Facing Our Hatred: Hazlitt’s 1826 Warning for Modern America

I’ve been curious about what Jane Austen—or her character Elizabeth Bennet—might have read, so I researched works published during the Regency era. In this process, I found William Hazlitt’s essay, On the Pleasure of Hating, published in 1826, which offers insights that feel eerily relevant today.

Hazlitt argues that people often take pleasure in hating, and this hatred seeps into everything—from religion to patriotism to morality. Instead of promoting love or unity, these ideas become excuses for attacking others. He suggests that patriotism is less about love for one’s country and more about hating perceived invaders. Similarly, religion is often used to criticize others instead of fostering self-improvement. Hazlitt warns that society masks selfishness and intolerance as "public spirit and opinion," turning people into oppressors or passive followers.

His words resonate with an uncomfortable truth: hatred can corrupt noble ideals—whether in religion, patriotism, or virtue. Initially, I felt disheartened by America's ongoing struggles with these issues. However, I now see this insight as a call to action. By acknowledging our tendency to find pleasure in hatred, we can take steps to overcome it. Let’s confront these darker aspects of ourselves and others, encouraging compassion, understanding, and dialogue. In this way, Hazlitt's cautionary tale can serve as a roadmap for healing and fostering genuine connections.

Here are direct quotes:

"The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to rankling spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness, and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others. What have the different sects, creeds, doctrines in religion been but so many pretexts set up for men to wrangle, to quarrel, to tear one another in pieces about, like a target as a mark to shoot at? Does any one suppose that the love of country in an Englishman implies any friendly feeling or disposition to serve another bearing the same name? No, it means only hatred to the French or the inhabitants of any other country that we happen to be at war with for the time. Does the love of virtue denote any wish to discover or amend our own faults? No, but it atones for an obstinate adherence to our own vices by the most virulent intolerance to human frailties. This principle is of a most universal application. It extends to good as well as evil: if it makes us hate folly, it makes us no less dissatisfied with distinguished merit. If it inclines us to resent the wrongs of others, it impels us to be as impatient of their prosperity. We revenge injuries: we repay benefits with ingratitude... Instead of patriots and friends of freedom, I see nothing but the tyrant and the slave, the people linked with kings to rivet on the chains of despotism and superstition. I see folly join with knavery, and together make up public spirit and public opinions."
Read the essay here: "On the Pleasure of Hating"