What is misanthropy? An example from Jung’s Red Book

Hello friends!

A dear reader had asked me, some time ago, to write about misanthropy. Maybe you don’t know what this word means, so let’s start with it: misanthropy comes from Greek. The end of the word anthropy comes from anthropos (άνθρωπος) which means man, human being. From άνθρωπος comes the word anthropology – which we also studied in the faculty of psychology, an area dedicated to the study of human culture.

And the beginning of the word misanthropy, mis, also comes from the Greek μίσος (misos) and means hate. For example, in the word misogyny we have the same prefix mis (hate) plus gynia (gyné means woman), so misogyny is literally hatred of women.

But going back to our word, misanthropy means hatred of human beings, hatred of humanity in general. While it seems strong to say it this way, the concept does not necessarily imply a form of violence. We must speak of varying degrees of misanthropy. It is common to have hatred or aversion against people who are different from us, which is a full plate for anthropology studies, as is the case of religious intolerance.

It is also common to have an aversion to a specific type of population, such as people who feel an aversion to people who are poor or an aversion to people with a certain skin color. There is misanthropy that is directed at women (misogyny) and misanthropy against those who do not have the same cultural “level”. What became known as “rolezinho” in Shopping Centers in São Paulo seems to have awakened this type of misanthropy against poor people, usually black, who would be inferior and could not go to certain places.

What I mean by that is that when we hear about misanthropy and when we see the definition as hatred of human beings or aversion to humanity, we can have a view that nobody has it. Or, at most, that’s just what mentally disturbed people have. But as it is easy to understand, this is not what happens in reality. There are different degrees of aversion to human beings, due to characteristics that can be social, cultural, intellectual, moral, spiritual or religious, economic, etc.

In order to reflect a little on the various modalities that it is possible to find a certain degree of misanthropy, I would like to mention one in particular and with which I often live because I am in the most “elevated” environment of the great higher education institutions in Brazil: the misanthropy of those who think they are intellectually superior and don’t want to mix with the rabble who don’t know anything.

An example from Jung’s Red Book

In Jung’s Red Book, a kind of autobiographical diary of dreams and visions, there is a narrative in which the author in an active imagination (in short, a fantasy or daydream) encounters a hermit named Ammonius. Ammonius was a professor of philosophy, learned and witty who lived in the city of Alexandria. One day, he meets an old friend of his father who converts him to Christianity by presenting the idea that God had become man.

Ammonius, then converted, moves to the desert to study the Holy Scriptures. In chapters Dies I and II (Day 1 and 2), Jung talks to Ammonius and learns from him, until he realizes that the path of the anchorite was loneliness that distanced him from others. Ammonius’ aim was to find the deep meaning of the Bible, as well as its future meaning. And Jung asks him: “Do you not believe that this work could anticipate its success if you were closer to the people?” (JUNG, 2010, p. 272).

The first interpretation is that this was a temptation of the world, a demonic temptation. Afterwards, Amônio reflects and discovers that the best thing to do would be to get out of his isolation in the desert.

Well, I made a point of quoting this small excerpt from the Red Book to show that this internal struggle was also present in the psyche of the creator of Analytical Psychology. The struggle between wanting to isolate yourself to study and wanting to be with us. After I read this passage, I understood why Jung always criticized people who isolated themselves in their small universes, without exchanging anything with anyone or went to completely different countries just to escape their countrymen.

The meaning of this passage is somewhat similar to another passage in the Red Book, in which Jung finds a silent scholar shut up in his castle, immersed in his readings. It’s the chapter “The Castle in the Forest”. He writes:

“As you share in the manifold nature of the world through your body, so you share in the manifold nature of the inner world through your soul. This inner world is really infinite and in no way poorer than the outer one. Human beings live in two worlds. A demented person lives here or there, but never here and there” (JUNG, 2010, p. 264).

Jung criticizes, therefore, the belief that an intellectual lives an interior life. In his opinion, the person who dedicates himself to research in books, to the academy, lives more outside of himself than inside, because, although he does not live externally like others, he lives the external thinking of others. This type of one-sidedness is as harmful as those who live and waste decades in external activities and do not find their interior. As he says, living only outside of oneself or living only within oneself is a harmful one-sidedness.

Conclusion

There are many types of misanthropy, many levels and gradations of what hatred of human beings is, hatred of humanity. It could just be a sneer like the one who says he prefers animals to men or it could be the violent and murderous hatred of someone who plans and executes the plan to kill dozens and even hundreds of people in one attack. It’s easier to see the misanthropy in the other. In two senses: it is easier to criticize and see that other people have very limited thoughts (“but I don’t have that kind of thinking”) and in the sense that it is the other, the different, the strange (in many languages ​​the foreigner is the same word for strange) that awakens exclusion, prejudice, the illusory feeling of superiority.

For example, someone who has a certain religious belief can divide – as Ammonius did – existence into two opposite poles: the Church and the world. It is curious to analyze this type of phenomenon from the perspective of the psychology of religion, the psychology that studies religious phenomena. The person believes that only what he believes is right and everyone else is wrong, everyone else is sin. It is like Hegel’s critique of Kant: the Absolute cannot be minor and relative, otherwise it is not Absolute. If the Absolute excludes the subject and is only outside of it or outside the world, it is not Absolute, it is relative and partial…

Anyway, this turns out to be another subject. But the purpose of the text was to be a reflection on misanthropy, taking as a specific example the ivory tower academics who live a lifetime thinking that they are better than other people who have not read what they read and do not dialogue with anyone and likewise the example of the religious who flees the world or has no love for others.

The way out of misanthropy is, then, the opposite: the Amor Mundi, the love of the world.

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