{"id":168,"date":"2006-03-20T01:41:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-20T05:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=168"},"modified":"2006-03-20T01:41:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-20T05:41:00","slug":"love-hate-fear-and-indifference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2006\/03\/love-hate-fear-and-indifference\/","title":{"rendered":"Love, Hate, Fear, and Indifference"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been doing some thinking of late about the nature of love. I’ve already posted some preliminary thoughts about what ideal or perfect love would look like here<\/a>. In this post I’d like to approach the topic from a different angle, by contrasting love with three of its ‘opposites’, namely, hate, fear, and indifference.<\/p>\n

In brief, here’s how I size up the similarities and differences between these four notions:<\/p>\n

1. Love, hate, and fear contrast with indifference in that they are all modes of concern<\/span> with regard to some object. Indifference is simply a lack of concern<\/span>.<\/p>\n

2. Love contrasts with both hate and fear in that love is a positive<\/span> mode of concern in that it desires and actively pursues the good <\/span>of its object. Hate and fear, by contrast, are negative<\/span> modes of concern. Hate desires and, given the chance, actively pursues the harm<\/span> or destruction<\/span> of its object. Fear desires and strives to bring about the absence<\/span> of its object, often by running away.<\/p>\n

3. Hate contrasts with fear in that hate is directed toward<\/span> its object, going on the offensive, so to speak, whereas fear is directed away from<\/span> its object, going on the defensive, so to speak.<\/p>\n

4. Given the above, love, hate, fear, and indifference are contraries to each other. One cannot love something and at the same time and in the same respect<\/span> either hate, fear, or be indifferent toward it. Mutatis mutandis<\/span> for hate, fear, and indifference.<\/p>\n

Now, here’s an interesting question. Which of these – hate, fear, or indifference – is most opposite to love? Or are all equally opposite, but in different respects?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been doing some thinking of late about the nature of love. I’ve already posted some preliminary thoughts about what ideal or perfect love would look like here. In this post I’d like to approach the topic from a different angle, by contrasting love with three of its ‘opposites’, namely, hate, fear, and indifference. In\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}