Random quote
Such as make it their business to oversee human actions, do not find themselves in anything so much perplexed as to reconcile them and bring them into the world’s eye with the same lustre and reputation; for they commonly so strangely contradict one another that it seems impossible they should proceed from one and the same person.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Euphemism

Person without permanent residence

Who controls the language controls the mind. Philosophically, there is a lot to say about this statement that undermines its truth (For instance: Who controls the language of the controller?). However, despite philosophical doubts, in practice it works often that way. One who has best described the working of mind control by language is George Orwell. His 1984 and Animal Farm have seldom been so relevant as today. Whether they have read Orwell’s works or haven’t, many politicians know the value of this statement, and they apply it; not only for convincing the public and their potential voters but also for manipulating them. Language is often used for pushing people in a certain direction, while concealing their real intentions; by politicians in the first place, but certainly not only by them.
Manipulating the public is often done by means of fallacies: Argumentations in which the conclusions don’t follow from the premisses. Another way to manipulate others with words is by giving them a vague meaning. Often there isn’t much difference between the one and the other. Using vague words often leads to fallacies. Actually, if your intention is to manipulate with words, it’s not important whether these words belong to the first category or to the second. Only the effect counts.
Manipulating your public by softening the meaning of your words or with vague meanings means using euphemisms. A euphemism is “a delicate, indirect, inoffensive, or vague word or phrase that takes the place of one that is unpleasant, blunt, offensive or graphic.” (Baltzer-Jaray, p. 270) Euphemisms are often used, when you don’t want to hurt the feelings of those you are talking to and want to be polite, or when you want to avoid directly talking about certain subjects, like death and sex. However, it is not what I want to talk about now. Here I want to discuss euphemisms as instruments for thought manipulation and by this the way people behave. I’ll concentrate on the former and let the behavioural aspect implicit. Then we see (following Baltzer-Jaray) that euphemistic language is used for:
- preventing inappropriately stirring people’s emotions by using neutral terms like calling homeless people “people without permanent residence”, or mentally disabled people “people with abilities”. When many years ago the first migrant workers from Southern Europe and Morocco arrived in the Netherlands, they were called “guest workers”, concealing that they were poorly paid, did often dirty and heavy work and were badly housed.
- swaying people’s opinions or emotions to a particular side, for example when torture is called “enhanced interrogation”, or non-combatant civilian victims in a war are called “collateral damage”.
- concealing a person’s role in responsibility for a bad deed, for example when it is said that someone has not been killed but “neutralized”, or that a government has “disinformed” the parliament instead of having lied.
Such euphemisms are “fallacious”, so Baltzer-Jaray, “because they are intentionally used to conceal the truth and obscure any real meaning; they are soft language used to mask or downplay warranted emotional force.” In other words, they are instruments of manipulation. They make you think less critically and suppress your feelings. That’s the political side. As said, in daily life euphemism are also often used, and there they can have a positive side as well. However, in advertising often weasel words are used to seduce you to buy certain products. Such words “appear to say something truthful or meaningful, but really they conceal truth and meaning”. So, if a product “combats wrinkles” and “dermatology experts agree skin appears smoother”, such a recommendation in an advertisement seldom says to what extent it will probably be successful (1%, 25%, 75%?) and which experts say so and what is meant by “skin appears smoother”.
Euphemistic words and expressions are often used to mislead. Once you have fallen into the trap and believe them in their literal sense and doesn’t see the deception behind the euphemistically used words, maybe you’ll vote for a politician because of these words, or buy a product that is misleadingly advertised to be good. And that’s just what the politician, advertiser or whoever wants to mislead you with euphemisms intends.

Sources
- Baltzer-Jaray, Kimberley, “Euphemism”, in Arp, Robert; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019; pp. 270-272.
- “Euphemism”, in Wikipedia.

Random quote
The brain is part of the mind; but the mind is not part of the brain.

Markus Gabriel (1980-)

How to stop an autocrat

Vilnius, Lithuania: Bronze sculpture Aukojimas (The Sacrifice) created by sculptor Darius Braziunas and architect Arturas Asauskas. Memorial near the Vilnius TV tower to the thirteen people who lost their lives in 1991 when Soviet troops seized the tower during the Lithuanian struggle for independence from the Soviet Union.

The political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) developed the theory that a state could best be governed by an absolute sovereign, in order to prevent the societal breakdown by interhuman conflicts. Such an absolute ruler would best represent the interests of the people. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), on the other hand, was rather an advocate of a democratic government system, in which the interests of the people were represented by democratically elected institutions. Although in the days of Hobbes and Spinoza nearly all countries were governed by authoritarian rulers, if not absolute sovereigns, from then on the number of more or less democratically governed countries increased, especially since the 19th century, till in the early 21st century most countries were democratic states. Democracy seemed to be a viable system that represented the interests of its subjects best. For although in Hobbes’s view absolute rulers should represent the interests of their subjects, in practice they served mainly their own interests and those of their cliques, to the detriment of the interests of the people they were supposed to look after. In view of this, it was to be expected that a democracy, once established, would be a stable political system. Nevertheless, the opposite turns out to be true. Since a few years, for all kinds of reasons (which I don’t want to discuss here, and which are, moreover, not always clear), there are tendencies to authoritarianism if not dictatorship in many countries; even to that extent that again most political systems are no longer democratic but autocratic. And as in the past, the new authoritarian leaders – whatever they say – do not represent the interests of their voters (for most new autocrats have been elected in democratic elections) but the interests of themselves and their cliques. Therefore, many who have elected these leaders feel themselves tricked, if not worse. For how many of those who have brought Putin to power wanted war with Ukraine? Also in the USA opposition to president Trump is growing, including among those who voted for him. And who in the USA really wants that the power of the judicial institutions, one of the pillars of democracy, is undermined? However, these are reactions afterwards, when it is or can be already too late. Nevertheless, the behaviour of autocrats, especially when initially democratically elected, seldom comes from nowhere. It could have been foreseen.
The Russian-America journalist Masha Gessen has experienced both a long ruling “old” autocrat (Putin), and the rise of a new autocrat in a democratic country (Trump). Already in 2016, just after Trump’s election as president of the USA, Gessen wrote the article “Autocracy: Rules for Survival”, with six rules how to foresee and to survive an authoritarian political system (adapted):

Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, this is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. Indeed, especially now during his second term, with a majority in Congress and having won the presidential election convincingly, Trump carries out exactly those autocratic measures he had already promised during his campaign. His radical position was not a posture. We have been warned. Therefore, it will be foolish to think that during the rest of his term as president Trump is not going to do what he has promised during his campaign.
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Sometimes an autocrat must give in to pressure or because the situation is against him, but it is always a matter of two steps forward, one step back, and then again two steps forward, etc.
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. See, how the US Congress is paralysed by Trumps actions. See, how autocrats manipulate or manipulated the judicial institutes in Poland, Hungary and now also in the USA, not to speak of Russia. They are made the long arm of the autocrat. It is the same for the free press and the universities, institutes that have always been seen as representatives of freedom. The first thing an autocrat will do is to get a grip on them, and usually he succeeds.
Rule #4: Be outraged. In the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. However, adherents of the autocrat or others who think that it will not be that bad will attack you, if you criticize the autocrat. Hasn’t he been elected democratically? Be prepared for such reactions.
Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. That’s just what the autocrat wants. Once you have compromised, new demands will follow. If you again give in a bit, again new demands will follow, etc., till finally you’ll be left with nothing and will have lost everything.
Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. There is hope.

