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.