The Misanthrope’s Apology

This article explores ancient Greek arguments against and in defense of misanthropy. In the Demosthenic first speech Against Stephanus , Plato’s Phaedo , and Diodorus Siculus, misanthropes are criticized for withholding the material and emotional resources that they owe to their fellow human beings. That criticism is answered by Menander’s Dyscolus , ps.-Heraclitus’ seventh letter, and ps.-Hippocrates’ seventeenth letter. The protagonists of these texts insist that misanthropy is the correct affective reaction to the evils endemic to Greek society. Their hatred constitutes a claim that societal practices such as warfare, retributive justice, and slavery are ethical problems for every individual. Misanthropes reconceptualize these practices as the self-defeating, self-contradictory actions of humanity as a collective agent. In this sense, misanthropy achieves a distinctive moral critique by regarding humanity holistically, from an outsider’s standpoint. The misanthropic perspective is therefore a valuable complement to cosmopolitanism, which universalizes the model of community without critiquing its undesirable consequences.