs to be taken into consideration.” 

Though Sargeant doesn’t be a part of modern feminists in an easy critique of capitalism, one will get the sense that she want to. With out naming capitalism explicitly, she indicts a nebulous “anti-human system” that tends towards mechanization and Taylorization. This technique, she says, upholds an “inhuman norm, one which neither males nor girls can comfortably inhabit.” Whether or not that is an esoteric indictment of free market capitalism (which isn’t even cited within the index) or a dig at large tech or bloated large authorities paperwork, or one thing else (a bemoanment of our postlapsarian state of sin and ignorance basically?), she doesn’t fairly say. What is obvious is that Sargeant is cautious of utilitarian calculus that causes one to “depend the fee” of care. “Working solely inside the language of economics to say worth,” she warns, “can slender our ethical imaginative and prescient.” So far as optimistic prescriptions go, Sargeant argues for a extra “reality-based” or “humane” economic system. Few concrete coverage proposals include this attraction.

The vagueness is probably intentional. Sargeant might merely be searching for to begin a dialog amongst feminists and conservatives of varied stripes. Any try to be accessible to such a big swath of individuals will probably be unsatisfying to some. This ebook is certain to look too summary for somebody in search of a transparent bulleted listing of coverage proposals and never philosophical sufficient to at least one in search of a deeper engagement of the moral points at play; not important sufficient of capitalism and masculinity to a conventional feminist, and never important sufficient of feminist ideology and the welfare state to a social and financial conservative. Members of every group might feasibly be in Sargeant’s viewers, and I feel she courts all of them. 

The majority of the ebook is dedicated to tales, and that is the place it’s strongest. Sargeant offers voice to the plight of the aged and disabled, pregnant working girls, new moms, and people reliant on social welfare. She doesn’t neglect even the healthiest and most self-reliant of males, who she acknowledges have deep wants of their very own. Sargeant’s cultural critiques are interspersed all through these chapters. She laments the expectation that the needy ought to conceal their neediness both by “toughing it out” or utilizing assistive units supposed to be invisible or to make their customers much less seen. She decries the shortage of lodging for being pregnant and child-rearing within the office and in society at massive, and goes on to criticize welfare packages that set too excessive a bar for the disabled to obtain and hold their help. In accordance with Sargeant’s findings, we “deal with the extraordinary occasions of human life, like childbearing, schooling, and getting old, as a shock … criminalizing care, overprofessionalizing it, obstructing its most pure shops, and treating it as a person pastime somewhat than a key load-bearing a part of civilization.”

Clearly, that sort of open-ended critique leaves many questions unanswered. Readers will nonetheless be moved to consider the way in which they personally reply to these extraordinary occasions of human life that make our dependency so plain. How will I henceforth deal with my partner and youngsters, my college students, my coworkers, my getting old mother and father, and lonely disabled neighbors? Because the ebook goes on, Sargeant entreats us to replicate and to try for lives of better charity. She does so partly by instance, in sharing how she got here to phrases along with her personal deficiencies and embraced them. The vulnerability Sargeant demonstrates in opening up about her personal struggles with infertility and miscarriage, her continued reliance upon her husband and others as a younger mom and author, and her ongoing battle with satisfaction is gorgeous and provoking. 

Sargeant’s ebook won’t settle any points, however I imagine it achieves its chief goals: to encourage its readers to care extra deeply and selflessly for these entrusted to them, and to spur additional reflection on deep moral questions. Not less than, that has been its impact on me. Thus, I regard this ebook firstly as a name to conversion and secondarily as a dialog starter. I like how Sargeant resists the urge to bracket higher-order questions, however it might be extra correct to say that she clears the bottom and makes room for a fuller philosophical anthropology, not that she provides one. The ebook is dissatisfyingly imprecise in regards to the relationship of human dignity and dependence, regardless of what its title guarantees. 

If “the elemental query is whether or not our view of individuals is massive sufficient,” I’m unsure that the view of individuals put forth on this ebook succeeds in enlarging it as a lot as Sargeant thinks it does. I think what Sargeant is looking for is a extra strong understanding of the human being as an individual somewhat than as a mere particular person. The view of human beings as meaningfully dependent upon each other is a serious enchancment upon the best of the autonomous self, however it’s not the total image of the individual. Simply as mainstream feminists and champions of autonomy have overemphasized independence, Sargeant dangers figuring out humanity an excessive amount of with dependence. 

Sargeant’s motives listed here are pure. She replaces independence because the preeminent human high quality with dependence in hopes that it’s going to assist us to embrace each other in charity. However a full revelation of the individual requires that we add greater than merely “dependent” to the “rational” and “animal” designations. It could be higher to say that human individuals are relational creatures of a rational nature who’re additionally free and fallen. The truth that human beings are creatures implies a elementary dependence upon a creator. Relationality accounts for dependence, too, whereas not decreasing our orientation towards the opposite to a mere mutual dependency. It makes room for the concept that we’re nonetheless ordered towards others even when we’ve achieved relative independence and self-sufficiency: as relational beings, we’ve an inherent connection to and duty for others. The Christian view accounts for the duty to offer of oneself in all issues, contending that we’re individually created by a private God who implants in us a capability for and the calling to like and serve not solely him, however each other. Fallenness additional underscores our want for love, and it accounts for the problem man experiences in giving and receiving that love, in addition to his resistance to serving God and different males. Freedom exists that we’d overcome our fallen human nature and ultimately come collectively in love.

