Is hatred in fact voluntary? Like its opposite, love, the English term is ambiguous: it can refer to feeling, or willing, or acting.
It is certainly arguable that the feeling of hatred isn't voluntary. Does one really, initially, make an identifiable choice? Seems to me that very few who feel hatred for someone will admit it in those terms. The persons hated "deserve it;" it's a matter of justice. I doubt if even Hitler thought of himself as a "hater." He was giving people what they had coming to them.
I have been very web-slothful lately. St. Thomas Aquinas, if I recall rightly, distinguishes between the passion of hatred and the sin of hatred. The first is something that one experiences, involuntarily, the second something that one does. The passions are not themselves sins, but, ungoverned, they will lead to sins of the most serious nature. Being human, we cannot help but be subject to the passions. But, being human, we can resist the feeling of hatred becoming the will to hate and actual acts of harming others, friends and enemies, whom Jesus commands us to love.
Rick, acting out hate is a choice, but it doesn't work well for a T-shirt. For heaven's sake, this is a slogan, not a philosophical disquisition in the manner of Thomas Aquinas.
Is hatred in fact voluntary? Like its opposite, love, the English term is ambiguous: it can refer to feeling, or willing, or acting.
ReplyDeleteIt is certainly arguable that the feeling of hatred isn't voluntary. Does one really, initially, make an identifiable choice? Seems to me that very few who feel hatred for someone will admit it in those terms. The persons hated "deserve it;" it's a matter of justice. I doubt if even Hitler thought of himself as a "hater." He was giving people what they had coming to them.
I have been very web-slothful lately. St. Thomas Aquinas, if I recall rightly, distinguishes between the passion of hatred and the sin of hatred. The first is something that one experiences, involuntarily, the second something that one does. The passions are not themselves sins, but, ungoverned, they will lead to sins of the most serious nature. Being human, we cannot help but be subject to the passions. But, being human, we can resist the feeling of hatred becoming the will to hate and actual acts of harming others, friends and enemies, whom Jesus commands us to love.
Rick, acting out hate is a choice, but it doesn't work well for a T-shirt. For heaven's sake, this is a slogan, not a philosophical disquisition in the manner of Thomas Aquinas.
ReplyDeleteBut is not wrath one of the seven deadly sins?
ReplyDeleteHatred being voluntary or involuntary is seldom a valid defense in court.
ReplyDeletewv "quite"
Hate isn't the opposite of love. Indifference is. Hatred is still caring, and if people can pursue love, people can choose to pursue hate.
ReplyDeleteSo Elie Wiesel says.
ReplyDelete