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Philosophy | Essay
Nietzsche on ‘Hatred’ and ‘Contempt’
On the Relationship Between Emotions and Values
Friedrich Nietzsche had profound insights into the psychology of hatred.
His assumption was that each human harbored hatred and contempt, whose directedness found plurality across the landscape of human values.
For Nietzsche, hatred arises not toward those we see as inferior but toward those we regard as equals or superiors, while those we see as inferior arouse not hatred in us but contempt and disgust.
As he writes in Beyond Good and Evil, “One does not hate as long as one still despises/underestimates, but [one hates] only those whom one esteems equal or higher.” (§173).
Hatred Versus Contempt
This distinction between hatred and contempt forms the core of Nietzsche’s famous contrast between ‘master’ and ‘slave’ moralities, which Nietzsche uses to designate psychological types stipulatively. These types exist on a continuum — an aspect of both animates all our psyches to varying magnitudes.
The noble soul of the ‘master morality’ reveres its equals and superiors while despising those it sees as inferior. As Nietzsche writes in On the Genealogy of Morals, “The ‘free’ man, the…
