Workshop "Contempt, Ancient and Modern: China, Greece, India, Rome"

Though it is possible (at least in contemporary English) to distinguish between contemptible actions and contemptible persons, there is a fundamental sense in which contempt responds to persons more than to actions, denying them the recognition, the respect, that persons ordinarily deserve. It puts others, whether individuals or groups, on a lower social and moral level. Which raises the question of whether contempt is ever justified. Aristotle thought it could be, when a person who genuinely is morally good despises her moral inferiors. Many contemporary thinkers disagree. But whether we justify it in certain circumstances or condemn it in all, contempt remains ubiquitous in our contemporary societies, from everyday social interaction to the relations between ruling classes and the citizens they presume to rule. Was it ever thus? And if it was, what light might the classical thought of China, Greece, India, and Rome be able to shed on the conceptualization, theorization, and accommodation of this powerful emotional, social, and political phenomenon? These are the questions that this workshop seeks to explore.

Workshop Programme:

24/03/2022:

14.45: Douglas Cairns (Edinburgh), Introduction

Section I, India

Chair: Douglas Cairns (Edinburgh)

15.00-16.00: Maria Heim (Amherst), Contempt as Social Fact in Classical Indian Sources (virtual lecture)

While contempt can easily be found in many classical Indian sources, it does not often get thematized and scrutinized as such—at least not as much as we might expect in literatures that otherwise examine moral psychology in meticulous and fine-grained ways, and which subject many, many other emotions to strenuous moralizing, debate, and therapeutic transformation. Contempt often appears to be taken for granted as a social fact, which is striking in literatures that critique and seek to eradicate adjacent emotions (pride, vainglory, arrogance, and so forth). My paper will first do some survey work on this state of affairs, and consider what implications it has for our comparative project. The second half of my paper will look at contempt in the Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana, to examine the ways that contempt drives key moments of the narrative. Many of the features of contempt pointed out by Darwall and others are in clear evidence and well-understood by the epic itself (often it is women who see the workings of contempt with the sharpest perspicuity). Still, no matter how virulent and destructive contempt is, contempt as such does not often get targeted directly in the epic, and its merits and legitimacy are not debated. My paper asks why. 

16.00-16.30: Break

16.30-17.30: Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (Lancaster), Between Anger and Contempt: Draupadi in the Sanskrit Mahabharata (virtual lecture)

Of all the outspoken women of the Mahabharata, the unique polyandrous Queen Draupadi is perhaps the most powerfully articulate and sustained presence in the vast composition. Twice attacked by villainous opponents of her husbands, her angry denunciation of them and the elders who stand by is laced with contempt relevant to her perception of the men's social standing and character. But she also reveals moments of contempt amidst more complex emotions towards her senior husband, King Yudhisthira. The contempt is often shown in the midst of eloquent arguments over right and wrong. Reasoning, anger, pride and indignation are all vectors of a fiery personality, and the location of contempt in the texture of her being reveals its social and psychological expressiveness.

17.30-18.30: Break (Change of location)

18.30-20.00: Public Keynote Stephen Darwall (Yale), The Wages of Contempt

Much of our contemporary politically fractured condition throughout the West can be seen as the result or “wages” of contempt or imagined contempt.  Mutually reinforcing causes have led to authoritarian political movements mobilized through contempt from “below” as a response to actual or imagined contempt from “above” (liberal intellectual and social elites).  These forces include globalization, the loss of good working-class jobs, the undermining of “public reason” and publicly recognized expertise by cyber-balkanization, anti-intellectualism, nativism, and reactionary trends in response to civil rights, affirmative action, the women’s movement, gay, and transgender rights.  I seek to begin to understand this phenomenon through an understanding of the toxic emotion of contempt and its reciprocal, shame. 

Location: Gerhart-Potthoff-Bau, Hörsaal 81. Hettnerstraße 1/3, 01069 Dresden (Entrance Fritz-Foerster-Platz)

20.00-21.30: Reception

25/03/2022:

Section II, China

Chair: Fritz-Heiner Mutschler (Dresden)

9.30-10.30: Karyn Lai (New South Wales), Overcoming the Language of Uselessness and Disability: Some Insights from the Zhuangzi (virtual lecture)

 The Zhuangzi is a fourth-century BCE text belonging to the Daoist tradition.  It is deeply sceptical about the prevailing political culture, which promoted specific ethico-social values and practices, for one and all.  Assessments of life and its projects were often made from this vantage point, which intolerantly excluded other forms of achievement and wellbeing: there is the ‘useless’ and there are the misfits.  In this talk, I demonstrate how the Zhuangzi sees through the insularity of these schemes, through exposing how they unjustifiably curtail the breadth and richness of human experiences.  I suggest that the Zhuangzi proposes a way of seeing the world that is not bound within these constraints, and which also celebrates diverse forms of engagement with the world.

