misanthropy

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Misanthropy is a general dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt, or hatred of the human species. A misanthrope is someone who harbors those views and feelings. The word origins are from Greek words μίσος (misos, "hatred") and άνθρωπος ( anthrōpos, "man, human being").

Forms

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While misanthropes express a general dislike for humanity on the whole, they typically have normal relationships with individual members of society.^{[citation needed]} Misanthropy may be motivated by feelings of isolation or social alienation, or simply contempt for the perceived prevailing characteristics of humanity.

An extreme misanthrope may indeed hate the human species generally, but it does not necessarily entail psychopathy. Misanthropes can hold normal and intimate relationships with people, but they will often be very few and far between.^{[citation needed]} They will typically be very selective with whom they choose to associate. Most misanthropes will be categorized as loners, living in seclusion. They may not find solace or effective functioning in society as a result of their perspective. However, effectively functioning in society may have little or no value to the misanthrope, and the prospect of fitting into their culture may seem unnecessary or undesirable.

Many misanthropes express a highly sarcastic sense of humour, and often have a preference for various forms of social/political satire. Overt expressions of misanthropy are common in satire and comedy, although intense misanthropy is generally rare.

Philosophy

In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates states, "Misology and misanthropy arise from similar causes."^[1] He equates misanthropy with misology, the hatred of speech, drawing an important distinction between philosophical pessimism and misanthropy. Immanuel Kant said, "Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made," and yet this was not an expression of the uselessness of humanity itself. Similarly, Samuel Beckett once remarked, "Hell must be like... reminiscing about the good old days when we wished we were dead." This statement may be seen as rather bleak and hopeless, but not as anti-human or expressive of any hatred of humankind.^{[citation needed]}

Seneca the Younger, in his treatise On Anger, suggests that one's misanthropy can be mitigated or cured by laughing at the foibles of humanity rather than resenting them. Seneca's Stoic philosophy regarded all forms of anger as corruptions of reason and therefore detrimental to good judgement; he thus argues that hatred and misanthropy must be eliminated for the individual to attain sanity.

In early Islamic philosophy, certain thinkers such as Ibn al-Rawandi and Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi often expressed misanthropic views.^[2] In the Judeo-Islamic philosophies (800 - 1400), the Jewish philosopher Saadia Gaon, uses the Platonic idea that the self-isolated man is dehumanized by friendlessness to argue against the misanthropy of anchorite asceticism and reclusiveness.^[3]

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, on the other hand, was almost certainly as famously misanthropic as his reputation. He wrote, "Human existence must be a kind of error." Schopenhauer concluded, in fact, that ethical treatment of others was the best attitude, for we are all fellow sufferers and all part of the same will to live. He also discussed suicide with a sympathetic understanding which was rare in his own time, when it was largely a taboo subject. However, his metaphysics ultimately led him to conclude that suicide was no escape from the suffering of the world. He claimed that the world was one side representation—how we perceived it—and one side will—the underlying indivisible metaphysical matter that was the basis of existence. Because suicide does not allow one to escape from the will (from which all suffering proceeds), it is pointless to kill oneself. Schopenhauer instead suggests aesthetic enjoyment as the only escape from the suffering of the world. This would be along the lines of the cathartic release points of Mozart's Requiem, or the charmingly mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa. He also offers an escape from suffering through compassion; however, he believed that very few are capable of reaching this state, and those who do reach it have rejected their humanity (further demonstrating his misanthropy).

Søren Kierkegaard wrote "How absurd men are! They desire rights they do not have and do not use the ones they have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech."

See also

Look up misanthropy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Misanthropy

• Misotheism
• Philosophical pessimism

Notes