Specter of Reason

I caught Skyfall last weekend and posted this mini-review on my Facebook wall: In some ways, it's excellent. Javier Bardem is unsurprisingly phenomenal. The music is very good, sometimes excellent. In other ways, it's predictably silly (the dialogue and action sequences are often well-crafted, but sometimes ridiculous). The plot is very sophisticated and convincing, and it works as an exploration of Bond himself, even though there are some pretty big holes. Nothing devastating, though. What bothers me, surprisingly, is Bond's relationship with women. Bond has always been promiscuous, but in this one he seems capable of very sincere and passionate intimacy, but without any emotional attachment at all. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I was seriously offended by the way the film depicted his relationship with women. Again, I know he's always slept around, but was it always this bad? (Maybe you need to see the film to answer that question.) Anyway, that point aside, ...

In " Veiled Threats? " and again in " Beyond The Veil: A Response ," Martha Nussbaum defends the right to cover one's face in public. Laws against veils are a hot topic in Europe, with several EU countries pushing for legislation which would prevent many Muslim women from wearing full-face Islamic veils. Nussbaum goes over and rejects several arguments which are commonly made in support of such a ban. Though I'm not quite sure where my mind is on the issue, I have some problems with what she says. One of the arguments she rejects is that the full-face veil depersonalizes women. To counter this argument, Nussbaum begins by suggesting that Muslim women may not be degraded or depersonalized by this tradition. This suggestion is not persuasive, however, because some Muslim women have spoken out against the full-face veil for just that reason. More importantly, we have reason to be suspicious of reports by women who say they like the full-face veil. Thes...