— On Assholes

In some cases, sure.  David Brooks glowingly praises spaceman Elon Musk in order to make sure Americans don’t forget–as though Americans *could* forget–that encouraging grand visions and getting entrepreneurs to take big risks can return benefits to everyone.

Trouble is, a culture that inflates egos in hopes of nurturing a few “game changers” can run *out of control*, with grandiosity of asshole proportions

If only there were such steps, and a self-help book that laid the steps out.  We could all read that book, follow those steps and, presto, assholes would all wind up somewhere else.  (I’m not sure where.   Some island?  Or Newport Beach?  Or maybe they’d de-materialize.)

So assuming there aren’t seven easy steps (or eight or eleven or…), we might find a little bit of help in considering how a seven-step self-help book might oversimplify.  (If my comments also oversimplify, take that as proof of my main point.)

We, as a society, are in trouble if Rousseau is right about this:

…the manner in which public affairs are conducted gives a sufficiently accurate indication of the moral character and the state of health of the body politic.  The greater harmony that reignes in the public assemblies, the more, in other words, that public opinion approaches unanimity, the

The title of an excerpt of my book (at salon.com, here) suggests that the good folks at Fox News are “idiots.”  Perhaps the editors wanted to avoid using “asshole” in the title, but I’d say assholes and idiots are pretty different, even worlds apart.

There is indeed a general similarity between idiocy and assholery, at least when we are stuck

Thomas Hobbes’s “Foole” says in his heart that there is no justice: he sees no reason to keep his coventants with others when breaking faith “conduces to his benefit.”  Hobbes’s reply to the Foole is famously wanting, but he at least gives an argument: the Foole would be foolish to take his chances on risky benefits when his security and very life depends on keeping the trust of his

Probably not, though there is a case to be made.

Perhaps the plainest evidence yet is the infamous “47 percent” comment: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Making that comment *would* have been a major asshole move if it were made in public.  He’d be publicly asking for the job of representing everyone and yet feeling somehow entitled to disregard almost

These words make philosophical trouble for my definition of “asshole.”  Here’s the problem–and why I’m sticking to my guns.

My definition (in Assholes, ch. 1) implies that clams about who is or is not an asshole can be *true or false*, quite aside from what sorts of people we *approve or disapprove of*.  Thus you can correctly think someone is

Many foul terms–especially the foulest of the foul–can at first seem to be little more than expressions of ugly attitudes.  Terms such as “shit” and “fucking” can seem, at first blush, to be nothing more than a way of venting or spouting one’s unpleasant feelings, in an ejaculatory or cathartic burst conveyed though inherently emotive words.

That picture can seem so natural that it is interesting to see if we can think about foul language in a radically different way.  We get help in this from David Kaplan, the eminent philosopher of language (UCLA), and his analysis of the meaning of “oops” and “ouch.”  (In a great and famous unpublished paper,

Romney repeated that familiar idea in the Oct. 3 debate, suggesting that Obama once said so as well.   Here (in this previous post) is how assholes show this to be wrong, or at best “conventional wisdom” in the bad sense: an oft-repeated saying that is dubious or at best true in narrow circumstances.  (Unless of course you

A proper appreciation of the asshole surfer requires a nuanced sense of wave etiquette.  We begin with the first rule of considerate surfing: whenever possible, get out of the way.

That is to say, the paddling surfer is to do everything in his or her power not to obstruct the surfer who is riding a wave.  This rule is presupposed, for example, by the agitated surfer’s complaint, “Hey bud, get the fuck out of