Hiding from Humanity : Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Martha Nussbaum. 2004.

This book propose an approach to study the way which the concept of emotions influence the conception,
production and even the application of Law, Nussbaum discuss particularly about the role of the disgust
and shame, from her point of view this kind of emotions plays a determinant role comparable with the
positive emotions like compassion in deliberations about justice but this negative emotions are related to
justice in a problematic way.

Nussbaum would argue that emotions occupy a legitimate place in our legal culture expressing that
society's condemnation of the criminal attitudes represents a clear example of they are a common source
which our moral judgments are nourished. To Nussbaum our disgust is a way to reject our own animality
when it is expressed in another, the point is that everyone has some inclinations or pulsation that must
regulate or even eliminate because they are expressions of crime or censured moral attitudes, so people
express disgust to behaviors that they dominate or control in themselves.

In other sense Nussbaum considers if disgust should justify the violence imposed towards the victims,
because violence is not always the expression of a condemnation, this is the case of stigmatization of
minorities or sensible groups like homosexuals or persons with Down's syndrome condition. For example
we could question if the disgust of a homophobic man who commit homicide could be a factor to mitigate
or reduce the punishment.

The case of shame incorporate an interesting point to discussion, in this respect Nussbaum make mention
to the application of penalties that involving public shaming of the offender like make them use T-shirts or
stickers that express their conviction, but even if is congruent to submit criminals to certain dose of
humiliation, thats revels the tension between the point of view that the law as something that should
shame malefactors and the point of view of Law as something should protects citizens from insults to their
dignity.

The interest of Nussbaum points to express the importance of emotions as a component determinant at
the moment of identifying, for example, the mental state of a criminal, and she is opposed to a No-
Emotional proposal of Law arguing that the must part of norms presuppose in effect the existence of
certain basic emotions like the anger a cause of an assault or fear to death, and they always involve more
than mechanical or irrational responses, and this mix of theoretical and practical elements configures a
portrait that regulate not only to legal system but a model of what is reasonable to feel and the actions
that we take in order to a standard reasonable man paradigm.
 Hiding from Humanity : Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Martha Nussbaum. 2004.

Our civilization is decadent and our language must inevitably share in the general collapse.

The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

But the important is that George Orwell considers that this process of decadence is reversible.

Between the signs of this process he put:

Staleness (deterioro, decay) of imaginary

Lack (absence) of precision

He argues that overall the prose in political context is a proof of the loss of power of metaphors that are
normally used as a common places that have lost its evocative power and most part of them are even used
in senses and incompatibles contexts.

Another signs is the artificial usage of linguistic elements to give a false appearance of symmetry, that it
turns in a pretentious diction interested in express a false scientific or impartial judgement.

A particular evidence of those artificial or superficial usages of language is the abuse of terms that have not
or even loss his concrete sense like fascism, democracy, socialism, patriotic, etc., that just represents
commonplaces and the abstractions that aim just to satisfy desirable or not desirable elements or even
simply disqualified the opponent.

This tendency to the ornament and the construction of artificially sober structures rich in neologisms and
terms stolen to science, arts or philosophy make of the texts of modern writers a mix of sentences with
sense vague and obscure in case they have any sense.

The most expression of this deterioration of language is represented by political speaker where the
reduction of consciousness is even desirable for those who pretend just to persuade or find any rate of
favorable political conformity

And this obscurity tendency response to: the great enemy of clear language is insincerity, politic is in this
way the battlefield of the euphemism and vagueness that pretends to justify the worst crimes of humanity
just because is convenient to the interest of some groups of power and the corruption of language is use as
a weapon.

Finally as we said this decay is repairable, and Orwell recommends:

Never use metaphors

Use the most simple words possible to express ideas
Never use foreign or scientific if there is an equivalent English term