Where the Sun Always Shines. And Where It Never Does.

You know him I, promise. He is difficult to avoid — especially, it seems, in our great urban centers. Curiously, the tonier the ZIP code, the more he seems to multiply like some droning, infuriating ungulate. He is the person who weaves through three lanes of traffic suddenly, without signaling. He is the person who sits near you at a movie theater and proceeds to take a phone call in the middle of the feature. He is the person who cuts in front of you at your local lunch spot and pretends not to realize that he is doing so, blithely. He makes his presence felt: he is to be accorded special privileges, and his precedence over you is to be accepted a priori. He is morally stainless, for is it not merely in accordance with the natural order of things for him to leave work early, but make you stay late? For him to purchase a third term as mayor of The Greatest City in the World™, no matter the laws or the express desires of his own constituents? For him, as head of a major investment bank, to cause through his avarice a global financial crisis, but to blame that crisis on the fecklessness and greed of middle-class homeowners? Or for him, as vice president, to lie repeatedly to his compatriots, justifying an invasion of a certain Middle Eastern country on the grounds that the dictator he is seeking to depose is lying? Of course this is natural, he thinks: of course. How could it be otherwise? This man, I think you will agree, is an irritant. This man is an outrage.

This man is an asshole.

He is also, as Aaron James rightly observes in his convincing and often quite funny book, Assholes: A Theory, an important object of moral inquiry. Assholes are a social type. They arouse our anger and indignation, and sometimes leave us with a vague feeling of powerlessness and self-loathing. The strength and nature of our reaction to assholish behavior signals the extent of the moral violation caused by it. Thus, for James:

The problem of the asshole [. . .] presents a major obstacle to progress and social justice but also threatens the hard-fought and hardwon gains for decency a society has already made. The problem affects whole societies, international relations, and so the entire world.

The problem of the asshole, then, is a problem for us all.

This may sound overstated or glib, but James, a professor of philosophy at UC Irvine, makes a rigorous case for why we should take the problem of the asshole seriously. The book surveys diverse asshole subtypes: asshole bosses, royal assholes, the corporate asshole, and delusional assholes, to name just a few. But first James neatly unpacks the basic features of this most loathsome individual. For him, an asshole is defined by three important qualities, which also serve to differentiate his behavior from other morally repugnant characters such as the jerk, or much more seriously, the sociopath. First, the asshole considers himself — and James and I agree, assholes are almost always men — to possess special privileges or advantages over others. Moreover, he behaves in a manner that reflects this belief (making the asshole distinct from the mere egoist, who may believe that he is better than others, but for a variety of reasons, does not act on this belief systematically.). Second, the grounds for this belief are assumed and not argued for. An asshole believes deeply that he alone deserves special treatment, that he is somehow entitled to it. This kind of asshole behavior, as James goes on to show, produces both minor-league assholes, such as the line-cutter or reckless freeway driver, as well as their major-league brethren, such as, say, Donald Trump or Anthony Weiner. (Of course, significant overlap is possible, and minor leaguers rarely disappoint when called up to the big leagues.) Third, and finally, assholes are “immunized” to the protests of others. An asshole might hear you out, recognizing your complaints as valid in an abstract way, but he never truly listens. A real asshole does not feel the need to justify his behavior to you, okay? Thanks.

by Zach Dorfman, LA Review of Books |  Read more:

Image: from the book Assholes, by Aaron James