Misanthrope

 My hate is general, I detest all men;
Some because they are wicked and do evil,
Others because they tolerate the wicked,
Refusing them the active vigorous scorn
Which vice should stimulate in virtuous minds.

(The bad things that men do should make us 

reject the men that do them if we are good)

 

Molière's character Alceste in Le Misanthrope (1666)

 

Philosophy

In Western philosophy, misanthropy has been connected to isolation from human society. In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates defines the misanthrope in relation to his fellow man: "Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable...and when it happens to someone often...he ends up...hating everyone." Misanthropy, then, is presented as the result of thwarted expectations or even excessively naive optimism, since Plato argues that "art" would have allowed the potential misanthrope to recognize that the majority of men are to be found in between good and evil. Aristotle follows a more ontological route: the misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god, a view reflected in the Renaissance of misanthropy as a "beast-like state."
It is important to distinguish between philosophical pessimism and misanthropy. Immanuel Kant said that "Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made," and yet this was not an expression of the uselessness of mankind itself. Kant further stated that hatred of mankind can take two distinctive forms, aversion from men (Anthropophobia) or enmity towards them. The condition can arise partly from dislike and partly from ill-will.
Another example of mistaken misanthropy is Jean-Paul Sartre's quote "Hell is other people." On the face of it, this looks deeply misanthropic, but actually Sartre may have been making an observation about the tendency of human beings to lack self-awareness. Unaware people tend to project out their worst fears and most deeply disliked personal characteristics onto other people, rather than participate in meaningful introspection. Thus, when they look at other people they often see the worst of what is in their own personality. Alternately, Sartre may have been making the statement that "Hell is other people" due to the existential dread that results from being surrounded by people who lack self-awareness and oppress others through acting in bad faith. See also Sartre's novel, La Nausée. Read in this context, Sartre's writings would be considered misanthropic since they are an attempt to derive an authentic meaning independent from mankind.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (an early influence on Friedrich Nietzsche) on the other hand, was as famously misanthropic as his reputation, which included his philosophical antinatalism. He wrote that "human existence must be a kind of error." It should be added, however, that misanthropy does not necessarily equate with an inhumane attitude towards humanity. Schopenhauer concluded, in fact, that ethical treatment of others was the best attitude, for we are all fellow sufferers and all part of the same will-to-live; he also discussed suicide with a sympathetic understanding which was rare in his own time, when it was largely a taboo subject.
Martin Heidegger had also been said to show misanthropy in his concern of the "they" — the tendency of people to conform to one view, which no-one has really thought through, but is just followed because, "they say so". This might be thought of as more of a criticism of conformity rather than people in general. Unlike Schopenhauer, Heidegger was opposed to any systematic ethics, however in some of his later thought he does see the possibility of harmony between people, as part of the four-fold, mortals, gods, earth and sky en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy.

Primacy of the intellect

God has bestowed upon human beings the gift of intellect, by which they can judge right and wrong. If what the prophets announce corresponds to what the intellect decrees, then prophets are superfluous. If it contradicts what the intellect decrees, then one should not listen to them. The discussion with the Barahima, the issue of the abrogation of the law, and the question of the possibility of substituting one law for another are also part of this argument. The argument is then applied to Islam in particular.
Connected with the claim of the sufficiency of human intellect is the discussion of various expressions of this intellect. Human children are taught to speak by their parents, from one generation to another, and this has always been the case. Ibn al-Rawandi is here probably addressing the question of whether human speech is natural or conventional. He seems to favor the solution of ilham (i.e., natural, innate knowledge), although the term itself does not appear. From the dai's answer we can see that Ibn al-Rawandi gave various examples of innate knowledge (the ability of birds to communicate with each other, the ability of ducks to swim, the ability of infants to suck milk), and that these were mentioned by him as being analogous to speech and understanding.
The sciences are also mentioned by Ibn al-Rawandi as proof for the sufficiency of the intellect. According to him, people developed the science of astronomy by watching the skies. They did not need a prophet to teach them how to watch. Nor did they need prophets in order to teach them how to build lutes. It is absurd to assume that without prophetic revelation people would not have learned that the intestines of a sheep, when dried and stretched upon a piece of wood, can produce pleasant tones. All these skills are acquired by the assiduous application of the inborn human intellect, discernment, and power of observation.
 (In early and pre-Islamic philosophy, certain thinkers such as Ibn al-Rawandi, a skeptic of Islam, and Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi often expressed misanthropic views)