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Hubris (; ), or less frequently hybris (), is extreme or excessive pride or dangerous Confidence and , often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance.
Hubris, arrogance, and pretension are related to the need for victory (even if it does not always mean winning) instead of reconciliation, which "friendly" groups might promote. Hubris is usually perceived as a characteristic of an individual rather than a group, although the group the offender belongs to may suffer collateral consequences from wrongful acts. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments, or capabilities.
The term hubris originated in Ancient Greek, where it had several different meanings depending on the context. In legal usage, it meant assault or sexual crimes and theft of public property, and in religious usage it meant of divinity or transgression against a god.
The goddess Hybris is described in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition as having "insolent encroachment upon the rights of others".
These events were not limited to myth, and certain figures in history were considered to have been punished for committing hubris through their arrogance. One such person was the king Xerxes I as portrayed in Aeschylus's play The Persians, and who allegedly threw chains to bind the Hellespont sea as punishment for daring to destroy his fleet.Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit—Sermons Preached and Revised by C. H. Spurgeon, During the Year 1877, Volume 23 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1878), p. 303.
What is common in all of these examples is the breaching of limits, as the Greeks believed that the Moirai (Μοῖραι) had assigned each being with a particular area of freedom, an area that even the gods could not breach.Cornelius Castoriadis. Ce qui fait la Grèce, tome 1: D'Homère à Héraclite, chapitre V. Editeur: Seuil (9 mars 2004).
Crucial to this definition are the ancient Greek concepts of honour (τιμή, timē) and shame (αἰδώς, aidos). The concept of honour included not only the exaltation of the one receiving honour, but also the shaming of the one overcome by the act of hubris. This concept of honour is akin to a zero-sum game. Rush Rehm simplifies this definition of hubris to the contemporary concept of "insolence, contempt, and excessive violence".
Two well-known cases are found in the speeches of Demosthenes, a prominent statesman and orator in ancient Greece. These two examples occurred when first Midias punched Demosthenes in the face in the theatre ( Against Midias), and second when (in Against Conon) a defendant allegedly assaulted a man and crowed over the victim. Yet another example of hubris appears in Aeschines' Against Timarchus, where the defendant, Timarchus, is accused of breaking the law of hubris by submitting himself to prostitution and anal intercourse. Aeschines brought this suit against Timarchus to bar him from the rights of political office and his case succeeded.Aeschines "Against Timarchus" from Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents by Thomas Hubbard (historian) Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because of anything that happened to the committer or might happen to the committer, but merely for that committer's own gratification:
to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: naive men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater.Aristotle, Rhetoric 1378b.
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