This blog is certainly not only about US president Trump, as it might seem, but about any new authoritarian leader. In Europe it applies to the Hungarian Prime Minster Victor Orbán, for instance, or to the Dutch political leader Geert Wilders, or the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Wilders and Meloni are still contained by the political systems in their countries, but will this remain so?
If you think all this is too vague to stop an autocrat, the American political scientist Gene Sharp (1928-2018) has conducted extensive research into the problem how to tackle repression in a nonviolent way, which resulted in a list of 198 methods (see also the main page of the website of the Albert Einstein Institute). Autocrats can be toppled by the will of the people, as history learns.

See also my
- “Non-violent resistance and repressive regimes” summary and full text
- “Nonviolence and power. A study about the importance of power relations for nonviolent action and resistance” summary and full text
- “Non-violent resistance and the properties of states. A preliminary study” summary and full text

Random quote
Never Throw Down Your Weapons.
When blind fold Hatred’s claws are shown:
And Falsehood swings come dark behind,
Stand to your arms, and lay not down:
The weapons of the Mind.

Alexander Graf von Hoyos (1876-1937)

Taking the perspective of the other

Sometimes it is helpful to view things from an unusual perspective.

What I often miss in the views of many politicians is a feeling how others, like their opponents (but not only their opponents), who are affected by their measures, judge these measures and the ideas behind them. Not few politicians think that what they do is superior and that others must adapt, and if they don’t that they must be punished. Only few politicians can place themselves in the shoes of their opponents and those affected by their decisions. They cannot take the perspective of the other, as it is called in psychology. It’s not that they must agree with these others, but having a feeling for their viewpoints, especially those viewpoints they don’t agree with, will make their decisions more sensible.
Taking the perspective of the other involves putting yourself in the position of the other and trying to imagine how this person sees the world from his perspective and especially how he sees you. It also involves understanding the feelings belonging to that position. So, if a small country is attacked by a big neighbour, and you want to mediate in the conflict, you must not only see it as a clash on a political chessboard that can be solved if both parties give in a bit, or take the stalemate on the battlefield as a starting point without taking the reasons and causes of the conflict into account. You need also take account of the different views of the warring parties. For instance, you as a mediator should understand that the big neighbour is a former superpower who wants to restore the position it once had and that it wants to “collect” a series of weak vassal states at its borders, while the small attacked country is desperately asking your support, in order to keep the freedom it acquired 30 years ago, when it became independent of the big neighbour that now tries to undo its liberty and independence.
Taking the perspective of the other makes that you get a better and multi-sided view on the problem at hand and on the consequences of the actions you want to perform. It helps avoid the mistake of seeing what others do only from your perspective, by thinking that your view on the world is the way everybody sees it. It makes you aware of what other people see and how they see it. So, it is not a matter of taking merely the place of another and look at the world from there with your ideas, but you must look around from that position with their ideas. In this way, you’ll not only have a better feeling for what others do and why, but you’ll also get more information, and you will be better able to interact with others. You’ll have a better understanding of those you interact with. As David W. Johnson writes in Psychology Today: “Once people can view the issue and situation both from their own perspective and the other persons’ perspectives, they can more easily find mutually beneficial solutions. Perspective-taking also communicates that one really understands their thoughts, feelings, and needs. It is usually easier to jointly solve a problem when the other people feel understood and respected.”
For politicians, taking the perspective of the other is not only a matter of the right attitude, but also a matter of being surrounded by the right persons, especially by the right advisors. By right advisors I don’t mean only advisors who basically agree with you but just also advisors that do not. It is important to have around you also advisors who are critical of your views and who can formulate alternative possibilities; possibilities you may not agree with initially. Such advisors help develop broad, multi-sided views. This is important since it helps make political decision makers aware 1) that everyone has a unique perspective; 2) that perspectives are dependent on a person’s experiences, expectations and goals; 3) that the same message can mean two entirely different things from two different perspectives; and 4) it helps avoid the misunderstanding that everybody sees things from the same perspective as you do, (see Psychology Today)
Generally, the effects of perspective taking are positive. 1) It improves communication and reduces misunderstandings and distortions. 2) It is essential for a realistic assessment of common and opposed interests and an accurate assessment of their validity and relative merits. Without a realistic view lasting agreements and solutions are hardly possible. 3) If you want to influence others, you need to have a feeling what they stand for and to feel the emotional force with which they believe in it. 4) Engaging in perspective-taking tends to improve the relationship with the other person. You are more liked and respected when the other sees that you know his perspective and takes it into consideration.
Some politicians do what you like and like what they do, without taking care what others and especially their opponents and victims think of it. At first, this egomania may be effective, but then those affected will look for countermeasures, or ways to ignore them and leave them alone. (see Psychology Today)

Random quote
How regrettable it is that many Great Man committed his almost superhuman acts like a dupe, like an insane one! With the initially perhaps noble inspiration, he gradually became a stormer and a robber chief.

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)

Johann Gottfried Herder, a forgotten philosopher

Some philosophers with a big impact on human thinking are almost forgotten. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) is one of them. I guess that most of my readers will not have heard of this Prussian Enlightenment philosopher. Happily, I knew a little bit about him, so when I saw an anthology from his work with an introduction in a bookshop, I didn’t hesitate to buy it. For, although I knew his name and although I knew that he had been an important thinker, and that he had something to do with the idea of history, I had never read anything written by Herder. So, this was a good opportunity to correct that omission.
In short, and maybe a bit exaggerated, Herder’s contribution to human thinking has been threefold:
- He invented the idea of history.
- He invented the idea of cultural relativism.
- He stressed the importance of language as the bearer of our thinking and world views.
There is more, but already this made Herder one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment.
As for the last point, which I’ll further ignore, Herder was one of the first to state that language shapes our framework of thinking, without saying that it determines thinking. Languages are the reflections of cultures.
But let me go to the other points. Until the 18th century the European world views were static. In fact, there was no past and no future, but only present. I mean, people thought that past and future were more or less copies of the present. Only the variables were filled in differently during the ages. The persons changed and institutions may have been replaced by other institutions, but it was, so to speak, old wine in new bottles, so people thought. However, Herder made clear that history involved development. The present is not a repetition of the past, but the past is substantially different from the present. Human institutions and ideas are continuously changing and becoming qualitatively different. There is progress, or maybe decline, or at least there is change. New wines are being developed, so to speak; not only the bottles become new. After some time, old wines are no longer considered tasty.
Herder introduced also the idea of cultural relativism. This involves that each culture has a value of its own. Therefore, each culture must be measured by its own standards. There are no inferior or superior cultures. This was a direct attack on the reigning European culture and its self-arrogance towards non-European cultures: “Every nation must ... only be viewed from its own situation with everything it is and has. ... Our European culture cannot act as a measure of general human values.”
That this was something new, can be illustrated by mediaeval paintings. Mediaeval painters often painted biblical scenes, so scenes in the holy land or otherwise in Egypt, Babylonia, and the like. However, these depicted scenes were clearly Mediaeval-European. They didn’t take into account that the biblical stories took place thousands of years ago in a different, Middle-Eastern culture. Only by and after the Renaissance, people began to realize that there have been different worlds that were not only inhabited by different people, but that these worlds were fundamentally different from theirs. So biblical scenes had to be filled with Middle-Eastern landscapes and with people in Middle-Eastern cloths. Johann Gottfried Herder was the first or at least the most influential philosopher who worded and expressed such views.

