Abstract
In a recent paper, Thomas Szanto (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2019) develops an account of hatred, according to which the target of this attitude, paradigmatically, is a representative of a group or a class. On this account, hatred overgeneralises its target, has a blurred affective focus, is co-constituted by an outgroup/ingroup distinction, and is accompanied by a commitment for the subject to stick to the hostile attitude. While this description captures an important form of hatred, this paper claims that it does not do justice to the paradigmatic cases of this attitude. The paper puts forward a “singularist” view of hatred, the core idea of which is that, in its simpler form, hatred is to aversively target the other qua this individual person, where the adverb “aversively” expresses the subject’s desire for the target to be annihilated. The conclusion develops some general considerations on the distinction between paradigmatic and marginal instances of an attitude by highlighting its importance for the study of affective phenomena.
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Notes
To make but one example, the precept of loving one’s enemy (Luke 6: 27–29) is cardinal to Christian morality. Interestingly, Scheler notes that the precept “presupposes the existence of hostility, it accepts the fact that there are constitutive forces in human nature which sometimes necessarily lead to hostile relations […]. It only demands that […] hatred should be absent, especially that ultimate hatred which is directed against the salvation of [the enemy’s] soul” (Scheler 1994: 46f).
As Brudholm puts it: “[h]atred lies at the extreme end of the continuum of attitudes at stake in our dealings with one another, and it is tempting to say that the beginning of hatred is the end of a relationship […] part of the reason why hatred is not an ordinary phenomenon in inter-personal relationships is that it invites abandoning the other or worse” (2010: 293).
Hatred “never lacks the tendency to annihilate single, historically given creatures” (Kolnai 2007: 141, my trans.).
To formulate this idea with Vendrell Ferran (2018: 174): “[hatred’s] heuristic value consists in showing us that, in our world, hatred is a possibility inherent to human nature,” even when (or: especially when) one deems oneself to be immune to that possibility, one could add.
Psychological research presents preliminary evidence for the idea that the lexical distinction tracks different kinds of mental phenomena rather than experiences lived through with different level of intensities (Van Bavel et al. unpublished ms).
Others have already put forward views that converge with the singularist account. In particular, this paper intimately resonates with Kolnai, who writes: “now, we don’t want to flatly declare that hatred is possible only against an equal spiritual-personal force, but we do establish without difficulty that this is the central case and that other cases can be understood only as irradiations and transferences of this case” (Kolnai 2007: 102f, my trans. and emph.). Steinbock concurs: “the deepest and most fundamental kind of hating is a person-to-person hating that denies or diminishes the person on an interpersonal basis” (Steinbock 2019: 119) and so do Elster (2004), Brudholm (forthcoming), and Landweer (forthcoming).
The debate (see Szanto 2019: 5) seems to hinge on issues such as whether hatred can have an episodic (occurrent) form, whether it should rather be described as a sentiment or as a disposition, whether it has bodily components or not, etc. I am inclined to think that hatred can be an emotion. In fact, I believe that hatred can be episodic (while having the possibility of turning into a sentiment) as the example in Section 2, which describes the onset of hatred as a conscious emotional episode, may illustrate. These episodes can also be constituted by bodily feelings (“To feel hate […] may be exactly this: rage, aggression, teeth gnashing, eyes inflamed, and […] a burning desire to harm or destroy a deserving object” Brudholm and Schepelern Johansen 2018: 95). However, I won’t defend these claims here, which is why I employ the general term “(affective) attitude,” rather than the more specific term of “emotion” to denote hatred.
It exceeds the purpose of the paper to develop this specific point, but it is important to highlight that properties such as “odiousness,” “admirability,” “blameworthiness” etc. are dispositional. Their definition, thus, necessarily refers to the possibility (or power) to induce the corresponding attitudes in a subject (hate, trust, admiration, blame, etc.). If formal objects contribute to the explanation or justification of affective attitudes (Mulligan 2010: 486), then adducing these as the properties which our attitudes respond to generates explanations or justifications which are uninformative at best, circular at worst (Kim: “why do you hate John?”, Pam: “Because he is odious,” Kim: “Why is John odious?”, Pam: “Because he has the power of inducing hate”). This suggests that such second-order dispositional value-properties are grounded in first-order value-properties (being evil, excellent, guilty) and that an object or fact acquires the second-order value-property because the first-order property correlates with an emotive reaction of a certain type. For instance: it is because evil and hate are correlated that, if John is evil, John is odious and, thus, has the power of inducing hate (see von Hildebrand 1969: 10).
