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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").

[edit] History and meaning

[edit] Misanthropy in Western thought

In Western philosophy, misanthropy is connected to isolation from human society. In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates defines the misanthropy in relation to his fellow man: "Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable...and when it happens to someone often...he ends up...hating everyone."^[1] Misanthropy, then, is presented as the result of thwarted expectations or even excess optimism, since Socrates argues that "art" would have allowed the potential misanthrope to recognize that the majority of men are to be found in between good and evil.^[2] Aristotle follows a more ontological route: the misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god, a view reflected in the Renaissance of misanthropy as a "beast-like state."^[3]

Søren Kierkegaard is often called a misanthrope, and the writings of his later years certainly express misanthropy, besides "misogyny, world-weariness, hatred of the physical world, of the body, of sex, and insistence on the necessity of suffering and self-torture."^[4] But this is a superficial appearance, actually reflecting his belief that the true Christian, in order to follow the rigorous demands of pure Christianity, should be like Christ and renounce the material world totally. This vision of pure Christianity, in words and action, may give the appearance of misanthropy.^[5]

[edit] Misanthropy in Islamic thought

In early Islamic philosophy, certain thinkers such as Ibn al-Rawandi and Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi often expressed misanthropic views.^[6] 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.^[7]

[edit] See also

Look up misanthropy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Misanthropy

• Philanthropy
• Misotheism
• Philosophical pessimism
• Pentti Linkola

[edit] Notes