Hubris

Hubris is the structural counterpart to dike in the Hesiodic moral universe — the violation of measure, the assumption of a station the divine order has not granted. In the Works and Days it names what destroys the race of silver: their “mad immoderation” (hubrin) seals their doom (Vernant 1983). It is the principle by which the impious king is contrasted with the king who shows respect for dike, and by which the second pair of Hesiodic races is structured.

Vernant’s structural reading of the myth of the races makes the dike/hubris polarity load-bearing throughout: “In the first pair, the dominant value and the starting point is dike; hubris is secondary, treated as its counterpart. In the second pair, the opposite is true” (Vernant 1983). The age of iron is itself doubled along this axis — “one of which acknowledges dike, while the other knows only hubris” (Vernant 1983). Hubris is therefore not a moral failing of individuals but a standing possibility of human existence, a way the soul can stand toward the order in which it lives.

For the depth tradition this is exact: hubris is the ate-aligned movement of the psyche that refuses the limit. It is the headwater of what Greek tragedy will dramatize as inflation, and what Jung will read as the inflation of the ego that mistakes itself for the Self. The Lineage receives the term as a name for a specific psychic posture, not a generic vice.

Relationships

• dike
• ate
• myth-of-the-races
• works-and-days
• hesiod

Primary sources

• works-and-days (Hesiod c. 700 BCE)
• vernant-myth-and-thought (Vernant 1983)