Skip to main content
Apply Give
Menu

Philosophy Colloquium - Karen Stohr / What's wrong with contempt

close portrait of a woman's face, outside, smiling.

Philosophy Colloquium - Karen Stohr / What's wrong with contempt

Philosophy Friday, April 10, 2026 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Friday April 10 we welcome to our colloquium series Georgetown's Karen Stohr, who will share her work in moral philosophy with a talk on "What's wrong with contempt," abstracted below.

Some morally terrible people seem to deserve contempt. Philosophers, however, are divided on the justifiability of holding contemptuous attitudes toward evildoers. Although contempt has been ably defended as at least sometimes a fitting response to morally bad people, I will argue that it is nevertheless something we always have moral reason to avoid. Contempt, I suggest, is a vice, even when it is narrowly directed at people who might be thought to deserve it. Drawing on a broadly Kantian framework, as well as work in psychology on dispositional contempt, I will argue that contemptuous attitudes have destructive effects on our individual moral characters and on the moral communities we inhabit. We thus should refrain from responding to anyone with contempt, no matter what they have done. 

Add to Calendar 04/10/26 15:00:00 04/10/26 17:00:00 America/New_York Philosophy Colloquium - Karen Stohr / What's wrong with contempt

Friday April 10 we welcome to our colloquium series Georgetown's Karen Stohr, who will share her work in moral philosophy with a talk on "What's wrong with contempt," abstracted below.

Some morally terrible people seem to deserve contempt. Philosophers, however, are divided on the justifiability of holding contemptuous attitudes toward evildoers. Although contempt has been ably defended as at least sometimes a fitting response to morally bad people, I will argue that it is nevertheless something we always have moral reason to avoid. Contempt, I suggest, is a vice, even when it is narrowly directed at people who might be thought to deserve it. Drawing on a broadly Kantian framework, as well as work in psychology on dispositional contempt, I will argue that contemptuous attitudes have destructive effects on our individual moral characters and on the moral communities we inhabit. We thus should refrain from responding to anyone with contempt, no matter what they have done. 

 false