Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults

305 Pages·2007·3.34 MB·English

by  Jerome Neu

STICKS AND STONES
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S S
TICKS AND TONES
The Philosophy of Insults
jerome Neu
1
2008
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Neu, Jerome.
Sticks and stones : the philosophy of insults / Jerome Neu.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-531431-1
1. Invective. I. Title.
BF463.I58N48 2007
179—dc22 2007006256
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
—Children’s chant
Words, like sticks and stones, can assault; they can injure; they can
exclude.
—Blurb for Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory,
Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment
A gentleman never insults anyone unintentionally.
—Oscar Wilde
I am enclosing two tickets to the fi rst night of my new play, bring a
friend … if you have one.
—George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
Cannot possibly attend fi rst night, will attend second . . . if there is one.
—Winston Churchill, in reply
Let’s give a welcome to macaca here.
—Senator George Allen
You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your
catastrophe!
—Shakespeare, Henry IV,Part 2 II.1.56–57
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ever think, “I’ve never felt so insulted in my life”? And then, somewhat
later, think it anew? Lovers will do that to you. At least some of them
will. That is how I got into the subject. Such lovers are masters of your
heart, and so masters of humiliation. They forget you and their com-
mitments to you. They neglect you in favor of people they assure you
don’t really matter. They disappoint expectations you didn’t even know
you had.
Of course, strangers can insult one too, but perhaps not repeatedly.
One is less ready to forgive and more ready to back away.
To insult is to assert or assume dominance, either intentionally
claiming superiority or unintentionally revealing lack of regard. To be
insulted is to suffer a shock, a disruption of one’s sense of self and one’s
place in the world. To accept an insult is to submit, in certain worlds to
be dishonored. How is one to retrieve self-respect?
The schoolyard wisdom about “sticks and stones” does not take one
very far: insults do not take the form only of words, in truth even words
have effects, and in the end the popular as well as the standard legal
distinctions between speech and conduct are at least as problematic as
they are helpful. How are we to defend ourselves, if a chant won’t do
it? While being insulted is painful, invulnerability to insult has its costs.
Excessive servility, so that it is not possible for others to show one less
respect than one feels for oneself, and excessive arrogance, so that the
actions and attitudes of others are dismissed with the same contempt as
viii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
those others themselves are dismissed, are not attractive models for liv-
ing. Neither, however, is an excessive sensitivity, so that one is always and
readily insulted. It means that others must constantly walk on eggshells
to protect one’s delicate sensibilities or pander to one’s self-importance.
On the other hand, an excessive self-suffi ciency, so that the concerns of
others cease to be of concern to one, makes one equally insufferable.
Where is the Aristotelian mean that will tell us just how sensitive and
vulnerable to insult it makes sense to be? The conventions of etiquette,
morality, and the law, as well as the counsels of religion, provide us with
norms and guidelines that are of some help, but they too are subject to
critique and raise issues of their own.
For example: What is it exactly to look at someone “the wrong way”?
How, given that our legal system both values freedom of speech and is
concerned to prevent harm, offense, and emotional distress caused by
speech, are we to delimit protected groups and unprotected speech?
Who may insult whom and how? And what is it to “respect” another
religion? Must one follow its dictates? Must one follow all of those dic-
tates (whether having to do with depictions of Muhammad or the eating
of pork)?
To fi nd guidance on how to live in the world with the many others
who impinge on our boundaries, to think about how much we should
put up with those who would put us down, it is necessary to explore the
nature and place of insult in our lives. What kind of injury is an insult?
Is its infl iction determined by the insulter or the insulted? What does
it reveal of the character of each and of the character of society and its
conventions? What is its role in social and legal life (from play to jokes
to ritual to war and from blasphemy to defamation to hate speech)? In
what follows, I emphasize philosophical, anthropological, psychoana-
lytic, and legal approaches to these questions.
I much appreciate the encouragement and suggestions of Peter
Ohlin, my editor at Oxford University Press. A version of the fi nal chap-
ter of this book was previously published in Sharon Lamb and Jeffrie
Murphy, eds., Before Forgiving: Cautionary Views of Forgiveness in
Psychotherapy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). Able research
assistance was provided by Thomas Del Monte and Gary Maushardt. I
have also benefi ted from the participants in a seminar, “On Insults” (not
a “how-to” course), that I have taught at the University of California,
Santa Cruz over recent years. Carter Wilson, as always, has been par-
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
ticularly generous with helpful comments and feedback. Finally, while
their names are too numerous to mention, I am grateful to all those
who have shared their thoughts on insults and also to those who have,
however unintentionally, given me occasion to think about the place of
slights, slurs, slander, and yet deeper wounds in the lives we, sometimes
uneasily and uncomfortably, lead together.