10.30-11.30: Curie Virág (Edinburgh), Contempt without toxicity? Virtuous contempt and the ritual community in Xunzi

As a latter-day follower of Confucius, Xunzi seems to take for granted that contempt is an appropriate and justified response for a person of virtuous character (typically referred to as the junzi).  Indeed, the Xunzi is in many ways written from a standpoint of self-righteous contempt towards those whose moral failings it seeks to call out and place within a clearly-defined hierarchy of values and behaviour. At the same time, there are also numerous passages in which Xunzi condemns excessive anti-social emotions, attitudes, and dispositions (such as anger and combativeness) and deprecates categorical judgments that dismiss and diminish the standing of others. Xunzi thus seems to reserve the right to justified contempt while also warning against the potential dangers of contempt. This two-fold attitude suggests an attempt to draw clear boundaries around contempt so as to diminish its potential destructive and destabilizing implications. Xunzi’s position is historically interesting because it marks a significant conceptual shift vis-à-vis Confucius, who seems to have had fewer reservations about contempt as a justified virtuous response. But it is also of interest for how we might think about contempt today, particularly in the light of the hostility and contentiousness that mark our current political landscape. Xunzi’s strategy depends on ideas about personhood that are quite different from those operative in many contemporary accounts of contempt. Most notably, it places a far greater emphasis on participation in ritual norms of social interaction, not only as the foundation for social harmony but also as the criterion of what it is to be fully human. This precludes justifying forms of contempt that are directed towards ‘persons’ in the more robust modern sense and shifts the focus towards actions. It also limits how far one can go in one’s active display of contempt by excluding more pernicious forms of hostility, arrogance, and disrespect.

11.30-12.00: Break

Section III, Greece

Chair: Mirko Canevaro (Edinburgh)

12.00-13.00: Kleanthis Mantzouranis (Edinburgh), What Does Aristotle’s Moral Exemplar Feel Contempt for?

One of the most striking features of Aristotle’s moral exemplar (the megalopsychos, the ‘proud-minded’ person) is the megalopsychos’ disposition to be ‘contemptuous’ or ‘disdainful’ (kataphronētikos, EN 4.3.1124b29; EE 3.5.1232a38-39), a disposition which Aristotle describes as ‘justified’ (dikaiōs kataphronei, EN 4.3.1124b5-6). While this attitude of the megalopsychos may indeed be praiseworthy when directed towards generally admired ‘external goods’, such as wealth, power, and nobility of birth, the idea that a thoroughly virtuous person can treat certain others with contempt seems more controversial. The aim of this paper is to explore the implications of Aristotle’s statement when the object of the contempt of the megalopsychos is other human beings. Drawing on Aristotle’s ethical and psychological theory more generally (Aristotle’s account of emulation at Rh. 2.11; the ‘social virtues’ at EN 4.6-8), I seek to shed some light on particular aspects of the megalopsychos’ contempt, including the sort of people towards whom it may be directed, the reasons on account of which the megalopsychos may feel contempt for them, and the ways in which this contempt may be manifested in the interactions of the megalopsychos with others.

13.00-14.00: Break

14.00-15.00: Linda Rocchi (Edinburgh), From (Apt) contempt to (Legal) Dishonour – Two Kinds of Contempt and the Penalty of Atimia

It is almost a truism that contempt is closely related to dishonour: in a recent discussion on the subject, Bell (2013: 96) describes contempt as ‘a dismissive emotion that fails to respect the dignity of persons’, and as ‘a demoting emotion that presents its target as having a comparatively low status’ (p. 128). The relationship between contempt and dishonour is already recognised in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, where it is clear that what Aristotle has in mind is ‘inapt’ contempt, and the dishonour he mentions would be better described as ‘disrespect’, i.e. a misalignment between the target’s actual status and the contemptuous treatment s/he is receiving. However, as Bell argues, contempt need not always be an inappropriate response to perceived faults of character: ‘apt’ contempt can also ‘offer ways of confronting immorality’ (p. 2). By adopting an ‘ethic of contempt’ (p. 8), i.e. by construing immorality as contemptible and presenting the immoral agent as someone to be shunned, we can shape and protect the values of our society. In this paper, I shall show that the Greeks did adopt such ‘ethic of contempt’ and through the codification of the legal penalty of atimia (‘dishonour’) actively used what they considered ‘apt’ contempt (alongside other ‘negative emotions’) as a weapon against breaches of socially endorsed standards of behaviour. Yet they were also aware of the potential ambivalence of these notions. This ambivalence is likely to have been one of the factors that catalysed a differentiation, within the semantic field of atimia, between ‘dishonouring’ (atiman/atimoun) and ‘disrespecting’ (atimazein) – between ‘apt’ and ‘inapt’ contempt.

15.00-15.30: Break

Section IV, Rome

Chair: Dennis Pausch (Dresden)

15.30-16.30: Verena Schulz (Eichstätt) Expressing contempt in Rome – language, rhetoric, and critique (virtual lecture)

This paper deals with the way in which Romans speak about contempt. It focuses on three elements of this discourse: language, rhetoric, and critique. First, I will give an overview about the Latin vocabulary for contempt and disrespect. The focus will be on the question whether there is a positive notion of contempt inherent in some word forms. Second, I will argue that the rhetoric of contempt makes abundant use of comparisons, which are crucial to Roman thinking and identity-building in general. Finally, I will present literary examples in which contempt is presented as a virtue because it is directed against someone who deserves to be disrespected.

16.30-17.30: Antje Junghanß (Dresden), Contumelia a contemptu dicta est (Sen. dial. 2,11,2): Reflections on Contempt in Seneca 

For Seneca, the firmness of the Wise is shown in his ability to calmly withstand attacks, as he explains in the eponymous writing. Attacks can come in the form of injustice, iniuria, and disparagement, contumelia; Seneca proves that neither of them affects the wise man. Contumelia is linked to contemptus in definition and conceptualisation, so that the remarks on how to deal with disparagement contain clues as to what contemptus means for Seneca. In the context of the workshop, I would like to show that Seneca understands the term in a double sense: First, contemptus means to deny someone the recognition they (think they) deserve and thus involves a strong negative judgment. Second, it designates a kind of indifference which is to be understood in the context of Stoic apatheia.    

17.30-18.00: Closing Remarks