- published: 31 Oct 2014
- views: 3710
Misanthropy is the general hatred, mistrust or dislike of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope, or misanthropist is someone who holds such view or feeling. The word's origin is from Greek words μῖσος (misos, "hatred") and ἄνθρωπος (anthrōpos, "man, human"). The condition is often confused with asociality.
Misanthropy has been ascribed to a number of writers of satire, such as William S. Gilbert ("I hate my fellow-man"). Jonathan Swift is widely believed to be misanthropic (see A Tale of a Tub and, most especially, Book IV of Gulliver's Travels).
Molière's character Alceste in Le Misanthrope (1666) states:
In Emily Brontë's solitary novel, Wuthering Heights, the eponymous setting—the home of Heathcliff—is referred to as a "perfect misanthrope's Heaven."
In Western philosophy, misanthropy has been connected to isolation from human society. In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates defines the misanthrope in relation to his fellow man: "Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable...and when it happens to someone often...he ends up...hating everyone." Misanthropy, then, is presented as the result of thwarted expectations or even excessively naive optimism, since Plato argues that "art" would have allowed the potential misanthrope to recognize that the majority of men are to be found in between good and evil.Aristotle follows a more ontological route: the misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god, a view reflected in the Renaissance of misanthropy as a "beast-like state."
Since the dawn of time
it has reigned supreme
it's running through our veins
a primal legacy
Deep within a blackened heart
The surge of raw aggression
rages deep inside
unavoidable instinct
waiting to be free
live for vengeance
revel in violence
in the heat of coflict
hatred takes control
Embedded in our genes
hate lay hidden
blood is the trigger
to the acts of the forbidden
Supressing the rage within
denying the inbred fire
instead of using it right
they kill their dark desires
enforcing the ways
ignorance of evil
the only true emotion