Emerson's Doctrine of Hatred

If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, "Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless would be such a greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self Reliance"

After generations of debate on the politics of transcendentalism, this passage from "Self-Reliance" (1841) remains Emerson's best-known statement on social reform. Although it comes in the middle of the iconic paragraph that begins "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist," the passage seems to offer a distinctly critical, not to say reactionary, view of political involvement. The passage implies a greater concern on Emerson's part with individual freedom than universal freedom; it suggests that the personal foibles of an individual abolitionist should be given more attention than the justice of his or her cause. It appears to turn the critical principles of self-reliance into an all-too-convenient exemption from social engagement; it compounds the impression of disinterest in abolition with a seeming ignorance about the fact that, after 1834, there were no slaves in Barbados, but there were, a mere five hundred miles off, in Baltimore. The passage has thus long been taken as an expression of Emerson's limited enthusiasm for the abolitionist cause. As such, it has been the object of criticism by some, commiseration by others.

In the current wave of revisionist work on Emerson's relation to abolition, the passage, like "Self-Reliance" more generally, has remained difficult to redeem. Len Gougeon, one of the leaders of the revisionist movement, has worked to modify Emerson's anti-abolitionist reputation by positioning "Self-Reliance" as a stage in the evolution toward what would become Emerson's period of more visible abolitionist activism in the later 1840s and particularly in the 1850s. In his book Virtue's Hero, Gougeon argues that although "Self-Reliance" does indeed express Emerson's ambivalence toward abolition circa 1841 when the essay was published, by 1844, when Emerson delivered his first in a series of abolitionist addresses, Emerson had undergone a "conversion" to abolitionism, the evidence for which can be seen in his more frequent attendance at abolitionist meetings, his greater willingness to sign petitions, and, of course, deliver addresses on behalf of the cause. Gougeon's largely biographical reading has a certain common-sense appeal that has caught on among critics (41–85).¹ However, I would argue that by explaining Emerson's abolitionism in evolutionary terms, such a reading ends up explaining away a central component of Emerson's abolitionist thought. I will argue that, far from representing Emerson's criticism of abolitionism, the passage from "Self-Reliance" embodies Emerson's abolitionism. By presenting abolitionism in terms of an intersubjective dialectic in which "grace" is answered with "gracelessness" and "love" with "hatred," I argue, Emerson performs rather than criticizes key terms of Garrisonianism's famously disruptive publicity.

Hating Your Brother

Gougeon reads the passage as an example of Emerson's residually Unitarian tendency to criticize "certain abolitionists who attempt to reform the world without reforming themselves first" (Virtue's Hero 55). Gougeon refers in particular to Emerson's recollection of a meeting with the British abolitionist George Thompson in 1835, whom he described in his journal as "belong[ing] . . . to that great class of the Vanity-stricken" (26). Therefore, Gougeon asserts, "it must be pointed out that Emerson here does not condemn all abolitionists, or the movement itself, but only those who use the cause for self-aggrandizement" (55). The implication of Gougeon's reading, then, is that...