Does this mean that we must accept everything that is happening in other cultures, because it is happening in a culture that is not our own? Supposing that we accept Herder’s ideas, the answer is yes and no. It is “yes”, because we cannot or must not apply our own standards to cultures that are alien to these standards. Cultures must be judged from within. But this makes that the answer is also “no”. Actually, in each culture there are dissidents and critics. No culture is a unity. Moreover, cultures don’t exist isolated, anyway not in the present world. Carriers of a culture look across the borders of their own worlds, and there are always also a few who physically leave their own world and travel around and get new ideas and see other standards. This can be a starting point for criticism and cultural change.
Does this mean that in the end all values, norms and standards are relative, since culture-bound? I think that the answer is clearly “no”. Although values, norms and standards are culture-bound, this doesn’t involve that they are bound only to one culture. Some values, norms and standards are general and apply to everybody. We call them universal human values. They have been formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for instance. Thanks to the Enlightenment philosophers we know that general standards should be general and not be one-sided and culture-bound. Herder was one of these philosophers and certainly not the most unimportant one.

Sources: Johann Gottfried Herder, Hoe worden we humaan? (esp. pp. 106-124; quote on p. 118, my translation) and Wikipedia.

Random quote
Human feeling becomes indignant when brutal and brute trade measures are taken against innocent nations, purely for their own gain, so that such nations are actually sacrificed.

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) 

Fact and fake

Abstract portrait of Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis on a barn
somewhere in the North of the Netherlands

At the end of the First World War (1914-1918) there was a revolutionary mood in many European countries, also in countries that had been neutral in this war. I think that everybody knows about the Russian October Revolution, which actually took place in November 1917. It led to the establishment of the communist regime. In November 1918, uprisings broke out all over Germany. The result was the fall of the Empire and the establishment of the Weimar Republic. There were also revolutions and attempted revolutions in Hungary and Switzerland and other countries and, indeed, in the Netherlands (my own country) as well. Most Dutchmen will have heard of the failed bloodless coup by the Dutch social democratic leader Pieter Jelles Troelstra on 11 and 12 November, which actually was not more than a list of radical demands. Less known is the revolutionary atmosphere in Amsterdam on 13 November.
Although the Netherlands had nothing to do with the First World War and had stayed neutral, also this country had suffered a lot from the war because of a kind of blockade in disguise by the fighting countries, who tried to keep all food, industrial products etc. for themselves. The Netherlands was not only enclosed by the warring countries, but as a merchant country it was heavily dependent on the import of food and other products (including fertilizers) and it was unable to produce enough food for feeding its population. As a result, first food and other products had to be rationed and at the end of the war there was a beginning famine. Add to this the already existing poverty in rural and urban areas, and it was not surprising that there existed a pressure to change, if not to revolution. Under the influence of the events in Russia and Germany, also the Dutch leftist leaders made radical demands. On 12 November, the social democrats had brought them forward in meetings in Rotterdam and in the parliament in The Hague, and a day later also on a meeting in Amsterdam. On that 13th November, in the evening, communists, anarchists and other groups left of the social democrats organized a meeting elsewhere in Amsterdam. The great anarchistic leader Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis was also there. He was the most popular radical leader in the Netherlands in those days. He had done much for improving the miserable situation of the poor, especially for the rural poor, and therefore he was called “The Saviour”.
During this meeting of the radicals, it was decided to hold a march through Amsterdam. The mood was rebellious, and many participants thought that the revolution had now started. The route of the march passed two army barracks. When the front of the march with the leaders had already passed the first army barracks peacefully, a group of demonstrators in the middle of the parade decided to enter its grounds and to seize the weapons. Or at least, it’s what the guard may have thought. What exactly happened is not clear, but anyway, soldiers opened fire on the invaders, four demonstrators died and several were wounded. After this tragic event, some left the demonstration, others continued the march but the revolution never took place.

What did Domela Nieuwenhuis during the march? 25 years later, one of the demonstrators wrote: “I can still see this memorable demonstration in my mind … Domela Nieuwenhuis in a carriage in front of the march …”
However, Jan Meyers, the biographer of Domela Nieuwenhuis, wrote in 1993 that Domela went in a carriage at the backside of the march.
Domela was an old man, who hardly could walk anymore, so, if he had participated in the march, probably he would have done so in a carriage. However, a policy spy who had been present at the meeting before the march started reported that he was brought home, after having given a speech at the meeting. So, the march took place without Domela.

What happened really that evening in Amsterdam and especially what did Domela Nieuwenhuis? Most likely, the version of the police spy is true. Half a year later Domela was present at another march, and there he was present in a carriage. So, both marches may have been confused. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to suppose that the demonstrator, the biographer and the police spy were in good faith, when they told what Domela did on 13 November. What we see here are three different representations of the same “fact” that might have been true. Such things often happen. Often it is afterwards difficult to determine what is true and what is false, especially when we have only witness statements that describe an event and no objective evidence. Fake and fact are often difficult to disentangle, especially when what is fake has not been intentionally constructed. And look at yourself: How often aren’t you wrong, though you think to tell the truth?

Source: Wouter Linmans, Revolutiekoorts. Onrust en oproer in november 1918. Esp. pp. 139-141. See also my blog Personal identity and memory.

Random quote
From the time when man stole the fire from heaven and learned to work the iron, since he forcibly brought the animals and his fellow brothers together and also used the vegetable kingdom for the benefit of himself, he has in many ways contributed to the change of the climate. … So we can also imagine the human race as a troop of confident, but little giants, who have come down from the mountains in order to subdue there the earth and to change the climate with their weak fists. The future will tell to what extent they will succeed.

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)

At the top

“…why, in giving your estimate of a man, do you prize him wrapped and muffled up in clothes…”

