hybris

Abstract As Aristotle says, hybris is “doing and saying things which are a source of shame to the victim, not for some ulterior motive but just for the pleasure of it” (Rhetoric 2.2, 1378b23–25). It is a pejorative term that refers to ways of going wrong about honour, both one’s own and that of others. Honour is this context is not a limited good at stake only in certain contexts and in some specific kinds of interaction but a dynamic that informs all social interaction, a matter both of one’s own claims and self-presentation and of deference to the claims and self-presentation of others. Hybris is also an offence in Athenian law, one which includes even slaves among its possible victims. Though very often expressed in concrete acts (including speech acts) that seek to deny others the respect they deserve, hybris also has a substantial dispositional aspect, something that is captured in particular in images of plant-like growth and efflorescence. It is the dispositional features above all that form the link between ancient hybris and its theorization in contemporary psychology and business studies.