Assholes Read Free

complaints of other people. This theory answers our challenge by zeroing in on a particular, distinctive way of being morally reprehensible. We can bring this out by considering the way our theory is
moral
through and through.
    We should pause, however, to worry about overmoralizing. When the writer David Foster Wallace calls John Updike’s character Ben Turnbull an asshole (with the clear implicationthat Updike is an asshole as well), the main ground for this is Turnbull’s (and Updike’s) general self-absorption, not his moral faults. 15 We will agree that self-absorption is crucial. We will also admit that there are more general uses of the term “asshole,” which we discuss later on. We start with the central, moral case.
    According to our theory, the asshole does what he does out of a “sense of entitlement,” a sense of what he
deserves
, or is
due
, or has a
right
to. However misguided, the asshole is
morally motivated
. He is fundamentally different from the psychopath, who either lacks or fails to engage moral concepts, and who sees people as so many objects in the world to be manipulated at will. The asshole takes himself to be
justified
in enjoying special advantages from cooperative relations. Given his sense of his special standing, he claims advantages that he thinks no one can reasonably deny him. He is
resentful
or
indignant
when he feels his rights are not respected, in much the same way a fully sociable, cooperative person is.
    Assholes and fully cooperative people simply have very different moral views of what their respective entitlements are. To bring out the difference, compare the point of view of “fully cooperative” people. Fully cooperative people, we may say,
see themselves as equals, as having grounds for special treatment only in special circumstances that others will equally enjoy at the appropriate times
. Here are several examples.
    On one’s birthday, one expects to receive special indulgences from one’s friends, such as a party, a round of drinks, or a celebratory phone call. Yet all count as equals because everyone is assigned one such day of celebration each year on or around the calendar day of each person’s birth. If you are celebrating my existence now, I will be celebrating your existence at some point during the year.
    The practice of forming a queue will degenerate into a scrum unless people by and large are willing to wait in the line. Yet it would be acceptable for you to cut to the front when you explain that there is a real emergency. You then receive a benefit because others accept a certain burden: if they weren’t waiting in line, there would be no line for you to cut in, and you might not be to able work your way to the front in a scrum. But under exigent circumstances, people of course understand. They will do likewise when an emergency comes up in their lives.
    Two people will have a successful conversation, in which both speak and both are understood, only when each listens while the other talks and each is given a good amount of speaking time. Yet it is fine to interrupt someone speaking in order to make an especially important point, even if one’s excitement to make the point simply gets the best of one. We give each other this privilege, and we are happy to work around occasional interventions, as long as we both feel our conversation is moving along just fine.
    Being someone’s friend requires consistent efforts to think of and present the friend in a good, supportive light. Yet it can be fine to point out a flaw, as gentle teasing or in order to crack a good joke. The joke can come at the friend’s expense if its “price” in discomfiture is low—low enough so that the friend is happy to pay for the sake of a laugh.
    We might generalize from these examples in the following way. In each case, there are both normal expectations and special circumstances in which those expectations are, for certain parties, to be set aside. Those who happen to wind