Individuals lengthy to like and to be beloved. Sargeant hopes that destigmatizing dependence will free us up for the “exuberant outpouring of affection and threat taking so many people wish to undertake for the sake of one other.” However the situation for the opportunity of this type of charity isn’t the mere social visibility or acceptability of dependence. It’s the advantage of humility. Dependence isn’t a advantage. Humility is. Admitting one’s dependence could also be a step alongside the way in which, however it’s not the fullness of the factor. Sargeant argues that, given the very fact of dependence, “society ought to make a optimistic and beneficiant shift.” Nevertheless it won’t if the center time period of humility is lacking. It’s recognizing one’s creatureliness and all that it implies, greater than merely acknowledging one’s dependence and insufficiency, that instills true humility. Emphasizing dependence with out this dimension of creaturehood would possibly simply perpetuate the deep humiliation and despair that Sargeant seeks to eradicate.

As a result of we’re free, we are able to domesticate inside ourselves the advantage of humility that yields to charity. However as a result of we’re fallen, we frequently don’t. As free and fallen creatures, features of our nature could be directed towards good or evil. Sargeant’s sweeping indictment of an “anti-human system” because the perpetrator of social ills might not depart sufficient room for this. Even inside this account, Sargeant sees that features of human nature could be perverted. In her telling, the “rational” aspect of humanity morphs into a chilly financial calculation that’s in the end “inhumane.” Sargent doesn’t appear to think about {that a} related hazard could be current with dependence. Would possibly dependence, insofar as it’s human, even have its perverse, dehumanizing kinds? Some folks exaggerate their very own dependence and abdicate duty. Others create and exploit dependence for energy. 

Not all dependence is sweet, and never all independence is dangerous. Maybe for Sargeant, this goes with out saying, however as a result of it goes unsaid, it’s troublesome to see if Sargeant’s embrace of dependence has any limits. Typically it appears as if she regards dependence as an unqualified good, nearly denigrating independence. However, in fact, dependents should rely upon somebody who’s, comparatively talking, unbiased. Sargeant maintains all through that nobody is actually unbiased. All of us have intervals of relative power and weak spot. There’s an economic system of want, and to maintain it, we merely should take turns. We’re all kind of dependent, and as life goes on, we’re more likely to grow to be extra dependent. Sargeant appears to suppose the state of affairs could be quite a bit simpler if we had a society that shifted its focus to accommodating dependence. At this level, her argument can sound a bit Rawlsian: you by no means know in the event you would possibly all of a sudden grow to be severely dependent, so you need to go for the society that greatest accommodates that risk. 

However Sargeant doesn’t wish to stay with Rawls on the “political, not metaphysical” airplane. This turns into most clear the place she speaks about males, whose neediness usually won’t present itself till a lot later in life. Although “the lie of autonomy is a bit roomier” for them, it’s nonetheless, in her ebook, a “lie.” Males “lose quite a bit when they’re instructed they don’t seem to be wanted.” Even males must be wanted, Sargeant says. Dependence, then, isn’t just a bodily phenomenon; it has a religious dimension. 

If dependence and dignity are as intertwined as The Dignity of Dependence insists that they’re, then it have to be on the religious stage. Sargeant successfully demonstrates that dependence is an inescapable reality of human life. Nevertheless it doesn’t appear to be sufficient for her to say that severely dependent folks have dignity too, or to affirm that individuals have dignity regardless of their dependence. She appears to wish to toughen claims in regards to the “dignity of dependence,” implying that it possesses a dignity all its personal. Why would that be the case? 

The very best reply is theological, and Sargeant hints at this however shies away from it: at backside, as creatures, all of us depend on an omnipotent, all-sufficient Being to satisfy our many wants. Dependence is an indication of our noble origin in God, the unbiased Being that saves us from what would in any other case be an issue of infinite regress. It isn’t dependence all the way in which down. God wants nothing from us, however he nonetheless loves us. Christ is the mannequin Sargeant is in search of, who affords infinite self-sacrifice and care with out counting the fee. Sargeant absolutely is aware of this, and she or he is aware of that his face is mirrored not solely within the power of those that supply themselves, but in addition within the expressions of the least of those.

Even when it’s not a superb in itself, dependence is definitely a part of the human situation, and there may be a lot to realize from deeper reflection on that theme. By main readers into these waters, The Dignity of Dependence has made an actual contribution, not solely to feminism however to broader conversations in regards to the foundations of a thriving tradition.