wisdom of repugnance
n.— «Professor Nussbaum is certainly right that feelings of disgust, like feelings of shame, are extra- if not irrational: we don’t argue ourselves into disgust or shame: we feel it immediately. Professor Nussbaum is deeply suspicious of those feelings. She sharply criticizes the physician-philosopher Leon Kass for advocating the “wisdom of repugnance”—the wisdom of disgust and revulsion—because our disgust might be misplaced.» —“Does shame have a future?” by Roger Kimball New Criterion Sept. 1, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...