Hobbes against hate speech

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21597833
AutoresTeresa M Bejan (0000-0003-3091-595X, University of Oxford, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume32
Fascículo2
Páginas247-264
Data de publicação2024-03-03
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0960-8788 • E-ISSN: 1469-3526
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09608788.2022.2027340
OpenAlexW4210735735
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas34

This article argues that Thomas Hobbes' analysis of insult or ‘contumely’ prefigures recent developments in moral and political philosophy in striking ways. Specifically, Hobbes's concerns about the dignitary harms in hate speech went well beyond ‘fighting words’ to the essential role played by expressions of hatred and contempt in making and unmaking social hierarchies. Hobbes’s sensitivity to contumely’s subtle power to constitute social in/equalities recalls recent work in feminist and critical race theory. Yet his expansive solutions – both negative and positive, legal and ethical – also shed light on the difficulties faced by aspirationally egalitarian societies in their efforts to eradicate contempt today

Contempt · Epistemology · Expansive · Hatred · Insult · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · Theology · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · War, Ethics, and Justification