Note that something along this explanation is required to specify the particular sense in which hatred’s targets are ‘fungible.’ In fact, all affective attitudes may be described as having a fungible target as long as their targets exemplify the relevant value-property: I do not fear only this particular dog, for my fear will be activated by all dogs that exemplify a threat. Not only this commendable person is admired by me, but I will admire any person which, mutatis mutandis, is commendable. In hatred, the ‘fungibility’ of the target must, therefore, have a peculiar explanation, were one to claim that hatred is different from other attitudes in that respect.
To be more precise: the property of an emotion is essential (in the minimal sense) if this emotional episode cannot exist if deprived of that property. As an example: an instance of fear would not exist without this emotional episode exemplifying the property of appraising its target as dangerous. Or: an instance of envy would not exist without this emotional episode exemplifying the property of appraising a good as desirable. I leave open whether this impossibility is of metaphysical nature or of empirical (or social) nature.
If this conclusion is correct, then it invites the empirical hypothesis that hatred’s paradigm scenarios – i.e., those salient situations in which, according to de Sousa, individual learns how to elicit appropriate emotive responses (de Sousa 1990) – would be cases of person-focused (and not general) hatred. The hypothesis appears plausible, considering that general hatred is cognitively more demanding than person-focused hatred as it presupposes, among other notions, the idea of an ingroup-outgroup distinction.
See Ben-Ze’ev: “[…] anger can sometimes persist in a way that develops into hatred. This may easily occur, since people who evaluate the bad actions of another person as stemming from that person’s basic character will tend to transform their anger into hate” (2001: 383). On the relation between anger and hatred, see also Roberts 2003: 251, Brudholm forthcoming.
This is true for “blaming anger,” but not all anger is blaming anger: we also react with anger to goal frustration (Shoemaker 2017).
Note, however, that moral and legal probity notwithstanding, Pam understands John’s action upon his legal and moral rights to be underlaid by an evil intention for John could have also opted not to act on those rights. I elaborate on this point below.
Strictly speaking, the attitude’s intentional object is John, but I consider affective attitudes to be superposed on cognitive acts that track values (this is a view about affective attitudes originally developed in early phenomenology, see Vendrell Ferran 2008, which has important ramifications in contemporary debates, see Mulligan 2010; Mueller 2018). According to this particular view, if those underlying cognitive acts misfire, that has consequences for the attitudes superposed on them: they, too, are deficient in an important respect.
I am grateful to ingrid Vendrell Ferran for pressing me on the punishing intention that animates hatred.
Of course, one could still claim that Pam will hate all persons, insofar as they are evil. But the sense according to which the target of hate, on this interpretation of hate, can be claimed to be fungible will apply to all affective attitudes and thus is not specific of hatred, see footnote 10.
In passing, it is noteworthy that self-deception represents a concrete epistemic threat in all negative emotions (like envy, e.g.), and so in hatred, too. Therefore, self-deception should be seen as an additional obstacle to the frank report of hatred. I am thankful to Alba Montes Sánchez for directing my attention to this point.
It merits attention that the terms “marginal” or “peripheral” are not used here as synonyms of “insignificant” or “irrelevant,” but only in opposition to “paradigmatic” (and, more precisely, in opposition to the sense of “paradigmatic” discussed at the end of Section 1). General hatred, even if “marginal” or “peripheral” with respect to person-focused hatred, certainly is an extremely significant and relevant kind of affective attitude—from both, a societal and a psychological point of view.
The paradigmatic/marginal distinction can be applied to kinds themselves: it is possible to construe the notion of a “marginal kind” when one mixes together core and marginal features. In this sense, general or collectivizing hatred can be said to be a marginal kind of hatred.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Thomas Brudholm, Jason Dockstader, Danny Forde, Alessandra Fussi, Jamie Murphy, Donnchadh O’Connaill, Íngrid Vendrell Ferran, Alba Montes Sánchez, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous versions of this article.
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Salice, A. I hate you. On hatred and its paradigmatic forms. Phenom Cogn Sci 20, 617–633 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09668-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09668-0