hubris

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Sebald Beham : The impossible . The copper engraving of 1549 contains the warning: Niment under sticks big things that are impossible for him to do.

The hubris [ ˈhyːbʀɪs ] ( ancient Greek ὕβρις hýbris , 'arrogance', 'presumptuousness') describes an extreme form of overestimating oneself or arrogance . Hubris is often associated with a person's loss of reality and the overestimation of their own abilities, achievements or competencies, especially of people in positions of power.

description

In ancient Greek tragedies , hubris was used as a trigger for the failure of many protagonists who, in their arrogance, ignored the commands and laws given by gods . Human hubris is often followed by divine punishment by nemesis , which ultimately often leads to the fall and death of the protagonist.

In the opinion of Walter Arnold Kaufmann , hubris is neither to be understood as pride in one's own achievement or one's own worth nor as highlighting one's own merit ( self-adulation ). Hubris is not something you feel like pride. Rather, it is always associated with an action. The Greek verb ὑβρίζειν (hybrízein) means 'to become unrestrained' or 'let off steam' in Homer and is also applied to rivers, overgrown plants and overfed donkeys that scream and stomp. Hubris therefore means 'willful violence' and 'cheek' ( used for example in the Odyssey for Penelope's suitors). It also means ' greed ' and 'lust'. Hybrism means outrage , rape, robbery, and rightly sums up everything that is inflicted on a deity or a person in terms of grave injustice .

In science, hubris is also examined and thematized in psychology , medicine, and organizational and management research. In today's parlance, hubris is used as an educational term for presumptuousness and arrogance that will lead to a bad end. Example: “The hubris that lets us try to realize the kingdom of heaven on earth seduces us to turn our good earth into a hell.” ( Karl Popper )

See also

literature

  • Meyer H. Abrams , Geoffrey Galt Harpham: A Glossary of Literary Terms. 10th edition, international edition. Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Boston MA et al. 2012, ISBN 978-0-495-90659-9 , pp. 408 f.

Web links

Wiktionary: Hybris  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter Kaufmann : Tragedy and Philosophy (= The Unit of Social Sciences. Vol. 26). Mohr, Tübingen 1980, ISBN 3-16-942682-6 , p. 74.
  2. ↑ See e.g. B. Philipp Hermanns: Organizational Hubris. Rise and fall of a celebrity firm using the example of CargoLifter AG. Kölner Wissenschaftsverlag, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-942720-33-5 , p. 9 ff. Also as an open access version diss.fu-berlin.de.
  3. ↑ Karl Popper: The misery of historicism , preface to the German edition of 1964.