The misanthropist wants truthful, declarative speech, and yet everything in this comedy of manners suggests speech that acts and impacts, including, as I will show, Alceste's own repliques.
71-72), the misanthropist hates the way that his contemporaries use language, and his vitriol is directed in particular toward the portrait galant, both the positive version that irons out defects and the negative version that reduces individuals to "bons caracteres.
Tired of what he sees as empty declarations, the misanthropist wants to force her and everyone else to accept a view of language that relies upon linguistic transparency, or upon the close correspondence between word, referent, and meaning.
The danger of becoming misologists or haters of argument ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])'said he, `as people become
misanthropists or haters of men ([GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII); for no worse evil can happen to a man than to hate argument.
Where once upon a time we could channel our pesky inner
misanthropists reasonably privately - shout at the television, walk out of the cinema, throw that book across the room - now we have it in our power to 'share'.
