Assholes Read Online Free Page A

be carried if the practices in question are to work. He can do that without doing irreparable harm or committing clear-cut wrongs. One can be a full-fledged asshole in the small.
    This suggests that the asshole is not in any real sense an outlaw. He may well keep within the letter of the law. Nor is he just another cheater, out for a “free ride” on the cooperative efforts of others. The deeper problem is not deliberate exploitation buta kind of willful insensitivity: he sees no reason to address the ambiguities and uncertainties that inevitably arise when people interact. Even “bright-line” rules of cooperation will have exceptions, and cooperative people often have to put a certain amount of work into discerning both the spirit of the law and what is finally acceptable in a particular case. They thus seek clarification, check assumptions, ask permission, or at least take a measure of care in good faith. The asshole, by contrast, sees little need for the work of mutual restraint aimed at benefit for all involved. According to his generalized sense of entitlement, it is only right and natural that the various advantages of social life should flow his way.
    Turn, finally, to our third requirement of explanation: that the asshole is downright upsetting, even outrageous. How could a person who imposes only small or modest costs upon others nevertheless be morally repugnant? Our answer appeals to a crucial aspect of the asshole’s entrenched sense of entitlement: it immunizes him against the complaints of other people. The asshole not only takes special privileges but refuses to listen when people complain. When someone says or conveys (as with a glare) something like “The line starts here,” “It is not your turn,” “What are you trying to say?,” or “Could you, please,
let me finish
,” the asshole makes no attempt to hear the person out and perhaps delivers a rude retort, such as “Screw you!” He is unwilling to
recognize
anyone who does express a complaint, never considering that the complaint might be legitimate. So although one may only suffer the small material cost of being cut ahead of in line, or being interrupted, or being talked over, one also suffers a deeper wrong: one’s very status as a moral person goes unrecognized. Immanuel Kant memorably says that respect for the moral law “strikes down” or “humiliates”our sense of “self-conceit.” 17 This doesn’t happen for the asshole.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING RECOGNIZED
    We have suggested that the asshole is morally repugnant because, even when the material costs he imposes are small, he fails to recognize others in a fundamental, morally important way. This is the heart and soul of our account of why the asshole is so bothersome, so we should more fully delve into the moral question—before moving on to less weighty concerns.
    Kant would say the asshole suffers from “self-conceit” or “arrogantia.” This is supposed to be something different from mere “self-love,” which might lead to selfishness but isn’t necessarily a corruption of one’s capacities to reason morally. One can act selfishly, or even be a selfish person, despite one’s better moral judgment, perhaps by ignoring the moral situation or getting oneself not to actively consider it, much as a “jerk” or “schmuck” does. The asshole, by contrast, actively reasons
from
his sense of special entitlement rather than from an independent understanding of what the moral law requires when, inKant’s terms, all are regarded equally as “ends in themselves,” as coequal sovereigns in a “Kingdom of Ends.” 18
    Here Kant is probably developing Rousseau’s distinction between a person’s natural sense of self-worth (
amour de soi-même
) and a potentially destructive concern for rank or status as compared to others (
amour propre
). 19 According to Rousseau, healthy self-love does not require comparing oneself to others at all; feeling worthy does not necessarily