Hatred as an Attitude
Thomas Brudholm · Philosophical Papers · 2010
Although sometimes forgotten in current uses of the term, ‘hatred’ is a notoriously complex and ambiguous phenomenon. Analyzing and identifying what characterizes hatred and articulating a concept that helps us think more clearly about hatred is difficult. It is not even clear whether hatred is an emotion, an attitude, a sentiment or a passion. This essay departs from the idea that perhaps hatred is analyzable as a retributive reactive attitude. More precisely, it presents a philosophical exploration of what happens if one puts a messy bundle of notions and examples of hatred into the more clear conceptual framework offered by Strawson in ‘Freedom and Resentment’. The question whether hatred can be seen as a retributive reactive attitude is examined both with respect to Strawson's division between participant and objective attitudes and with respect to the seemingly most closely related participant attitude, resentment.