Ignorance or arrogance?

It is no secret that most people find arrogance more offensive than ignorance. Arrogance is offensive. Of course, we would not find arrogance offensive if we ourselves were totally free of all arrogance. Arrogance is offensive because it offends... our arrogance.

Ignorance, on the other hand, is usually not so offensive. Other people's ignorance, in fact, can make us feel good (after all, we are all a bit arrogant). We get a good laugh at the expense of the Homer Simpsons of the world.

But in any case, the question was not which is more offensive, but which is worse. Neither is worse, because they are two sides of the same coin. Arrogance is what we see, but behind the public display of arrogance is a certain type of ignorance.

The type of ignorance behind arrogance is not the ordinary home-grown ignorance that we all possess. We are all ignorant of most things in the world. (For example, I have no idea how my transmission works.) Worse, we are all ignorant of what we are ignorant about. We can't be aware of what we don't know.

This type of ignorance is unavoidable. But while we can't know what we don't know, we can at least know that we don't know. We can know that we are permanently surrounded by a sea of our own ignorance. Much of human history, indeed, is the history of discovering that the obvious is false. The arrogant don't seem to know this. Arrogance is that special kind of ignorance that is unaware of itself. To be arrogant is to take the boundaries of oneself to be the boundaries of the world. The arrogant come off as narcissistic.

But the arrogant are also naïve. They have an undue amount of confidence in their own beliefs, including beliefs about themselves. Such confidence is peculiar, given how we are in the world. We can't be fully aware of what it is we don't know. And not to remind ourselves of that seems ignorant.

—Joel Richeimer. As associate professor of philosophy and chair of the department, Richeimer specializes in the philosophy of perception and ancient philosophy.