Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

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Martha C. Nussbaum
the Stoic valuation of these externals. It stands with the speech of Augustus
in attributing great importance to them. If we believe the work’s
account of the facts, we should see the anger it solicits as justified anger,
which looks both backward toward Claudius’ wrongdoing and also forward,
to the time of rectification.
Disgust is very different: for bodily disgust expresses an aversion to
contamination and a rejection of a substance or person as a possible contaminant
to the self. Cross-cultural empirical research – particularly the
important work of psychologist Paul Rozin – has found a remarkable
constancy across societies in the cognitive content of disgust. 13 Robert
Kaster’s important work on specifically Roman disgust 14 is consistent
with Rozin’s findings, although it adds some significant culture-specific
points.
Disgust, Rozin argues from his experimental evidence, is not mere
distaste, because the very same substance or smell elicits different disgust-reactions
depending on the subject’s conception of the object:
whether, for example, the smell is thought to come from feces or
from cheese. Disgust is also different from the fear of danger, because
disgusting animals (roaches, beetles) remain disgusting after all potential
danger is removed. Moreover, disgust typically spreads from its “primary
objects” – bodily wastes and decaying bodies – to people and groups
who are viewed as contaminants, as marring the purity of the self –
even though these people do not pose any danger to the self. Rozin
concludes that disgust is an emotion that polices the boundary between
people and some aspect of their own animality (waste products, decay)
that they wish to keep at a distance. People or groups can become the
surrogates for these problematic features.
Disgust, then, has a dynamic that is very different from the dynamic
of anger. Like anger, it both registers a present pain and projects a future
good. But the future good is one of separation and repudiation, not rectification.
The disgusted person wants to get away from the disgusting
person or thing, either by removing himself or by removing it. Anger
seeks punishment; disgust seeks non-contact. Suppose we now think
about anger and disgust in politics. We often get angry at our politicians.
We also often feel disgust or revulsion toward a politician or group of
politicians. We say, “How disgusting”, we want to vomit. I would
argue that these two responses are importantly distinct. In anger we
13 I describe Rozin’s research in Nussbaum 2004, ch. 2, with bibliography.
14 Kaster 2001.