Hatred

"Hate" redirects here. For other uses, see Hate (disambiguation).

"Hates" redirects here. For the German singer, see Adrian Hates.

Postcard of the Duluth lynchings of black men on June 15, 1920

Hatred (or hate) is a deep and emotional extreme dislike, directed against a certain object or class of objects. The objects of such hatred can vary widely, from inanimate objects to animals, oneself or other people, entire groups of people, people in general, existence, or the whole world. Though not necessarily, hatred is often associated with feelings of anger and disposition towards hostility against the objects of hatred. Hatred can drive oneself to extreme actions. Actions upon people or oneself after a lingering thought are not uncommon. Hatred can result in extreme behavior including violence, murder, and war.

Philosophical views

Philosophers have offered many influential definitions of hatred. René Descartes viewed hate as an awareness that something is bad combined with an urge to withdraw from it. Baruch Spinoza defined hate as a type of sorrow that is due to an external cause. Aristotle viewed hate as a desire for the annihilation of an object that is incurable by time. ((Hatred is sorrow with the accompanying idea of an external cause. (When something, or someone, gives us sorrow, we feel hatred towards that thing or person.)) David Hume believed that hate is an irreducible feeling that is not definable at all.

Christianity

Though hate is usually considered to be a negative emotion by philosophers, religious philosophers such as Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas maintain that it is only healthy to hate sin. Both the Old and the New Testaments quote various forms of hate. David, in his Psalms, thanks God for destroying those that hate him, and thanks Him for hating his enemies. This is the era of wars and kingdoms; armies destroy enemies, hate is political and military. But it is also domestic: David's sons hate each other, and Absalom, David's favorite, will kill his half-brother after the latter rapes and spurns his sister. And after banishment, Abasalom will hate his father and try to destroy him. In the New Testament, hatred focuses on the soul. Evil is internalised and the focus of hatred becomes that part of the heart, the sinning self. Destruction of sinners is celebrated. But all people are, according to the gospels, sinners, and only have to look inside of themselves in order to find sin. In religious terms, therefore, love and hate are inextricable. Loving good means hating sin and turning from vice. Love, as Aquinas teaches, must be divided into love of good things, the healthy movement of the soul true to itself, and love of inappropriate objects, the desire to have and use what may by bad for the soul.

Ethnolinguistics

James W. Underhill, in his Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Concepts: truth, love, hate & war, (2012) discusses the origin and the metaphoric representations of hate in various languages. He stresses that love and hate are social, and culturally constructed. For this reason, hate is historically situated. Although it is fair to say that one single emotion exists in English, French (haine), and German (Hass), hate varies in the forms in which it is manifested. A certain relationless hatred is expressed in the French expression J'ai la haine, which has no equivalent in English. While for English-speakers, loving and hating invariably involve an object, or a person, and therefore, a relationship with something or someone, J'ai la haine (literally, I have hate) precludes the idea of an emotion directed at a person. This is a form of frustration, apathy and animosity which churns within the subject but establishes no relationship with the world, other than an aimless desire for destruction. Underhill (following Philippe Roger) also considers French forms of anti-americanism as a specific form of cultural resentment. At the same time, he analyses the hatred promoted by Reagan in his rhetoric directed against the "Evil-Empire". And Underhill suggests it is worrying that foreign languages (French, German, Spanish and Czech) are uncritically assimilating forms of hatred exported by neo-conservative discourse which permeate these languages via the translation of political journalism and the rhetoric of the "War-on-Terror" and the promotion of "Security".

Psychoanalytic views

In psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud defined hate as an ego state that wishes to destroy the source of its unhappiness. More recently, the Penguin Dictionary of Psychology defines hate as a "deep, enduring, intense emotion expressing animosity, anger, and hostility towards a person, group, or object." Because hatred is believed to be long-lasting, many psychologists consider it to be more of an attitude or disposition than a temporary emotional state.

Neurological research

The neural correlates of hate have been investigated with an fMRI procedure. In this experiment, people had their brains scanned while viewing pictures of people they hated. The results showed increased activity in the middle frontal gyrus, right putamen, bilaterally in the premotor cortex, in the frontal pole, and bilaterally in the medial insular cortex of the human brain.

Legal issues

A hate crime (also known as a "bias-motivated crime") generally refers to criminal acts which are seen to have been motivated by hate. Those who commit hate crimes target victims because of their perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender identity, or political affiliation. Incidents may involve physical assault, destruction of property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, or offensive graffiti or letters (hate mail).

Hate speech is speech perceived to disparage a person or group of people based on their social or ethnic group, such as race, sex, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, language ability, ideology, social class, occupation, appearance (height, weight, skin color, etc.), mental capacity, and any other distinction that might be considered by some as a liability. The term covers written as well as oral communication and some forms of behaviors in a public setting. It is also sometimes called antilocution and is the first point on Allport's scale which measures prejudice in a society. In many countries, deliberate use of hate speech is a criminal offence prohibited under incitement to hatred legislation. It is often alleged that the criminalization of hate speech is sometimes used to discourage legitimate discussion of negative aspects of voluntary behavior (such as political persuasion, religious adherence and philosophical allegiance). There is also some question as to whether or not hate speech falls under the protection of freedom of speech in some countries.

Both of these classifications have sparked debate, with counter-arguments such as, but not limited to, a difficulty in distinguishing motive and intent for crimes, as well as philosophical debate on the validity of valuing targeted hatred as a greater crime than general misanthropy and contempt for humanity being a potentially equal crime in and of itself.

See also

• Discrimination
• Gossip
• Misanthropy
• Revenge
• Self-loathing
• Two Minutes Hate

Further reading

• The Psychology of Hate by Robert Sternberg (Ed.)
• Hatred: The Psychological Descent into Violence by Willard Gaylin
• Why We Hate by Jack Levin
• The Psychology of Good and Evil: Why Children, Adults, and Groups Help and Harm Others by Ervin Staub
• Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence by Aaron T. Beck
• Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing by James Waller
• Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Concepts: truth, love, hate & war, by James W. Underhill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.