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Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition

Hate

by Barbara Forrest

Definition: Personal or social antipathy toward others

Type of ethics: Personal and social ethics

Significance: Hate is a primary cause of conflict between individuals, groups, and nations. Its moral status varies wildly in different contexts, from the Christian view that hatred is sinful to Friedrich Nietzsche’s frank admiration of the great haters who brought about the slave revolt in morality

Most people understand hate, or hatred, as an emotion felt by one individual for another that is characterized by animosity and sometimes is accompanied by the desire to see the hated person suffer. This highly personal understanding of hate is, however, relegated almost entirely to laypersons; scholars have given it not only moral but also metaphysical, sociological, psychological, and criminological significance.

To the early Greek philosopher Empedocles, hate was a metaphysical reality, one of two forces of change in the universe, the other being love. Empedocles explains all natural objects in terms of four basic material elements—fire, earth, air, and water—which combine and decombine in a cyclical process of production and decomposition. Love is responsible for the attraction between elements and for whatever order and stability the universe possesses. Love is in constant conflict with hate, its cosmic opposite.

As the cycle of change unfolds, love is superseded by hate in its turn, and disorder and decay appear in direct proportion to the hate unleashed by the progression of this cycle. The universe is the scene of constant creation and destruction as the dyadic conflict between love and hate proceeds.

Spinoza and Nietzsche

Baruch Spinoza gives hate a prominent place in his Ethics as a fundamental emotion and determinant of human behavior. People love what arouses joy in them, while they hate what arouses sorrow; likewise, one loves the person who “affects with joy a thing which we love” but hates him if “we imagine that he affects it with sorrow.” Love and hate, the respective responses to joy and sorrow, are psychological constants in the deterministic natural order of which humans are a part, acting as the determinants of the nature of all relationships with others, whether they be individuals, classes of individuals, or entire nations. So strong are these emotions that one may hate an entire class or nation of people because one of its members has done one an injury. Hatred induces “anger,” the desire to injure those one hates; when one’s hatred and anger toward others are mutual and result in an injury being done to one, one develops the desire for vengeance against those who have injured one. Hatred also exists in other forms—“indignation,” hatred of those who injure others, and “envy,” hatred of another’s good fortune.

For Friedrich Nietzsche, hate exists primarily as ressentiment (resentment), the vengeful, jealous hatred that reveals the weakness of those who perceive their own self-respect to be threatened by their superiors.

The early Christians resented the Romans because of their paganism and their power. Resentment is what was directed by the “herd,” the masses of nineteenth century Europeans, who were bound to one another by mediocrity and conformity, against the noble individual who dared to be different, who determined for himself what his values would be, and who used the life-giving energy provided by his animal instincts to create a superior life characterized by the mastery of those instincts. Consequently, resentment of others, according to Nietzsche, is beneath the dignity of the noble man; if he does experience hatred, it spends itself quickly and is over before it “poisons” him. Hatred festers in the souls of the weak and powerless, who spend whatever creative energies they possess cultivating plans for revenge.

The Nietzschean view of hatred as a psychosocial phenomenon is reflected in the attitudes of twentieth century thinkers, who have made it the object of not only philosophical reflection but also psychological, sociological, and criminological research. Samuel Tenenbaum, in Why Men Hate (1947), adopts a distinctly Nietzschean view of hatred: “Hate warps and stultifies the soul. It consumes the individual and fills him with suspicion and distrust.... The world becomes a giant conspiracy, where men and women, instead of living normal lives, connive and plot.” The twentieth century saw hatred erupt as animosity toward various racial, ethnic, and religious groups, often culminating in open warfare.

Other Views

Jeffrie Murphy, in Forgiveness and Mercy (1988), acknowledges several varieties of hatred: simple hatred, which is dislike for someone for some “nonmoral objectionable quality,” such as being a bore; moral hatred, which consists of hatred of someone because of the person’s association with an immoral cause, such as Nazism; and, finally, malicious hatred, which consists of the desire to injure another for the purpose of gaining some competitive advantage. Only the last variety of hatred is morally objectionable, but Murphy also argues for the existence of “retributive hatred.”

Retributive hatred is hatred that is motivated by justifiable anger over an unjustifiable wrong, for which the wronged party rightfully expects and is entitled to some form of retribution. No matter howjustifiable it is, however, Murphy does not favor acting upon retributive hatred. Moral humility demands that one recognize one’s own limitations of knowledge and virtue, lest one’s hatred drive one to excessive vengeance. In addition, retribution is often either impossible or too costly, and one’s own moral decency imposes constraints upon one’s desire for revenge. For these reasons, although retributive hatred is a proper response to a genuine wrong, it can be dangerous and should be subjected to “reflective restraint.”

Further Reading

1 

Beck, Aaron T. Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence. New York: Perennial, 2000.

2 

Berrill, Kevin T., and Gregory M. Herek, eds. Hate Crimes: Confronting Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1992.

3 

Goldberg, Jane G. The Dark Side of Love: The Positive Role of Negative Feelings. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1999.

4 

Hamm, Mark. American Skinheads: The Criminology and Control of Hate Crime. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993.

5 

Kaufmann, Walter, ed. “Empedocles.” In Thales to Ockham. Vol. 1 in Philosophic Classics. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968.

6 

Moss, Donald, ed. Hating in the First Person Plural: Psychoanalytic Essays on Racism, Homophobia, Misogyny, and Terror. New York: Other Press, 2003.

7 

Murphy, Jeffrie G., and Jean Hampton. Forgiveness and Mercy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

8 

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

9 

Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethics. Edited and translated by G. H. R. Parkinson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

10 

Tenenbaum, Samuel. Why Men Hate. New York: Beechhurst Press, 1947.

See also: Bigotry; Cruelty to animals; Genocide, Frustration-aggression theory of; Hate crime and hate speech; Hitler, Adolf; Racism; Revenge; Sexual stereotypes.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Forrest, Barbara. "Hate." Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition, edited by George Lucas & John K. Roth, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Ethics_0958.
APA 7th
Forrest, B. (2019). Hate. In G. Lucas & J. K. Roth (Eds.), Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Forrest, Barbara. "Hate." Edited by George Lucas & John K. Roth. Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2019. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.