Reflection
I can find a few examples in my life of relationships where respect has become contempt.
Each of us, I suspect, has a mechanism in our value system that triggers this feeling of contempt. I also suspect that this causes a conflict for many people - are we allowed to feel this way? Shouldn’t we respect everyone equally?
As with respect, I think contempt implies an order of rank. If you feel contempt for someone, it usually has to do with them falling short of a standard, whether their actions or in their character. It is not easy to feel contempt for someone without also looking down on them.
I have noticed a trend where compassion is proposed as a remedy for contempt. A person may fall short of your expectations for many reasons - including their personal histories of trauma, mental health problems and difficult personal circumstances. If you take these into account and feel compassion for them, then you will see the error in your contempt and feel differently.
I think there is some value in this - but it doesn't tell the whole story. This approach implies that contempt is (almost) always unfounded, which I don’t think is true. It also suggests that your personal values should be subject to compassion as a higher standard. But I think compassion is terribly overrated - it does not stand above our other values as the one to rule them all. It is just one of many important things in a value system and for some it may not appear at all.
Going back to my personal experience of contempt, I can identify one thing that usually elicits contempt for me: weak-mindedness. When someone won’t engage with something - not because they are intellectually incapable but because they fear the consequences - I feel my contempt rising.
This is what I have experienced with many people who are deeply religious - intellectual engagement challenges their ideological positioning and the psychological comfort they derive it.
Am I right or wrong to feel this way?
Analysis
The most unambiguous sign that one holds men in contempt is this, that one acknowledges them only as a means to one's own ends or does not acknowledge them at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All too human, §524
One of the golden rules in ethics, starting I believe with Aristotle, is to treat people as ends in themselves, not as a means to an end. It is more or less commonly accepted that we don’t instrumentalise people towards a goal.
But, of course, there are lots of ways in which we do see other people as instruments for our own ends. And, in many cases, this is nor devious or nefarious. Teenage children see parents as a means when they hit them up for cash. Elderly parents see their children as a means when they become frail and unable to care for themselves. I dare say - lovers see each other as a means to pleasure, or intimacy, or understanding.
If you take away this taboo, maybe we actually begin to see more clearly what is going on in many intimate relationships.
It is curious to me that Nietzsche here speaks with his Aristotelian voice. His philosophy, in many ways, seems well suited to this kind of instrumentalisation of others. For example, he sees the noble class of the aristocracy as using the working class for their own ends. And he (generally speaking) does not condemn this.
So what is going on here?
Maybe we can separate this idea of using others as a means and the idea of depersonalising someone. If both of these are true, as in (1) we use someone as a means and (2) we don’t see them for their personal identity and unique individuality, then we have strayed into this negative contempt.
But maybe - and I’m just venturing a thought here - maybe you can see someone for their unique personality and with love and respect in your heart, you can access their unique talents, insight, capabilities and capacities for your own ends.
And if you did this, would you avoid the charge of contempt?