If there is anything we seem sure of in our society today, it is that hate is a bad thing. Many things make this clear to me – from terms such as “hate speech” and “hate crime” that denote special categories of deplorable behavior; to slogans such as “love, not hate,” “love conquers hate,” and Read More…
Series: Beyond Love and Hate
Isn’t it self-evident that hate is a bad thing? Isn’t love obviously a good thing? Wouldn’t one have to be beyond reason to question these basic truths? In this series I will make the case that these principles are not at all self-evident or obvious. Rather, I argue that to hold them as such is reductive, dogmatic, and even dangerous.
What is Hate?
In part 1 of this series, I made the observation that in our society we tend to hold love to be a good thing and hold hate a bad thing, and that this seems to be something that many of us consider obvious or self-evident (the love-not-hate ethic). I claimed that such a view is Read More…
The Reason for Hate
In this series, I have been discussing our tendency to reduce social ethics to a simple dichotomy of love versus hate and the problems such a reductive approach can and often does cause in society. In Part 1, I argued against the seemingly popular view that love is obviously good and hate obviously bad, and Read More…