"We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value"
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Nietzsche is needling the sentimental idea that hatred is just “more dislike.” For him it’s a perverse kind of respect. You don’t truly hate what you’ve successfully demoted to irrelevance; you dismiss it, you patronize it, you pity it. Hatred flares only when the target is felt as a rival force - something with enough weight to threaten your position, seduce your desires, or expose your weakness. That’s the sting: hate is an involuntary confession that the other still matters.
The line is built like a trap. “Lesser value” sounds like moral accounting, but Nietzsche is really talking about psychic economics: where attention goes, value follows. To hate is to invest. You grant the enemy a status close to your own, sometimes even higher, because only then does their existence feel intolerable. The subtext is less about morality than about wounded selfhood: hatred is the ego’s way of defending a contested hierarchy.
Contextually, this sits neatly inside Nietzsche’s broader project of unmasking our “higher” emotions as strategies. He’s always asking what a feeling does for the person who feels it. Hatred becomes a tool of ranking - a reaction to competition for meaning, recognition, power. That also explains why hate often looks obsessive or strangely intimate: it keeps the opponent close, center stage, validated by your fixation. Nietzsche’s cynicism lands like a diagnostic: if you want to know what someone secretly values, watch what they can’t stop hating.
The line is built like a trap. “Lesser value” sounds like moral accounting, but Nietzsche is really talking about psychic economics: where attention goes, value follows. To hate is to invest. You grant the enemy a status close to your own, sometimes even higher, because only then does their existence feel intolerable. The subtext is less about morality than about wounded selfhood: hatred is the ego’s way of defending a contested hierarchy.
Contextually, this sits neatly inside Nietzsche’s broader project of unmasking our “higher” emotions as strategies. He’s always asking what a feeling does for the person who feels it. Hatred becomes a tool of ranking - a reaction to competition for meaning, recognition, power. That also explains why hate often looks obsessive or strangely intimate: it keeps the opponent close, center stage, validated by your fixation. Nietzsche’s cynicism lands like a diagnostic: if you want to know what someone secretly values, watch what they can’t stop hating.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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