Sticks and Stones The Philosophy of Insults

What kind of injury is an insult? Is its infliction determined by the insulter or the insulted? What does it reveal of the character of each and of the character of society and its conventions? What is its role in social and legal life (from play to jokes to ritual to war and from blasphemy to defamation to hate speech)? Jerome Neu's book emphasizes philosophical, anthropological, psychoanalytic, and legal approaches to these questions.