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Contempt
What is Contempt? Contempt is defined as an intensely negative emotion regarding a person or group of people as inferior, base, or worthless. It origniates from the 14th century from the latin word contemptus meaning scorn. Contempt is an emotion you feel towards someone or something and it usuallu has negative connotations.
How Does Contempt Affect Our Ways of Knowing? Language We can say that contempt affects our language because already in our language, we have certain words that best demonstrate this emotion we may feel towards something that we hold contempt. Words such as hag, loath, despise all reinforce this. We use different language when thinking about people or things to which we hold contempt. What we should consider is that not only do we think differently when we hold contempt, but that we sometime will refuse the truth itself because of how powerful this emotion is. Because we communicate differently with those who we hold contempt then we should carefully consider just to what extent this emotion affects our language. Reason Contempt can be seen to influence our reason because we may feel contempt and our judgement/reason will be affected. It makes more sense that Charlie is a better basketball player but I will not pick him for my team because I despise him...ect. Sometimes we will find ourselves in situations where we must undergo contempt for another entitiy and we will deny ourselves knowledge and our ability to reason becomes flawed. Holding contempt not only shuts out yourself, but it alters your reason and crafts it. Perception Contempt affects our perception because it yields to us a very powerful subjective view of the world. If we percieve the world through a filter of contempt than we may not see things that are there. Such as I will see only the reasons why Charlie is a bad baseball player...ect However in our world today, we can think of numerous situations where our contempt affected our perception. We might say that when under the influence of contempt, we find ourselves looking at the world in a different way and it is a more sinister way. We have an enhanced vision of the things we hold to contempt. Emotion As contempt is an emotion it gives us some insight into our world. Perhaps that there is a relative ammount of truth in our contempt for someone. Is it not going to be justified? Maybe Charlie the baseball player is a good baseball player but he treats everyone terribly and so you all play badly.....ect.
Ebenezer Scrooge shows comptempt to poor people and christmas in the novel 'A Christmas Carol'
