Our friend The Ethical Exhibitionist has a thoughtful and pleasing entry on his blog examining William Hazlitt’s “On the Pleasure of Hating”.
To quote, briefly:
The great thing about teaching Hazlitt’s essay is that nobody wants to acknowledge his central assumption, revealed in the title, that hating is a pleasurable act. Particularly well-intentioned liberal college students (and even their long-haired vegetarian peacenik professor, once upon a time). Hatred is a scourge, after all. It’s something we’re trying to eradicate. “Some people might find pleasure in hating, but I– as a liberated, open-minded person– certainly do not, and I don’t think most other people do either.”
Read the entire treatise here: THE ETHICAL EXHIBITIONIST
July 13, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Hey! Thanks for the link. I do love hating…
August 11, 2008 at 11:30 am
His review blows. It manages to reverse Hazlitt’s hating to the typical leftist “hatred of hate”. Boring.
August 26, 2008 at 11:41 am
I’m actually pretty sure that’s not what I did (in fact, if I mentioned partisan politics at all, it was to criticize a certain type of empty-headed liberalism that resists Hazlitt’s central thesis that hatred is natural and pleasurable). I also fail to see how acknowledging that Hazlitt declares his own hatred of “bigotry” and “brute force” somehow “reverses” Hazlitt’s stated position. Considering I’m quoting the man himself, I’d say your problem is with Hazlitt and not with me.
But I guess it’s an election year, and anything that doesn’t fall into a simplistic “left vs. right” frame simply “blows.”