The standard modes of aversion: fear, disgust and hatred

Abstract

I have nothing to offer but (a) one very plain and unexciting thesis of asymmetry between the fundamental types of emotional responses (or responses and reactions) to objects: liking and disliking, or, say, pro and con, appreciative/appetitive and aversive: an asymmetry not just empirically encountered but analysable and explainable; and (b) a restricted and somewhat arbitrary triadic selection of modes of aversion on which to base a diffential analysis. I shall argue that no such fundamental division, that is, none exactly on the same logical footing with this, can be attempted in the vastly more variegated range of friendly responses; and shall also mildly try to uphold the fairly representative character of the chosen triad of fear, disgust, hatred. Certainly we are accustomed to such apparently symmetrical contrasts as like and dislike, pro and con, being pleased and displeased, appetite and repugnance, attraction and aversion, and hatred. That appearance of symmetry is near enough to evident truth so long as we stick closely to the highly general root concepts of pro and con, like and dislike, or acceptance and rejection. It tends, however, to break down as our interest turns to the specified forms of pro and con emotional attitudes. Is hatred a symmetrical opposite of love? In every language, the word love has a way of embracing the entire conceptual field of pro responses: hence the traditional trinity of amor complacentiae, amor concupiscentiae and amor benevolentiae. Hatred is confined within much narrower limits: its proper object is only a person or a collective of persons, or at any rate something strictly expressive of the attitudes or words of such. In other cases, loathing, detestation, or repugnance rather than hatred seems to be the fit counterpart of what may still quite properly be called love. I the ducks in the park; I would refuse to say that I hate the seagulls which infest it in wintertime. Again, disgust has its range of objects limited to live beings or their remains, products, vestiges or representations; there is no similarly classic counterpart to it on the pro side. Again, what is the opposite