A Modest Defense of Hatred
Or, A Profane Encomium
Turner Valley, Alberta
We have been taught that hatred is wrong. We have been taught that every evil done to mankind has been animated by hatred. We have been taught that hatred is irrational, motivated by fear, greed, or envy. We have been taught that to hate someone is to wrong them, that hate must be rooted out and replaced with love. We have been taught that hatred not only harms others, but harms him who possesses it, turning the heart black and rotten. The reader must entertain me if I suggest we have been misled.
We must examine the effect of hatred upon the soul. To say that hatred makes the soul sick, rotten, black, poisoned, or any other such thing is to use a vague and nondescript visual image. Furthermore, such imagery would suggest that the soul is weakened, battered and bruised by hating. On the contrary, through hatred, the soul is revitalized. It is through hatred that clay can be animated, that a moribund body may be brought to life. Hatred can take any sad and sallow husk of a man, sleepwalking through his dreary life life, and fill him with vitality. It is apt that, when we speak of hatred, it is that one is filled with hatred—for under the influence of hatred, the soul is swelled, brimming with a volatile and catalytic substance. The absence of hatred does not indicate the presence of love; the absence of hatred is simply emptiness.
Hatred necessarily has an object, towards which this vitality spills over. Thus, hatred directs man towards a goal. I have seen hatred motivate men like no other force in heaven or earth. The Lord proclaimed that a man’s faith, were it great enough, could move mountains; I think it more likely for hatred to accomplish this task. And, as it directs a man to an object, it provides him a constellation of meaning. In this way, hatred transcends the self. In an age where man is instructed that meaning comes from within, there is no clear object of meaning for him—but hatred provides this. A secular age precludes us finding meaning in the divine. A “postnational” age precludes us finding meaning in our nation. Where man is bereft of these keys to meaning, he can yet turn to hatred.
But is hatred, then, problematic? Let us examine the alternative. Where man is denied hatred, and he lacks any objective referent of meaning, he sinks into a lobotomized stupor. In such an age, the alternative to a vital hatred is the Last Man. It is in Nietzsche’s forecast of the logical consequences of nihilism where we see something remarkable—that the opposite of hatred is not love, but nothing at all. The state where man cannot hate is not the state where his love is infinite and pure—it is a state where he is comfortable, seeking nothing besides his enervating amusements, and so he blinks.
It may be alleged that the object of hatred is purely negative—to tear down, destroy, or kill. This could not be further from the truth. The achievement of any objective may have a positive or negative aspect. The spread of Christendom came from equally ardent missionaries and crusaders. Hatred may tear down, but it may build also. Castles and palaces have been built from hatred—the greatest technological and scientific discoveries too. Hatred does not merely animate a man to destroy the object of his hatred, but also forces himself to turn inwards, to build himself up to surmount it. Hatred, then, may motivate progress and excellence better than any other force.
If we turn to examine the activity of the soul more closely under hatred, we see a particular structure emerge. Hatred inflates the desiring faculty to enormous proportions. Perhaps only love can also arouse one’s desire to such an extent. The desiring faculty is precisely that which orients the soul towards an object. What is more, the faculty of the will is strengthened, so that a hateful man may pursue his goal unrelentingly. On the surface, however, hatred does not so strengthen one’s reasoning faculty. Rather, hatred seems to numb the mind, turning it languid and servile. The mind is made a slave to the desire; it considers ways to fulfil the desire without questioning it, as hatred of that object is taken as given.
Hatred is, then, perhaps an imperfect tool. It may be used to set the soul in motion where it erstwhile was comatose, but it cannot establish a harmony in that soul. For, it is true in a sense that hatred turns one’s desire into a tyrant. Plato warned about the tyrannical soul in the Republic, writing that, in this state, one becomes a slave to desire; when one desire is satisfied, an even greater one appears. Where one is a slave to desire, the entire soul is made servile. Hatred becomes a tyrant in this way, threatening to dominate and consume a man. Moreover, this hatred is unstable, as it does not have a firm foundation. It is only borne of caprice, just as the tyrannical character’s arbitrary will.
The hatred I have spoken about thus far is anathema to reason. It motivates one towards a goal, but this goal is, in the end, arbitrary. The intensity of this hatred, as an all-consuming fire, threatens to extinguish a spirit, rather than energize it. Or, it may fade away in a moment. This kind of hatred proves to be rather superficial.
Might there be a different kind of hatred—one that harmonizes with reason? We have been taught that hatred is irrational, that it is borne out of fear, and that, once one understands what they erstwhile hated, this hatred dissipates into thin air. What if there were a kind of hatred that does not dissipate as one’s understanding grows, but that deepens in proportion to understanding? This might be a sustained hatred, able to last over years, rather than the fleeting hatred noted above. This would be a mature hatred, which does not dominate a man, turning the desire into a tyrant, but where the desire is sustained and contained by the reasoning faculty—in other words, this hatred rules the soul legitimately. This mature hatred would not turn the soul into a disordered mess, but would maintain a harmony, while also preserving its vitality. A desire which is maintained by reason is prolonged, heightened, and deepened. A man will know the object of his hatred to be worthy of that hatred, and this knowledge will carry him forth. This mature hatred would be more powerful than a superficial hatred ever could be. It would accomplish greater works and make man master of himself. He will find himself at home in his hatred.
