[Sim]

I haven't read that book, and I don't think I will, but I came across that review and found it to be quite interesting.

Unfortunately, I didn't find an English issue of that book, so I assume it hasn't been published in English yet.

However, you can buy the French version here: amazon.fr

The review:

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He Who Hates is to Blame

Andr? Glucksmann finds the reason for hatred in those who give in to that elementary feeling

by Ingo Way

For the French philosopher Andr? Glucksmann, the phenomenon of hatred showing up in islamist terrorism, but also in the riots in France, is not just a metaphor for socially unaccepted behavior. It cannot be banned by sociological or cultural explanations, but is a psychological and anthropological fact, a basic attribute of the human species, that can be mobilized anytime. In his newest book "Le Discours de la Haine" ["The Discourse of Hatred"], he explains that the reason for hatred does not lie in the object of hatred, but in the one hating. Hatred is fueled by inferiority complexes and the feeling, the world owes.

Although hatred is part of the conditio humana, it is still not self-evident: "To give in to evil with pleasure is the result of a systematical self-discipline". By making a wide excourse into the world of the Greek tragedy, especially Seneca's "Medea", Glucksmann describes the three steps of the self-education towards hatred, from self-pity (dolor), ourburst (furor) and crime (nefas). In order to let hatred brew in oneself, the one hating is painting himself as a victim, developing conspiracy theories in order to explain his suffering, as an excuse to finally fight "back". Every drinking hole rowdy emphasises his peaceableness, as long as nobody dares to look at him from the wrong side.

Glucksmann belongs to France's anti-totalitarian philosophers, who once, shocked by Solshenizyn's "Archipel Gulag", damanded a renunciation from utopistic and apocalyptic doctrines of salvation. Being the son of Jewish victims of the Nazi regime, Glucksmann fought (after his Maosist phase) the dictatorships of the Eastern Bloc and solidarized with the dissidents there. Today, he turns against the "green fascism", as he calls the islamist totalitarism, which embodies the hatred against the West plainest.

This hatred, according to Glucksmann, is nihilistic -- when we understand nihilism as the non-acknowledgement of evil. According to Glucksmann, almost more threatening than the active nihilism of the terrorists, is the the passive nihilism, that is common in Europe today -- the passive nihilism that assumes good motivations or understandable motives in the background, because of which there is an excuse for everything. This passive nihilism allows evil to happen, because it attempts to explain it away, culturalize it away, socioligize it away, psychologize it away. The basis of that passive nihilism is an infantile attitude: One pretends to live in a good world, where one can stay an innocent child. When there are problems, daddy USA will fix it -- and thereafter, he will be condemned for his mistakes. Glucksmann presents a one-liner to express this phenomenon: "The only evil that exists, is the fact that Americans believe there is evil in the world."

Glucksmann is asking for the reasons of that Western self-hatred, which didn't begin with Jean Genet's applause for the murders at the Olympic Games in Munich 1972, and which hasn't come to an end with the sympathy for Hamas terrorists today. As a possible explanation, he proposes the narcissism of the Americans and Europeans, according to which they assume that they are the cause of all evil in the world. A subtle form of Euro-centrism: Nothing in the world happens without us contributing.

A much more disturbing explanation is the idea that the islamist hatred against Jews may be shared by the European public, more or less secretly. Europe's current anti-semitism contains elements of the traditional anti-semitism, but it has also become a form of self-hatred. On the one hand, Israel reminds the Europeans (wrongly!) of their colonial past. On the other hand -- and this is crucial, according to Glucksmann --, this secondary anti-semitism is fueled because the Jews remind the world that there is no such thing as a "world conscience": Mankind allowed Auschwitz to happen, and still allows similar things to happen, in Rwanda, in Sudan. "The Jews after 1945 are a symbol that the impossible is possible. Their mere presence alone is reason enough to suspect that there is no world conscience."

The Jew, the American and the women are being demanded to be godlike good. But when they turn out to be only human, they are being called radically evil, becoming a target of hatred. The third form of anti-Western hatred, besides anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, is, according to Glucksmann, the hatred against the feminine. The woman embodies, just like the glittering world of the West, the promise of fortune, passion and freedom, and because of that, it has to be made invisible.

At a panel discussion with Glucksmann in Berlin, the philosopher Peter Bieri expressed the nominalistic concern that talking about "the evil" and "the hatred" turns these things into metaphysical entities, which inhibits a rational understanding. Glucksmann rejected that interpretation. He doesn't think of hatred as a platonic idea or an aristotlean substance, but as a pattern that always existed in history, a strategy used by all individuals giving in to hatred. All manifestations of hatred have similarities, like the lack of will for negotiations and compromise, an everything-or-nothing attitude (Medea either wants to keep her children, or kill them, there is no other option) and the conviction, that the own suffering, the own pain is the largest thing in the world, there has to be no consideration for nothing and nobody else. The subordination of rational self-interest under the mere joy of destruction is another attribute of hatred, which is a form of extreme self-hatred: The youngsters rioting in the French banlieus set their own cars, schools and kindergartens on fire.

Bieri insisted on his thesis that every hatred has legitimate reasons such as poverty or humiliation, the problem is only the escalation. But Bieri didn't explain how his interpretation explains phenomenons such as anti-semitism, september 11th or the mass murder on heretics in Islam. The pathos of freedom inspired by Sartre, and the anti-totalitarian morale of Glucksmann, seem to come closer to the reasons of a dazzling and irrational phenomenon such as hatred.

[Jason Vines]

That sounds like an interesting book. If and when it's published in English, I'll pick it up.