repugnantia

Repugnantia is a neologism used in philosophy and cultural analysis to classify phenomena that elicit visceral repugnance or moral disgust, often in contexts where judgments are influenced by affect rather than purely rational calculation.

The term draws on Latin roots related to repugnare and repugnantius; in English-language scholarship repugnantia appeared in late 20th-century discussions of moral psychology and aesthetics as a descriptive category rather than a normative endorsement.

A repugnantia tends to meet several features: immediate sensory or affective repulsion, the sense that the act or object violates deep-seated norms, resistance to change through argument, and cultural variation in what is deemed repugnant.

Applications include ethics (exploring how disgust influences prohibition), aesthetics (taste and disgust in art), and anthropology (boundary maintenance and taboo). Distinct from illegal acts, repugnantia are not snapshots of law, but of normative sentiment that can shape public policy and social sanctions.

Critiques argue that repugnance is subjective and variable; relying on repugnancia risks entrenching prejudice and masking less tractable moral reasoning. Proponents urge careful separation of descriptively characterizing repugnance from prescriptive judgments, using repugnantia as a heuristic rather than a rule. See also: disgust, moral psychology, moral disgust, taboo, cultural relativism.