In his essay “Of the inequality amongst us” (Essays, Book I-42) Montaigne asks why we don’t judge humans by their own gifts. “We commend a horse for his strength and sureness of foot”, so Montaigne, “and not for his rich caparison; a greyhound for his speed of heels, not for his fine collar...” So why then don’t we just humans for their own qualities? Someone may have many servants, a beautiful house, much power, many thousand pounds a year: all these are about him, but not in him. If you buy a horse, you want to see him without a horse blanket; you want to see him naked and open to your eye. So, “why, in giving your estimate of a man, do you prize him wrapped and muffled up in clothes? He then discovers nothing to you but such parts as are not in the least his own, and conceals those by which alone one may rightly judge of his value. ‘Tis the price of the blade that you inquire into, not of the scabbard: you would perhaps not bid a farthing for him, if you saw him stripped.” … “Measure [a person] without his stilts; let him lay aside his revenues and his titles; let him present himself in his shirt. Then examine if his body be sound and sprightly, active and disposed to perform its functions. What soul has he? Is she beautiful, capable, and happily provided of all her faculties? Is she rich of what is her own, or of what she has borrowed? Has fortune no hand in the affair? … Is she settled, even and content? This is what is to be examined, and by that you are to judge of the vast differences betwixt man and man.” This is what counts, so Montaigne. Power and wealth are mere outer appearances. Nevertheless, we are blinded by them, and we ignore the actual person. That is foolishness: “If we consider a peasant and a king, a nobleman and a vassal, a magistrate and a private man, a rich man and a poor, there appears a vast disparity, though they differ no more, as a man may say, than in their breeches.”
You can argue that having power, money and possessions does have advantages. However, they don’t make those who have them better persons. Even more, those on the top are usually worse off than ordinary humans. If you see those on the top in private, “you will see nothing more than an ordinary man, perhaps more contemptible than the meanest of his subjects: … cowardice, irresolution, ambition, spite, and envy agitate him as much as another”. In other words, as Montaigne explains by quoting Seneca: Although an ordinary man has less wealth and power than someone at the top, “the one is happy in himself; the happiness of the other is counterfeit.”
Here we have come to the heart of this essay. Montaigne will certainly not deny that having some wealth is better than being poor. As a lord, he knew that having some wealth frees you from much misery and from the basic limitations of life. Indeed, he was a lord, but only a little one, though one with relations in the highest circles. And just because of those relations with the top, he knew how life there was. Despite all praise that the one at the top receives, Montaigne knew that “he is but a man at best, and if he be deformed or ill-qualified from his birth, the empire of the universe cannot set him to rights.” Wealth and power don’t make you a better person than you actually are. “What of all that, if he be a fool? Even pleasure and good fortune are not relished without vigour and understanding… Where the body and the mind are in disorder, to what use serve these external conveniences: considering that the least prick with a pin, or the least passion of the soul, is sufficient to deprive one of the pleasure of being sole monarch of the world… Assuredly, it can be no easy task to rule others, when we find it so hard a matter to govern ourselves... I am very much of opinion that it is far more easy and pleasant to follow than to lead; and that it is a great settlement and satisfaction of mind to have only one path to walk in, and to have none to answer for but a man’s self.”
Being at the top doesn’t make you happy, nor does being extremely wealthy and living in abundance. “Nothing is so distasteful and clogging as abundance,” Montaigne tells us. However, – what Montaigne also wants to tell us – the problem is that many at the top think it does. And those at the top do not only think that such a life is the best there is because they are at the top, but in addition they are surrounded by people who make them believe that life there is the best there is and that they themselves are the best. Moreover, they choose such people around them. No wonder then, that they think to fulfil a divine mission and that they deserve the Noble Prize for that. Here, too, Montaigne holds up a mirror to them. Like all rulers, also Alexander the Great, King of Macedon (356-323 BC) was surrounded by flatterers. They told him that he was the son of Jupiter. However, Montaigne tells us, one day Alexander was wounded, and seeing the blood streaming from his wound, he said: “What say you now, my masters, is not this blood of a crimson colour and purely human? This is not of the complexion of that which Homer makes to issue from the wounded gods.”
Let me end this blog in the same way as Montaigne ended his essay: Each person’s way of life shapes his own fortune.

Random quote
We live in a possessed world. And we know it. It would not be unexpected for anyone if the madness suddenly broke out in a frenzy that would leave our poor European humanity in numbness and foolishness, with the engines still spinning and the flags still fluttering, but the mind gone. 

Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) 

Narcissism

The nymph Echo spied Narcissus, who had been lost in a wood, and she became immediately infatuated, following him, waiting for him to speak so her feelings might be heard. Echo came close enough so that she was revealed, and attempted to embrace him. Horrified, he stepped back and told her to “keep her chains”. Heartbroken, Echo wasted away, losing her body and only her voice remained.
Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, heard the pleas of a young man, Ameinias, who had fallen for Narcissus but was ignored and cursed him. Nemesis listened, and proclaimed that Narcissus would never be able to be loved by the one he fell in love with.
After spurning Echo and Ameinias, Narcissus became thirsty and found a pool of water. Leaning down to drink, Narcissus sees his reflection. Not realizing it was his own reflection, Narcissus fell deeply in love with it. Thus Nemesis’ curse came true, for unable to leave the allure of this image, Narcissus eventually realized that his love could not be reciprocated. He melted away from the fire of passion burning inside him, eventually turning into a gold and white flower.
(From: Wikipedia (adapted))

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Narcissus fell in love with himself, an impossible love. Psychologists used the myth and described narcissism as a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, a need for excessive admiration, and the belief that one is unique and deserving of special treatment. (source) Although at first, when you meet a narcissistic person, you may like him (a narcissist is more often a man than a woman), because he is charming and nice, over time you’ll feel ignored, uncared about, and unimportant, for a narcissist has at least five of the following characteristics:

1. A grandiose sense of self-importance, and exaggerating achievements and talents
2. Dreams of unlimited power, success, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. Requires excessive admiration
4. Believes he is special and unique, and can only be understood by, or should associate with other special or high-status people or institutions
5. Lacks empathy for the feelings and needs of others
6. Unreasonably expects special, favourable treatment or compliance with his wishes
7. Exploits and takes advantage of others to achieve personal ends
8. Envies others or believes they’re envious of him
9. Has “an attitude” of arrogance or acts that way
(source; in fact from the DSM-5 mental disorders manual).

You may think that each person has narcissist traits to some degree, but the difference between a normal person and a narcissist is that the latter has these traits to an extreme degree and that it is hard to talk with him about it. Moreover, it’s always you, who must give in, if you meet a person with a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). I found this accurate description of the difference between a normal person and a narcissist: “If you tell a ‘normal’ person they can’t come in, they may ask why but they will accept the boundary that’s been set. If you tell someone with NPD they can’t come in, they will try to break the door down. If you bolt the door, they will try the windows. If you board up and bolt the windows, they will try to make a hole in the roof. If that's an impossible route, they will burn the house down but they WILL get in because obsessively defeating the boundary you set becomes their objective, not the reason they wanted to come in.” (source)

Narcissism resembles hubris, as discussed in my last blog. Some see them as different positions on a personality scale. And it is so that Owen and Davidson listed narcissism among the symptoms of the hubris syndrome (see my last blog). Nevertheless, they are not the same. While hubris is a trait a person has acquired by his experiences, narcissism (NPD) is a disorder, so a kind of illness. Hubris is temporary, while narcissism is a personality characteristic and therefore difficult to change, if it is. It makes that the hubris syndrome appears in later life, while narcissism appears in late childhood or adolescence and it continues into adulthood. The hubris syndrome is an outcome of the environment acquired by persons in positions of power, and if it can be seen as an illness, it is “an illness of position as much as of the person.” (Owen) This doesn’t mean, of course, that hubristic persons cannot have a narcissistic disorder as well.
Can we do without persons with narcissistic traits? A study by Zoltán Fazekas and Peter K. Hatemi shows that “those scoring higher in narcissism … participate more in politics, including contacting politicians, signing petitions, joining demonstrations, donating money, and voting in midterm elections.” “The general picture is that individuals who believe in themselves, and believe that they are better than others, engage in the political process more,” so the researchers. “At the same time, those individuals who are more self-sufficient are also less likely to take part in the political process. This means that policies and electoral outcomes could increasingly be guided by those who both want more, but give less.” In an interview, Peter Hatemi says: “It is hard not to notice how much more of ‘me’ is part of our world – projecting one’s status at the cost of others, whether using social media such as Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. … It was hard for my colleague Zoltan Fazekas and I [sic] to ignore the rampant narcissism in our elected leaders, and the outcomes of their decisions. And it seemed likely that higher public narcissism has some role in the growing instability of our democracy. … A healthy democracy depends on a representative public that participates, but perhaps those who are participating are part of the problem? Some of the public has become more mobilized, but this mobilization is not evenly distributed. Arguably, people who participate more are more hardline and ideologically driven than any time in history, and it looks like narcissism has some role as well.” In a Me Era we can expect me-politicians, and that’s what we are seeing now.
I wanted to write about the difference between hubristic and narcissistic behaviour, but in the present political practice it makes little difference whether we are victims of the former or the latter.

