Research team

Putting arrogance in its place. Do we need to revalue or reform the concept of arrogance? 01/11/2022 - 31/10/2023

Abstract

Arrogance has been understood as an attribute of people and sometimes as an attribute of an act. Within this approach something important is overlooked: whether someone is perceived as arrogant, depends on what their environment allows them to do, and what we allow others is not equally distributed. William F. Buckley once said: "It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for", but where did the monarchy come from and who has the right to be king? This shows the connection between arrogance and entitlement. While reality shows us that perceived arrogance is connected to our social structures, we are stuck with a concept that is understood as absolute. From this perspective someone is arrogant as a result of their behavior, and not because of the context from which we look at that person. Therefore a new approach to the concept of "arrogance" is needed. First, we might re-evaluate arrogance, by saying that some cases are arrogant but at the same time not problematic. To this end, I will examine in which cases arrogance is problematic. The second way of dealing with this problem of arrogance is by redefining it: taking another principle than someone's attitude or behaviour to say whether something is arrogant might bring us to a more suitable extension. Therefore, I will also research alternative principles to define arrogance.

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Project type(s)

  • Research Project