Assholes Read Online Free PDF

an asshole without first finding out whether he did this out of entitlement (in asking at the next traffic light, it could become clear that he merely made a mistake). It makes little difference whether the driver really is, strictly speaking, properly classified as an asshole. The same might go for the difficult person. If your friend is flummoxed by his encounters with an especially difficult person, you might say, “Don’t worry about it. He’s just an asshole,” at once affirming your friend’s right to better treatment and advising that he probably should not expect the difficult person to change. These ways of calling someone an asshole seem useful and fine, even without looking further into why the person acts as he does.
    Yet, even in such cases, it remains an open question whether the person at issue
really is
an asshole, whether he is best classifiedas that type of person. Perhaps he is better classified as a jerk, schmuck, or douche bag, or just someone who is insensitive to social cues. To this classificatory question, our theory offers an answer: it delineates the class of assholes from the vast and motley array of personality types. In so defining the asshole, our strategy is to start by identifying the
significance
assholes have for us—the significance of moral recognition. We then tailor our characterization of the person around that kind of significance. The asshole’s entrenched moral sense of entitlement is thus essential for our account. We can happily admit that there may be marginal or borderline cases that do not quite fit our theory. But, otherwise, a proper asshole always has an underlying sense of moral entitlement. We may have to look deep within his soul to find it, but it is there.
    Turnbull’s self-absorption might illustrate the point. Wallace emphasizes it to explain why Turnbull is so unhappy, especially in light of his “bizarre, adolescent belief that getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants to is a cure for human despair.” 26 Wallace naturally also mentions Turnbull’s (and Updike’s) misogyny, and indeed the idea of “getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants to” can be seen as a misogynistic entitlement: an unfounded entitlement to something that, from a moral point of view, must be freely offered or given, and so won’t necessarily be available as one prefers. Plato or Aristotle would regard a moral vice of character as itself undermining human happiness or flourishing, which partly just
consists
in virtuous living. But the point might hold even if we take the more characteristically modern viewthat virtue and happiness potentially come apart. Turnbull’s unhappy self-absorption can reflect his failure to experience the real and profound connection with others afforded by true mutual respect, a connection that won’t necessarily come along with the pleasures of basic consensual physical contact.
    We might add that thorough self-absorption is in any case itself a moral failing that indicates entitlement in our sense: the self-absorbed person feels or presumes that he need take no account of others and, if asked, will often give reasons why this is justified (“I can’t do it right now,” “I’m overwhelmed,” “Can’t you see that I’ve got serious problems!”). These are potentially reasons why the person should not be asked to give others what would otherwise be their due, and how we evaluate those reasons will decide whether someone counts as an asshole. If his reasons are good enough (perhaps he is severely depressed), then he is not an asshole. Or even if the reasons given aren’t especially good, if he apologizes for his actions later, he isn’t an asshole; he is not immunized against the complaints of others in the way the asshole is. Many jerks, schmucks, and clueless or oblivious souls are pretty incorrigible but won’t go to bat for that way of being. They might even apologize, even as they easily fall