Random quote
Famous quote but today more than ever true:
‘Tis to much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we must yet walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in the world, we are but seated upon our breech.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

The hubris syndrome

The Greek goddess Nemesis in the interpretation of Albrecht Dürer

Two weeks ago, I analysed hubris as a kind of once-occurring, at least not systematically arrogant and intemperate behaviour. However, it can also happen that someone shows regularly or even systematically this undesirable behaviour. Then hubris has become a personality trait and the person concerned suffers from the hubris syndrome.
The hubris syndrome is mainly found in persons who hold positions of power. Just this makes it dangerous, not only for the persons in the immediate environment of the hubristic person. If a person is a top politician or a CEO, hubristic behaviour can have far-reaching consequences for sectors of society, if not for society as a whole and the whole world, as Lord David Owen has shown in his book The Hubris Syndrome. As Owen says there (p. xiii): “The havoc which hubristic heads of government can wreak is usually suffered by the people in whose name they govern.” And although in the beginning hubristic persons may win glory and acclamation because of their successes, in the end they meet their nemesis, like in a Greek tragedy.
What does the hubris syndrome involve? Lord Owen and Jonathan Davidson, who together coined the term hubris syndrome, present in their article “Hubris syndrome…” a list of 14 symptoms of the syndrome (see also here):

1. A narcissistic propensity to see their world primarily as an arena in which to exercise power and seek glory.
2. A predisposition to take actions which seem likely to cast the individual in a good light – i.e. in order to enhance image.
3. A disproportionate concern with image and presentation.
4. A messianic manner of talking about current activities and a tendency to exaltation.
5. An identification with the nation, or organization to the extent that the individual regards his/her outlook and interests as identical.
6. A tendency to speak in the third person or use the royal “we”.
7. Excessive confidence in the individual’s own judgement and contempt for the advice or criticism of others.
8. Exaggerated self-belief, bordering on a sense of omnipotence, in what they personally can achieve.
9. A belief that rather than being accountable to the mundane court of colleagues or public opinion, the court to which they answer is: History or God.
10. An unshakable belief that in that court they will be vindicated.
11. Loss of contact with reality; often associated with progressive isolation.
12. Restlessness, recklessness and impulsiveness.
13. A tendency to allow their “broad vision”, about the moral rectitude of a proposed course, to obviate the need to consider practicality, cost or outcomes.
14. Hubristic incompetence, where things go wrong because too much self-confidence has led the leader not to worry about the nuts and bolts of policy.

It is not so that a person suffering from the hubris syndrome should have all these symptoms. Three or four are enough, so Owen , to contemplate such a diagnosis. Moreover, the hubris syndrome is better seen as an acquired personality trait rather than as an acquired personality disorder. (see here) In addition, as Owen says in his book (p. 3) and articles: “Most syndromes of personality tend to manifest themselves in people by the age of eighteen and stay with them for the rest of their lives. Hubristic syndrome is different in that it should not be seen as a personality syndrome but as something which manifests itself in leaders only when in power – and usually only after they have been wielding it for some time – and which then may well abate once power is lost. In that sense it is an illness of position as much as of the person.” Usually, the syndrome comes gradually and gradually it fades away after the person has lost his position, for it often depends on the circumstances a person is in; on external factors. Owen mentions especially three key factors: Holding substantial power, minimal constraint on the leader exercising such personal authority, and the length of time they stay in power.

The hubris syndrome is not an innocent trait. It has many negative effects. A leader who thinks to be the greatest can cause many problems. To mention a few (see here):
- Lack of trust: The inability to see their own mistakes, shortcomings and incompetence undermines the confidence of those who should assist and support the leader.
- Weak relationships: People avoid solid bonds with arrogant and self-indulgent persons and those whom they don’t trust.
- Irrational decision-making: Leaders who don’t accept criticism make decisions without valuable insights and input from other people and are often perceived as impulsive and reckless.
- Leaders who don’t admit mistakes and don’t accept criticism tend to have ineffective teams that must support them.

Once a leader has become hubristic, it is difficult to change their behaviour, for hubristic leaders tend to surround themselves with assistants who agree with them already in advance and who confirm their decisions and behaviour and do not criticize them. However, when you get a leadership position there are a few things you can do to prevent that you become hubristic (ibid.):
- Ask for feedback regularly.
- Try to understand what kind of person you are.
- Get your hands dirty, so do some grunt work yourself.

But alas, it’s a feature of hubristic personalities that they are not open to such preventive and corrective measures. In a Greek drama, hubris always leads to the fall of the hubristic person. Hubris is punished by Nemesis. In the real world, often it is not different. But before that happens, a lot of damage has already been done.

---

P.S. Should I mention names? Most authoritarian political leaders in the present world are hubristic persons. Trump and Putin in the first place. However, once you know the characteristics, you will no doubt also recognize hubristic persons in your immediate environment.

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Arrogance of power [is] a psychological need that nations seem to have in order to prove that they are bigger, better, or stronger than other nations.

J. William Fulbright (1905-1995), former chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Hubris

The Fall of Icarus (Lantern console, Utrecht, NL)

In my last blog, I described how Idomeneo, King of Crete, opposed the will of a god and the forces of the cosmic order in order to save his son’s life. I explained that Idomeneo’s behaviour exemplifies the behaviour of the present world leaders, especially the older ones, who, like Idomeneo, ignore the obligations imposed on them by the human and cosmic order. After having written this blog, I realized that the ancient Greeks had a word for such behaviour: Hubris (also hybris; Greek: ὕβρις). It was one of the biggest crimes that a Greek citizen could commit. In Athens, you could be severely punished for it. But what actually is hubris?
At school, I learned that it had to be translated as overconfidence or haughtiness. However, I was told that it was a complex, much wider concept. And indeed, it is. Not only has hubris a much wider meaning than just overconfidence or haughtiness, but it’s meaning changed also through the ages. “In ancient times”, so Britannica, it meant “the intentional use of violence to humiliate or degrade. The word’s connotation changed over time, and hubris came to be defined as overweening presumption that leads a person to disregard the divinely fixed limits on human action in an ordered cosmos.” (my italics)
Hubris was often seen as extremely arrogant behaviour towards other persons, for example by Aristotle in his Rhetorics 1378b. However, I think that disregarding the cosmic order is at least so important as the personal aspect, if not the most important aspect, of hubris. But the personal aspect doesn’t need to exclude the cosmic aspect. Actually, the former is a manifestation of the latter, and that’s why it was considered a crime. Indeed, “some poets—especially Hesiod (7th century BCE) and Aeschylus (5th century BCE)—used hubris to describe wrongful action against the divine order”, so Britannica.
However, as Sjoerd van Hoorn explains, hubris isn’t only a violation of the divine or cosmic order as such, it is also a psychic attitude. For Pindar and Theognis (Greek poets, 6th century BCE) hybrid was a psychic concept. “Hybris is … an excess of confidence or too great a happiness that does not suit a person … A human who possesses practical wisdom is one who keeps measure, while immoderation can end in crime on the one hand, but on the other hand it can amount to what we still refer to in Dutch as ‘request the gods’ [= tempting fate], act in such a way that you ask for problems, as it were”, so van Hoorn (my italics)

Above I have explained that hubris is a complex, wide concept that, through the ages, had different meanings for the ancient Greeks, or at least different connotations. Nevertheless, I think that we can say that the concept of hubris has the following characteristics:
- Arrogant behaviour and contempt for the other, accompanied by humiliation, insolence, and the like.
- Violation of the human, divine and cosmic order; if not disrespect for this order. Instead of divine and cosmic order, most of us today would say the natural order. The human order includes the legal order.
- Immoderation, intemperateness if not excessiveness.
Hubris is an old Greek word. If you would ask me for a modern word or expression that covers its meaning best, I think that disrespect is a good choice; or even better, disrespect based on a sense of superiority. To my mind just this idea excellently sums up the behaviour of the leaders of the major world powers and of the people around them. It’s not difficult to fill in names. They all try to strengthen their positions and to glorify themselves at the cost of others by disrespecting and taunting these others and by discrediting their integrity. In doing so they go against the cosmic order that forces us to take care of problems like climate change, war, poverty, depleting human resources, etc. In Athens hubris was a severe crime. In Greek mythology and in Greek dramas hubris was always punished, as it was in Mozart’s opera Idomeneo, too. Why would it now be different? Hubris goes before a fall.

