In Defense of Disgust
by Regis Martin
One of the funniest men who ever lived, W.C. Fields, whose mask of comic malevolence will live forever, was asked once if he liked children. He replied instantly: “I like children—fried.” His view of dogs and women was scarcely any better. Women he regarded rather as elephants: “I like to look at ‘em, but I wouldn’t want to own one.” His detestations, in fact, were delightfully democratic. “I am free of all prejudice,” he airily announced. “I hate every one equally.”
Now unless your sense of humor is a bit Presbyterian, this is awfully funny stuff. But only because we know that he’s not being serious. Indeed, if he really were serious—that is, if the misanthropic impulse were not part of a larger gag but the genuine article—such curmudgeonly conceits would hardly inspire laughter. More like loathing for a man so twisted and perverse as to treat little children like so many pieces of fried chicken. Or women as no more than a pachyderm on parade. Certainly there was nothing funny about the Death Camps of the Third Reich, which succeeded in cooking great numbers of women and children (men also) in carefully stoked gas ovens.
The point is, we find the idea of human sacrifice, of cannibalism, fundamentally repellent. We viscerally recoil from so barbarous and bloodthirsty a practice. We may take a certain vicarious pleasure in witnessing the eating habits of Hannibal Lector, but we do not, for both profound and obvious reasons, wish to dine with him. In other words, in treating such derangements with the disgust they deserve, we testify to the “wisdom of repugnance,” to use an inspired phrase coined by Leon Kass.
However, we need to ask ourselves a very hard question. Is our revulsion for such reprehensible behavior, not to mention our contempt for those who indulge it, a function only of feeling, of untutored emotion? Or is it rather something so rooted in right reason that not to feel that way is to confess arrant and complete moral bankruptcy?
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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com
Now unless your sense of humor is a bit Presbyterian, this is awfully funny stuff. But only because we know that he’s not being serious. Indeed, if he really were serious—that is, if the misanthropic impulse were not part of a larger gag but the genuine article—such curmudgeonly conceits would hardly inspire laughter. More like loathing for a man so twisted and perverse as to treat little children like so many pieces of fried chicken. Or women as no more than a pachyderm on parade. Certainly there was nothing funny about the Death Camps of the Third Reich, which succeeded in cooking great numbers of women and children (men also) in carefully stoked gas ovens.
The point is, we find the idea of human sacrifice, of cannibalism, fundamentally repellent. We viscerally recoil from so barbarous and bloodthirsty a practice. We may take a certain vicarious pleasure in witnessing the eating habits of Hannibal Lector, but we do not, for both profound and obvious reasons, wish to dine with him. In other words, in treating such derangements with the disgust they deserve, we testify to the “wisdom of repugnance,” to use an inspired phrase coined by Leon Kass.
However, we need to ask ourselves a very hard question. Is our revulsion for such reprehensible behavior, not to mention our contempt for those who indulge it, a function only of feeling, of untutored emotion? Or is it rather something so rooted in right reason that not to feel that way is to confess arrant and complete moral bankruptcy?
.....
Read more: www.crisismagazine.com
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