weaken

Honneth meant the personal sphere, where our friends and family either build—or weaken—our basic self-confidence.

Instead, experts on autocracy like myself look for patterns that appear when countries' democracies are being weakened.

This actually triggers a stress response in our body that is associated with heightened levels of cortisol, that's associated with more inflammation, which weakens our immune systems and actually makes us more susceptible to disease.

This moral inversion is dangerous: the traits of strength and power, those of that ennoble man, are now condemned; and the traits of ordinariness and modesty, those of that weaken man, are praised.