Random quote
The phenomenon of something happening to a person’s mental stability when in power has been observed for centuries … Perhaps the most profound, though non-medical, study of this was made in the ancient world. The Greeks developed the notion of hubris to characterise and explore it. The most basic meaning was simply as a description of an act: a hubristic act was one in which a powerful figure, puffed up with overweening pride and self-confidence, treated others with insolence and contempt.

Lord David Owen (1938-), British politician and physician, Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979.

An eternal drama

Idomeneo, King of Crete, (Daniel Behle) and his people receiving the applause  after the 
performance of Mozart's opera "Idomeneo" The National Opera, Amsterdam, 15 February 2025

After the Greeks had conquered Troy and had destroyed the city, they could finally return home, after ten years of fighting. However, the gods that had supported the Trojans were still against the Greeks, and for many the journey home became an arduous undertaking. We all know that it took Odysseus ten years to reach his dear wife Persephone in Ithaca. Also Idomeneo, King of Crete, didn’t have a safe passage. Almost got home, Poseidon, the god of the sea, made him get into a severe storm. Idomeneo’s ship foundered and he could save his life only by promising Poseidon to sacrifice him the first person he would meet, if he would safely reach Creta. This first person was his son Idamante.
This is the background of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo, King of Crete, which I have seen two weeks ago in Amsterdam. It is the moment when the opera begins and the story develops. The essence of the drama is the conflict between the love of the father for his son on the one hand and his obligations to the gods, and in general to the forces of the cosmic order, on the other hand. As always in a Greek drama, it is impossible to escape fate and the forces of the cosmic order and certainly not the anger of a god who had been promised a sacrifice he didn’t get. In the original libretto Mozart’s opera was based on, in vain Idomeneo tries to escape his fate to offer his son and he kills him in a fit of madness. Mozart decided to give the opera a happy end: Other gods intervene, and Idomeneo abdicates the throne and is succeeded by Idamante. However, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the director of the present performance in Amsterdam, decided to go back to the original version of the story in which Idomeneo kills Idamante. As a consequence Idomeneo stays the ruler of Crete. Just this change by Cherkaoui makes this opera relevant to what happens in the world today, more than ever.
In order to understand why Cherkaoui decided to return to the original story of the drama, let’s listen to what he says about it. (the figures refer to the sources below) “I’d love to believe in that happy end,” so Cherkaoui “but the real world shows that it’s often not the case. These days, the young are fighting for their future and combating all kinds of oppression, but they are facing a cynical minority who don’t want to relinquish their privileges.” (1) Cherkaoui “sees an almighty king who refuses to give up his throne, even if he runs the risk of having to sacrifice his own son. He recognized our own times of crisis, in which political leaders are increasingly empowered and in which the future of the next generations is threatened by the political decisions of their predecessors.” (2) The gods and the monster in the opera “teach us that there are invisible, unwritten laws and that we expose ourselves – and the generations that come after us – to the risk of disaster, if we break them. The attacks and bombings we see in the world today are no less monstrous. The ancient Greek myths follow the principle of action and reaction, and teach us that what we do always has consequences.” (2) In the opera, Idamante, who represents the younger generation, falls in love with the Trojan princess Ilia, who stays as a prisoner in Crete. But it is a forbidden love. In this way, the past of the Trojan War with its massacres “are pressing on the present in the form of unprocessed trauma. The younger characters are trapped in a history that is not theirs.” (2) Therefore it is not realistic to give the opera a happy end, as Mozart did. By giving the end a dramatic turn, Cherkaoui wants to express his concerns about “the news, where we face revenge, egocentrism, armed conflict and bombings. Idomeneo warns against autocratic power without compassion for the people.” (2)
Indeed, when we see what is happening around us today, it is not difficult to recognize the drama depicted in the opera Idomeneo. Old leaders in the major powers of the world, don’t give up their power, but use it to perform their own actions of revenge. They betray the people who elected them, and block the new generations, that should replace them. The old leaders keep themselves busy with the traumas of the past (the war in Ukraine is a case in point) instead of the problems of the future (by neglecting or denying environmental problems, for instance). They try to strengthen their positions by spreading lies. In doing so they go against the cosmic order that forces us to take care of the problems that are ahead of us and not of those that are behind us. There is a saying that the revolution eats its own children. Here we see something like that, in the sense that the leaders destroy the people who have chosen them.
Interpreted in the way Cherkaoui has done, Idomeneo holds up a mirror to us. It’s a pessimistic interpretation but also a realistic interpretation in view of what is happening in the present world. Nevertheless, I don’t want to completely reject the possibility of Mozart’s interpretation of the drama, for the future is still open.

Sources
(1) Simon Hatab, “In gesprek met Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui”, in Idomeneo. re di Creta. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Nationale Opera & Ballet, Amsterdam; pp. 13-15. https://www.operaballet.nl/en/online-programme/idomeneo
(2) Jasmijn van Wijnen, “Interview. Choreograaf en regisseur Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui over Idomeneo”, in Odeon. Magazine van De Nationale Opera, jaargang 31, nr. 136; pp. 9-10.

Random quote
Boredom results from being attentive to the passage of time itself.

William James (1842-1910) 

When are you a philosopher?