It may, then, be highly beneficial for a man to adopt a mature hatred. It is a tool at our disposal and our bodies yearn to use it. However, there is a danger at hand. One of the most striking scenes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is when the monster discovers fire. At first, it is warm and welcoming, and so the monster reaches his hand in, only to be burned. The sublime duality of fire is analogous with hatred. Humans through the ages were wise to equate hatred with fire, for this same fiery hatred which provides warmth may also consume a man entirely. Man must be cautious with his hatred. A superficial hatred may be easily snuffed out like smoldering tinder or conflagrate into an uncontrolled blaze. A mature hatred, on the other hand, is tended to with care, allowing it to sustainably grow into something bright and beautiful.
But what, then, is hatred? Socrates chided his peers in the Symposium for praising love not on its own terms, but by its effects. Similarly, until now we have only praised hatred by its vestiges.
Hatred is merely the impassioned recognition of hostile and irreconcilable otherness. One cannot hate one’s own. And one differentiates between themselves and an other through their particularities. As such, particularity is implied by otherness. Irreconcilable otherness is irreconcilable difference between two discrete entities because of their inalienable particularity. Our particularity is essentially our humanness, as, without it, there would be nothing which makes a person that person. Inasmuch as inalienable particularity inheres in all humans, hatred is bound to arise between them. And what is more, hatred affirms this very humanness insofar as it is a recognition of this particularity. Hatred, then, is not anti-human, but distinctly human—it affirms the human. For a man to deny hatred is for him to deny the human element within himself and others.
If there exists genuinely hostile and irreconcilable otherness, then there is justifiable hatred.
Hatred is not only recognition of the fact of particularity, but it also leads man to love his particularity and bolster it. Hatred of outsiders leads a man to build up his nation. Hatred of heathens leads him to spread his religion. Hatred of ugliness leads him to create beauty. Hatred of falsehood leads him to discover the truth. Hatred of vice leads him to cultivate his own excellence.
It is through hatred’s affirmation of particularity that its connection with love is revealed.
It was George Grant who wrote that “Love is consent to the fact that there is authentic otherness.” One can only love what is not theirs. If the object of love is subsumed into the self, then love ceases. Otherness here also necessitates particularity. Love is acceptance of another’s flaws and imperfections. Love does not exist despite those flaws and imperfections, but because of them. For, if not for such particularities, the object of love may not be distinguished from others. Love must be fixed upon a determinate object. And, love is necessarily exclusive. Love must be a particularly strong attachment to an individual other, for if love is not exclusive, then the attachment is equally strong towards all things, at which point love loses all meaning. “Universal love” is an oxymoron.
But if love is essentially human, then so is hatred. Love and hatred, both forms of recognition of man’s particularity, are revealed to be two sides of the same coin. Both forces inflame the soul, and both not only recognize, but reify difference. All that can be said for hate can be said for love. It is through love of one’s own country that man builds it up; love of his god which leads him to evangelize; love of himself which leads him to cultivate excellence.
The same faculty is at work in love as in hate. With the intimate connection between the two, I ask the reader to look around himself to see whether or not love and hate intersect as I say—where there appears to be only one, look closer, and you will find the other nearby. A man loves a woman, and consequently hates those who try to take her from him, otherwise he does not truly love her. A man only hates an enemy if he loves himself and his nation. A man hates the heathen only if he loves his god. It is only a man who loves deeply that can hate deeply, and only a man who hates deeply that can love deeply.
Just as there is a superficial hatred, there is also a superficial love, where a man is led by his desire, not his reason. A mature love is one that harmonizes with reason, where the object of one’s love is worthy of that love. This love is sustained, not capricious. This love must be tended to. It is no accident that love, like hatred, is compared to a fire.
Those who read the Bible may be confused at the apparent difference between God in the Old and New Testaments. In the Old, God is punitive, angry, and spiteful. He floods the world for its iniquities; He opens a sinkhole underneath those who challenge the authority of Moses and Aaron. In the New, God is forgiving, graceful, and loving, sending His only son to die so that our sins may be forgiven. This may seem like an insurmountable gulf to those who view hatred and love as opposites. To one who views them as intimately related, God’s behaviour is entirely rational. It is only because God is hateful that He is able to love so deeply. The anger of the Lord is His love, and His love is His anger. It is because God loves mankind that He hates man’s iniquities. It is because God’s love is based upon our uniqueness—our particularities and our flaws—that it is not universal, but conditional. If God’s love were unconditional, it would not be true love. And if God were not also hateful, He could never love truly.
It is not that particularity is good per se, only that particularity is essentially human. If we want to preserve our particularity in an age where every effort is made to deny us that, then we must continue to hate, as we continue to love. Both, however, have their excesses. Of course, a superficial hatred may consume one’s soul and lead to destruction, as can a superficial love. Instead, we must cultivate a mature hatred, as we must cultivate a mature love. Additionally, we must not seek to reify difference at all costs, but only so much as our humanity demands. The task of the modern man is to reclaim his particularity. Hatred is an essential tool for this task.
Or else, let us blink.