Hobbes against hate speech

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21597833
AutoresTeresa M Bejan (0000-0003-3091-595X, University of Oxford, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen32
Número2
Páginas247-264
Fecha de publicación2024-03-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0960-8788 • E-ISSN: 1469-3526
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09608788.2022.2027340
OpenAlexW4210735735
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias 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