This past weekend’s Texas Book Festival had downtown in and near the Capitol buzzing with talk about all things literary — fiction, nonfiction, children’s literature, authors, ideas, themes, you name it — reinforcing Austin’s reputation as a city of readers. Thousands of people attended scores of sessions Saturday and Sunday. The line of people waiting Saturday at the Paramount to see novelist Margaret Atwood, for example, ran north along Congress from the theater’s ticket office, turned east and up East Eighth, then turned back south down Brazos, stopping just before East Seventh. Yet, despite the number of people, everyone was quickly seated. The festival was impressively and efficiently run.
I went to about as many discussions or panels as the festival’s schedule makes possible — eight — though with a little juggling and by skipping lunch I could have perhaps squeezed in a ninth. Naturally, some sessions were more interesting than others. One highlight was Barbara Ehrenreich’s talk Sunday about her new book, “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.” During the first part of her discussion, Ehrenreich, a breast cancer survivor, sharply attacked the “cancer dogma” that has emerged over the past couple of decades. This dogma, she said, attempts to convince patients that “their terrible experience isn’t really a terrible experience” — that their cancer is in fact a life-affirming gift. “I’m not afraid of dying,” Ehrenreich said, “but I’m terrified of dying with a pink breast cancer teddy bear next to me.”
The best session I attended, however, was Harvard professor Michael Sandel’s Saturday morning discussion of some of the ideas he explores in his new book, “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” Sandel showed why he’s one of Harvard’s most popular lecturers, engaging his audience in an insightful and accessible give-and-take built around Aristotle’s theory of justice.
Sandel began with this Aristotelian example: If we were handing out flutes, who should get the best ones? One member of the audience answered that the best flutes should go to the best flute players, which is exactly what Aristotle said. But why? Because the best flute players will use the flutes to produce the best music, a member of the audience said. Sure. We all agree that listening to an expert flute player is far more pleasing than listening to someone who doesn’t know how to play the flute as well, or at all.
Yet, that’s not Aristotle’s reason, Sandel said. Aristotle said the best flutes should go to the best flute players because flutes exist to be played well. That is what they are fundamentally for — that is their essential nature.
Which led Sandel to a discussion of golf — specifically, the legal case of Casey Martin, the former professional golfer whose congenital circulatory disorder made it painful for him to walk a golf course. Unfortunately for Martin, PGA rules prohibited the use of carts during a tournament so Martin sued for the right to use a cart under the American With Disabilities Act. His case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2001 ruled, 7-2, in Martin’s favor.
The court’s ruling hinged on the Aristotelian question of justice: What is golf’s essential nature? The court said that golf is fundamentally about hitting a ball from a tee into a hole in as few strokes as possible; walking the course or riding it in a cart does not alter golf’s fundamental nature. In other words, riding in a cart would not give Martin an unfair advantage because to win he still must hit the ball into the hole in fewer strokes than his competitors, the court said.
But, Sandel said, the Martin case was not only about fairness and rights, or golf’s essential nature; it was also about honor and recognition, other aspects of Aristotle’s theory of justice. Fear that the public would no longer honor and recognize golfers as athletes if Martin were allowed to ride a cart led several big-name golfers — Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tom Kite, among them — to oppose Martin’s lawsuit. No one doubts that golf is a game of skill, Sandel said, but golf’s place within the community as a sport depends on it being seen as an athletic event (despite the fact it “involves no running or jumping, and the ball stands still,” Sandel said) and not merely a game of skill. Otherwise, golf becomes like billiards. Billiards is a game of great skill, but the public doesn’t grant great pool players the same honor and recognition that it grants golfers because billiards doesn’t hold itself up as an athletic event.
Sandel then seamlessly took his audience from the Martin case to the debate about same-sex marriage, which, he said, also involves questions of marriage’s essential nature — its purpose — as well as honor and recognition — public approval. Is the purpose of marriage procreation, as some opponents of same-sex marriage argue (though no state has a fertility requirement for marriage)? Or is it about the formation of an exclusive, committed partnership, as supporters of same-sex marriage say (and as most state marriage laws reinforce)? When a state grants a marriage license, what public virtues is it recognizing and honoring?
Sandel said his hope with his book and lectures was to bring “philosophy into contact with the world,” and for at least 45 minutes Saturday morning at the Paramount he succeeded. He expressed regret that today’s public debates amount to either “ideological food fights” or “shouting matches on cable television,” when true democratic citizenship depends on a far more fair-minded, sophisticated public discourse.