The Meaning of Hubris
An ancient vice reaches a dizzying new height.
By JOHN LEAKE
Wikipedia has an interesting entry on hubris.
Hubris (/ˈhjuːbrɪs/; from Ancient Greek ὕβρις (húbris) 'pride, insolence, outrage'), or less frequently hybris (/ˈhaɪbrɪs/), describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance. The term arrogance comes from the Latin adrogare, meaning "to feel that one has a right to demand certain attitudes and behaviors from other people." To arrogate means "to claim or seize without justification... To make undue claims to having,” or "to claim or seize without right... to ascribe or attribute without reason.”
The term hubris originated in Ancient Greek, where it had several different meanings depending on the context. In legal usage, it meant assault or sexual crimes and theft of public property, and in religious usage it meant transgression against a god.
Aristotle expounded on the idea of hubris being the desire to impose shame on another.
… to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: naive men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater.
In religious usage, hubris means to transgress against the natural order of things as though one possesses abilities not given to mortal men.
The Greek word for sin, hamartia (ἁμαρτία), originally meant "error" in the ancient dialect, and so poets like Hesiod and Aeschylus used the word "hubris" to describe transgressions against the gods. A common way that hubris was committed was when a mortal claimed to be better than a god in a particular skill or attribute. Claims like these were rarely left unpunished.
It seems to me that HUBRIS is the essential vice of the Military-Industrial-Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex. As I have mentioned in previous posts, much of this vice is fueled by the U.S. government’s endless creation of money out of thin air in order to finance spectacularly risky, greedy, and unproductive schemes.
A notable, comical depiction of hubris was featured in this totally unexpected scene in the 2010 film, The Other Guys.
When you say "naive men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater", it makes me think of the scorn and abuse heaped on people like Dr. McCullough by far, far, far lesser men.
Your post much appreciated by this classical languages scholar, many years ago. Good job.