Baruch de Spinoza

In his book Es musste etwas besser werden …(It had to get a little better)  – in which Jürgen Habermas is interviewed by Stefan Müller Doohm and Roman Yos – Habermas tells us (p. 14): “I have always suspected myself not to be a ‘real’ philosopher; not one, if you will allow me the cliché, who starts from contemplating one’s own life situation and strives for deep, metaphysically valid insights. I recognized my motives more in Marxism and pragmatism. I consider the desire to make the world a little better or even to help stop the ever-threatening regressions to be an entirely unblemished motive. Therefore, I am quite satisfied with the term ‘philosopher and sociologist’.”
When reading this, I was a bit surprised, for Habermas started his academic career as a philosopher; that is, he wrote his PhD thesis The Absolute and History about the development of the concept of the absolute in Schelling’s work against the background of Heidegger’s Being and Time. Isn’t this a real philosophical theme? Only after having written his thesis, Habermas switched to more sociological themes. Moreover, aren’t Marxism and pragmatism philosophical movements? Or at least, aren’t they also philosophical movements? And thirdly, if you are a philosopher and a sociologist, does the fact that you are also a sociologist make you a less real philosopher? Does it make you an inferior kind of philosopher? Nevertheless, I can understand Habermas’s feeling, since I have a bit the same “problem”, but then the other way round. I studied sociology and later I switched to philosophy and then I wrote my PhD thesis on a philosophical subject (in the field of action theory). Since then, I have written mainly on philosophical subjects (although I must admit that over the years my themes have become more sociological again). So there are reasons to call myself a philosopher. Nevertheless, I hesitate to do so. Why? Actually I am a philosopher and sociologist in the sense explained by Habermas. That’s okay, isn’t it? Then why should I hesitate to apply these designations to myself?
However this may be, I think that Habermas’s words betray a German view on philosophy; a view that he wouldn’t have expressed in this way, if he were an Anglo-Saxon philosopher. In his view, a philosopher – as a philosopher! – should deal with “deeper” ideas; he or she should answer “deeper” questions; so with questions about the Absolute, the Being, the Good, Reason, etc. In this view, questions like what actions are and what makes them different from behaviour (Davidson) are not philosophical; just like questions about the right political system (Spinoza); or what meaningful language is (Dummett); what the distinction of science and non-science is (Carnap); etc.; so, questions that refer to the practice of life, methodological questions, and many more. These are questions especially studied by Anglo-Saxon philosophers. Understand me well, Habermas doesn’t object to them. Also according to him, they make sense. Even more, Habermas studied them, too, and he tried to find answers to these questions. Nevertheless, if I understand well his words quoted above, in his heart Habermas thinks that such questions are not to be studied by a Philosopher as a Philosopher (so a philosopher written with a capital P).
Apart from the question whether Habermas would defend this “German” view on philosophy – and I think that he would not and that, when asked, he would give a much broader view of what philosophy is; but here I am just interpreting the hidden view behind the quotation above – I think that many people have such a “Habermasian” view on philosophy as a vague and woolly activity. As we have seen above, this does not correspond to philosophical practice. But what then does a philosopher do? If you would ask me, I would say: A philosopher studies questions that are not empirical (or theological; but here I want to ignore the question what makes philosophy and theology different). So a philosopher studies all questions that cannot be empirically tested (and that are not theological). Okay, there are also so-called experimental philosophers, but they do not experimentally test philosophical views as such, but they test whether philosophical intuitions and justifications are generally shared. For example, if a philosopher says “This statement is intuitively true”, an experimental philosopher is interested in the question whether this intuition is generally shared and not in the truth of the statement.
Questions like the difference between action and behaviour, or what the right political system is, etc., may not be “deep” questions, but they are relevant for the practice of daily life. For example, whether we interpret a crime as an action or as a piece of behaviour makes whether we send the perpetrator to prison or to a psychiatric hospital. Such an interpretation is, at least for a part, philosophical. In case a practical question cannot be solved by an empirical test, we can try to solve it by thinking it through. And for that we need a philosopher or someone who thinks philosophically.

Random quote
Texts offer their resistance to the reader, philosophical texts even more so.

Jürgen Habermas (1929-) 

Poisoning the well

In old times, it was an often-used method to poison the wells of your enemy. Actually, it’s not only a method of the ancient past. In March 1917, during the First World War (1914-1918), the German army decided to shorten their lines on the Western Front in Northern France in order to make them stronger and they left extended areas to the French and the British armies. The Germans devastated these areas with scorched earth tactics and they poisoned the wells there as well. I am convinced that this method is still applied in the present wars in the world, although I have no evidence. This is already bad enough, but when in medieval Europe an epidemic broke out, often the false myth went around that Jews secretly poisoned wells and drinking fountains used by Christians and that this was the cause of the epidemic. Often this created a gulf of antisemitism if not violence and injustice against Jews. Certainly in those days it was difficult for the Jews to refute such false allegations.
Poisoning the well – in reality or confabulated – is not only a method of fighting, it has also become the name of a fallacy, so a mistake in our way of thinking. It belongs to the category of ad hominem fallacies or “playing the man”. The essence of the poisoning the well fallacy (PTW) is this: “PTW occurs when we illegitimately prime our audience with a pre-emptive strike against, or with adverse information about, an argumentative opponent before the latter has had a chance to say anything in her own defense or in defense of her point of view.” This will make the audience – and maybe the speaker as well – prejudiced against the opponent with the effect that the audience will interpret the opponent’s claims “as ‘fulfilling’ and ‘confirming’ the presumptions buried inside this conceptual trap.” (Ruiz, p. 196) In other words, the opponent is already put in a bad light before she has had any possibility to react, with the possible effect that she isn’t taken seriously or that her reaction is seen as a confirmation of what the speaker said about her, anyhow. For example (from “Poisoning the Well”):

“Tim: Boss, you heard my side of the story why I think Bill should be fired and not me. Now, I am sure Bill is going to come to you with some pathetic attempt to weasel out of this lie that he has created.
Explanation: Tim is poisoning the well by priming his boss by attacking Bill’s character, and setting up any defense Bill might present as ‘pathetic’. Tim is using this fallacious tactic here, but if the boss were to accept Tim’s advice about Bill, she would be committing the fallacy.”

As Nelson Todd explains: “The reason [PTW] is a fallacy is that it, like other fallacies, operates on the basis of little or no evidence. As such, it is prone to yield erroneous conclusions because it is not an orderly, objective way to reason through an argument.” The argumentation of the speaker is only based on the defamation of the opponent and then already before she got a chance to speak. It is not based on what the opponent really says. Moreover, besides that the other person is defamed, it is quite possible, even if the defamation generally is true, that it is not true in this case. If you say or think that John is a pathological liar, it is still possible that in this case he speaks the truth.
Poisoning the well can be an intentional tactic to “win” your case. It is often used as a tactic by politicians in order to get the voters on their hand. However, it is also possible that the speaker really believes what she says. Then PTW is not only a kind of false reasoning but also a kind of prejudice in the head of the speaker. If so, PTW is not only a kind of false reasoning that influences what others do but also your own actions. To take an example of Nelson: If “a patient in alcohol or drug rehab … encounters a therapist who has never had any alcohol or drugs themselves[, the] patient might think, ‘There is no way this person will ever truly understand what it is like to be an addict – therefore, I am not going to listen to anything they have to say.’ ” But maybe the therapist has much experience with treating addicts and has become the best expert in this field. The patient is prejudiced against the therapist. Since every person has prejudices, everybody of us should be aware that he or she can fall into the PTW trap. For instance: “I think that he is such and such a person, so therefore he’ll react in X way”. But is he really such and such a person? Isn’t it a bias in your head? Beware, for often we don’t poison the wells of our adversaries but our own wells.

Sources
- Nelson, Todd, “How ‘Poisoning the Well’ Hurts Everyone”, op website https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/us-and-them/202310/how-poisoning-the-well-hurts-everyone
- “Poisoning the Well”, op website https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Poisoning-the-Well
- Roberto Ruiz, “Poisoning the well”, in Robert Arp; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019; pp. 196-200.

Random quote
As a single, self-contained person, man can only exist by drawing breath from the space of meanings and reasons shared with other speakers, that is from the linguistic infrastructure of his "world" - but at the same time intersubjectively shared - life.

Jürgen Habermas (1929-)

Culture and clashes

Edward Sapir is especially known for his contributions to linguistics. During his work as a linguist, he studied Native American languages. This made that he became interested in anthropology as well. So, his Culture, Language, and Personality. Selected Essays (see my blog last week) contains besides linguistic studies also anthropological articles. One, “Cultural, genuine and spurious” (pp. 78-119), describes what culture is, and, though written a century ago, I think that Sapir’s classification of types of culture there is still relevant in the present world; a world characterized by migration flows that bring people with different cultural backgrounds into contact with each other on a large scale. Some (notably Samuel P. Huntington) think that this will lead to an increase of conflicts in the world, even to that extent that they speak of a clash of civilizations or cultures. Although I think that the origin of the present conflicts and those that can be expected in the near future is more complicated, this seems to me sufficient reason to go into the question what actually culture is.

