Weinstein, Hubris, and Narcissism

Like the protagonist of an ancient Greek tragedy, Harvey Weinstein has fallen from a position of wealth, power, and prestige. Like other tragic figures, Weinstein has only himself to blame. He has been accused of acts of hubris. The Greek word hubris is often translated as foolish pride, but it referred to offenses of a particular kind. In Rhetoric, Aristotle explained that “hubris consists in causing injury or annoyance whereby the sufferer is disgraced, not to obtain any other advantage for oneself besides the performance of the act, but for one’s own pleasure….The cause of the pleasure felt by those who insult is the idea that, in ill-treating others, they are more fully showing superiority.”

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Was the Shooter a Terrorist or a Narcissist?

There has been yet another mass shooting in the United States. This one is the deadliest in living memory. In the wake of this horror, people are having the usual arguments about whether the shooting was an act of terrorism and whether the shooter was mentally ill. The first is a legal question, and the second is a medical question. To answer the first question, you need to understand how legal terms are defined. To answer the second, you need to understand what mental illness is and how cases of mental illness are classified. These questions are important. Until you answer them, you cannot figure out how to prevent similar offenses from happening in the future.

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