Description: Ancient Greek terminology continues to shape contemporary discourse; hubris is a case in point. Typically seen as the catastrophic yet common tendency to reach too high, only to fall, it remains a fixture in the contemporary discourse of business and politics. But hubris has also become a term of art for researchers in a number of academic disciplines; and it remains a hotly contested topic in Classics. This unique volume of essays explores the connections, continuities and differences between ancient hubris and its modern counterparts. Its distinguished multidisciplinary cast of experts in Classics, Business and Management Studies and Psychology explores what modern researchers can learn from the theorisation and deployment of hubris in ancient sources and how modern approaches to hubris can help us understand the ancient concept.
Brief description: DOUGLAS CAIRNS (MAE, FRSE, FBA) is Professor of Classics at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Aidôs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (1993). Among his most recent edited and co-edited volumes are A Cultural History of the Emotions in Antiquity (2019), Emotions through Time: From Antiquity to Byzantium (2022) and In the Mind, in the Body, in the World: Emotions in Early China and Ancient Greece (2024). In 2018 he was awarded the Anneliese Maier Research Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.