According to Sapir there are three wa=ys that the concept of culture is used. Firstly, “culture is technically used by the ethnologist and culture-historian to embody any socially inherited element in the life of man, material and spiritual. Culture so defined is coterminous with man himself…” (p. 79) In this sense, culture is every human material and non-material product, but in a material product not the product as such is important for seeing it as cultural, so not the “hardcore” or “stuff” is important, but the way humans use it and have produced it. For instance, not that we eat cauliflower as such is cultural, for humans need to eat, like all animals. But it is cultural, because we prepare this vegetable in a certain way; because we eat it in a certain way, which is different from culture to culture (if people elsewhere eat cauliflower); because the present cauliflowers are the result of an age-old cultivation process; etc. In this view, culture is what makes a material thing a social product. Since as a child I read already anthropology books, I am very familiar with this use of the concept of culture, but most people don’t see it this way.
“The second application of the term is more widely current”, so Sapir. “It refers to a rather conventional idea of individual refinement, built up on a certain modicum of assimilated knowledge and experience but made up chiefly of a set of typical reactions that have the sanction of a class and of a tradition of long standing.” (80-81) It is the concept that makes that we call something sophisticated, or that we call a person so, because he or she knows how things are or should be done, especially in the intellectual field. We call such a knowledgeable person a “cultured person”, but, so Sapir adds, “only up to a certain point. Far more emphasis is placed upon manner, a certain preciousness of conduct which takes different colors according to the nature of the personality that has assimilated the ‘cultured’ ideal.” A negative expression of this kind of culture is snobbishness. (81)
The third type of culture is most difficult to describe, Sapir says. It is vague but undeniable and all-penetrating. It “shares with our first, technical, conception an emphasis on the spiritual possessions of the group rather than of the individual. With our second conception it shares a stressing of selected factors out of the vast whole of the ethnologist’s stream of culture as intrinsically more valuable, more characteristic, more significant in a spiritual sense than the rest.” This cultural conception “aims to embrace in a single term those general attitudes, views of life, and specific manifestations of civilization that give a particular people its distinctive place in the world. Emphasis is put not so much on what is done and believed by a people as on how what is done and believed functions in the whole life of that people, on what significance it has for them.” (82-83). This type of culture is often ascribed to nations, also to groupings within nations, and sometimes it unites people that are separated by borders. In this way we can talk of the Dutch culture, American culture, Kurdish culture, Scandinavian culture, Catalonian culture, and the like.
To this threefold use of the concept of culture I want to add yet another application. Briefly, it refers to what we could call the works and practices of intellectual, and in particular artistic, activity. Music, literature, painting and sculpture, theatre and film are types of practices of this idea of culture. Especially, it refers to the “higher” versions of these practices. I think that this fourth type of culture is what most people think of, when they think of culture. Many countries have a Ministry of Culture that deals with and tries to stimulate culture in this fourth sense.

This now fourfold use of the concept of culture makes clear that it is a multidimensional concept. When we talk about culture, at first sight it may not be clear what we mean by it. It is a thing that must be clarified, explicitly or implicitly, before we can go on. A certain use or “dimension” of the concept is relevant only in the right context. In the context of a political discussion and practice in which migration, ethnic diversity and integration are important themes, the first and third uses are most important, so the ethnological use of the concept of culture and the use that stresses general attitudes, views of life, and specific manifestations of nations and peoples. For just these cultural dimensions lead to and form the values, norms, customs and habits of peoples that are often mutually not understood and that can lead to large-scale frictions that surpass individual irritations. Just cultural differences created in this way are often misunderstood and belong to the factors that make that some want to kick out the newly arrived.

Random quote
We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

Edward Sapir (1884-1939)

Language and life world. Edward Sapir

About 100 years ago, a group of philosophers, the so-called logical positivists, tried to develop a system which should make it possible to reduce all scientific statements to logic. Especially Rudolf Carnap tried to do so in his 1928 book Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World). It failed. The problem was that these philosophers considered language as something objective, a mere instrument. What they forgot or ignored was that each objective scientific language is based on the ordinary language of daily life and that there is a close connection between a language and the life world of its speakers. In other words, there is a close connection between language and culture. We can never define the basic terms of a scientific theory in a purely objective manner, for in the end, we must always fall back on the colloquial language in order to describe these basic terms. Logical positivists could have understood this, if they had been open to the language theory of one of their contemporaries, Edward Sapir. Sapir, didn’t study the relationship between scientific language and ordinary language and life world, but he gave the tools that can be used for such an analysis.
Edward Sapir (1884-1939), a Polish born American, worked both in the field of anthropology and in the field of linguistics. He is especially known for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which he developed together with his student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941). This hypothesis says that the way someone perceives and conceptualizes the world is determined by the language he or she speaks. We can find the essence of this thesis in Sapir’s article “Language”. In the first place, so Sapir states there, language is “a system of phonetic symbols for the expression of communicable thought and feeling.” (p. 1) This means that a language is not merely phonetic, so a combination of sounds, for these sounds refer to something in the world, which makes that they have a meaning. “In all known languages, phonemes [sets of similar speech sounds] are built up into distinct and arbitrary sequences which are at once recognized by speakers as meaningful symbols of reference.” (4-5) Such phonemes are combined into words. These words can be combined and structured in a “complicated field of … formal procedures which are intuitively employed by the speakers of a language in order to build up aesthetically and functionally satisfying symbol sequences …” Together these formal procedures constitute the grammar of a language. (5)
A language doesn’t have only these formal characteristics, but it has psychological characteristics as well. First, language is felt to be a perfect symbolic system for handling all references and meanings of a culture, both useful for communication and for thinking. (6) Second, as a way of acting, language does not “stand apart from or run parallel to direct experience but completely interpenetrates with it.” (8) Reality and language are often felt as two sides of the same coin. Thirdly, since we grow into language from our birth, it is, “in spite of its quasi-mathematical form, … rarely a purely referential organization. It tends to be so only in scientific discourse, and even there it may be seriously doubted whether the ideal pure reference is ever attained by language.” (10; my italics) Given the expressive and communicative function of language plus the fact that language refers to the world around us and that in this way it gets a symbolic content, we can say that, in Sapir’s view, language is a reflection of our life world, and is often felt to be the world itself.
Though “the importance of language as a whole for the definition, expression, and transmission of culture is undoubted”, so Sapir, “it does not follow … that there is a simple correspondence between the form of a language and the form of the culture of those who speak it. … There is no general correlation between cultural type and linguistic structure.” (34) For then grammar and culture should develop in a parallel way, which is clearly not the case. But though we cannot see the influence of the general form of a language on the culture where this language is spoken, we can see such an influence of the detailed content of this language: “Vocabulary is a very sensitive index of the culture of a people and changes of the meaning, loss of old words, the creation and borrowing of new ones are all dependent on the history of culture itself.” (36) It is in the words and distinctions made in languages that we can see the impact of a language on a culture. Moreover, his view on language implies that language can be influenced by culture, such as that new inventions lead to new words. The essence is – and that is what the logical positivists ignored and what led to the failure of their approach – that language refers to the world; not to the world as such but to culture. Culture gives language its meaning while language gives culture its views. One implication is that we cannot develop an objective language with no connection with our culture, and by that with our life world.

Blog written on the occasion of Edward Sapir’s birthday (26 January) and the anniversary of his death (4 February).

Source
Edward Sapir, “Language”, in Culture, Language, and Personality. Selected Essays. Berkeley, etc.: University of California Press, 1956. The page numbers after the quotes in the text refer to this edition.