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Emotion

How can I know that I have (or have not) experienced the feeling or state or experience of 'hatred'?
Accepted:
June 28, 2009

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Nicholas D. Smith
July 9, 2009 (changed July 9, 2009) Permalink

As I understand it, hatred is something like anger, only whereas anger can be brief, hatred is much more durable.

Anger might lead you, while you are in its grip, to want to do something hurtful or harmful to another, or in some other way act in a way that is contrary to or which undermines or frustrates the other's interest, where the other is the object of your anger. Hatred is a settled disposition to want to hurt or harm, or to undermine or frustrate the object of hatred. Like anger, hatred can be controlled--one can resist the impulse to hurt or harm, or to undermine or frustrate, when angry and when filled with hate. But the impulse nonetheless there. People who are angry or who hate may often avoid those at whom they are angry or whom they hate, because they do not wish to experience so vividly these negative impulses, or posssibly, because they fear acting on them.

You can conclude that you have hated someone or something if what you have experience is like being angry at them for a long time and in an apparently resolved, habitual, and settled way.

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