“So many worn-out hands, so many chains. So many broken teeth, so much hatred.” Raymond Queneau, as sung by Guy Béart, seems to have captured the sad reality of our times. So much so that the head of state felt compelled to issue a forceful call to erect “bulwarks” against hatred. Couldn’t—and shouldn’t—education be the first of these bulwarks? But can we really—and how—educate our children against hatred?
In his Ethics, Spinoza defines hatred as sadness accompanied by the idea of an external cause: “To hate someone is to imagine that they are the cause of one’s sadness.” Sadness is, along with joy and desire, one of the three “primitive” human emotions. An emotion is a state that affects the body by altering (increasing or decreasing) its power to act. Generally speaking, joy increases this power to act and marks the transition to a greater state of perfection; sadness, on the other hand, diminishes it, leading to a lesser state of perfection.
Hatred is thus a sad passion. As such, it is “necessarily evil.” It drives us to “reject” or “destroy” its object. We must therefore strive to combat it. But the tragedy is that “human beings are by nature inclined to hatred.” How, then, is it possible to fight against such a “natural” tendency? Should education, in particular, serve to counteract this inclination?
Spinoza’s entire endeavor is to show how one can attain a “good way of life” while remaining within the bounds of the possibilities offered by human nature. Better yet, by fully realizing this nature (which, for him, is part of divine nature). For humans, by nature, have the capacity to overcome hatred. To this end, three main paths are open to them.
“Man is always necessarily subject to the passions.” But action and passion have the same origin: “It is one and the same tendency that leads us to say that man is active or passive.” This tendency becomes a passion when it is linked to inadequate ideas, and a virtue when it is linked to adequate ideas.
Passion is nothing more than a lack of knowledge. It reveals the mind’s powerlessness. Conversely, the mind’s power is manifested in clear and distinct knowledge, in the very act of understanding.
For passion does not have the power to override reason. On the contrary, “all the actions we perform that are driven by a passionate feeling, we can perform—without that feeling—driven by reason.” Through knowledge, we gain control over our feelings. In particular, “a passionate feeling ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it.” It is reason—liberating, a source of joy—that saves us from passion—a cause of bondage, synonymous with sadness. Human beings can therefore indeed be subject to passions; but they can also be freed from that subjection.
Since “acting virtuously means acting under the guidance of reason,” the first remedy for emotions such as hatred lies in their “true understanding.” To give reason precedence, therefore, means to direct all education toward engaging in the very act of understanding. Understanding is “the good that the virtuous person desires for himself,” and which he “will also desire for all other people.”
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From an educational standpoint, anything that leads to understanding is good; anything that prevents understanding is bad. “To bring the intellect to perfection is nothing other than to understand.” That is why we must teach children to be determined to act “based on what they understand.” The first way to build an educational bulwark against hatred is thus to help children understand that they must always, and above all, seek to understand. And to support them in this effort.
“It is rare, however, for people to live guided by reason.” Moreover, some might consider a life without passion to be rather insipid. Fortunately, educators have a second option available to them, one that allows them to act while remaining on the very plane of emotions: to combat—and overcome—a negative, passionate emotion (hatred) with an active, positive emotion (love). For “a feeling can only be repressed or suppressed by an opposing feeling that is stronger than it.” In this case, “hatred must be overcome by love (or generosity) and not countered by reciprocal hatred.”
But by what miracle can love—which is “the joy associated with the idea of an external cause”—be stronger than hatred? Quite simply, because the power to act is enhanced by joy, whereas it is diminished by sadness. That is why “those who live guided by reason strive, as much as they can, to offer love (or generosity) in exchange for the hatred, anger, contempt, etc., that they receive from others.” All the more so because “if one is committed to overcoming hatred with love, one fights with joy and confidence.”
But this is something that is felt rather than proven. The best way for parents and educators to combat hatred, therefore—as far as this second approach is concerned—is to love their children and their students. That is, to feel joy when thinking about them and when being with them. This implies—and we must note this—that we also love ourselves, that is, that we feel joy simply from being who we are. But this leads to the third approach.
The secret behind the miracle of love is simple: it helps strengthen every child’s capacity for action. The capacity for action is one and the same as the capacity for understanding. Hatred, however, is a sign and an admission of powerlessness. Servitude can be defined precisely as “man’s inability to control and suppress his feelings.”
Everything hinges on “tendency,” which “is nothing other than the essence (or nature) of man.” It is therefore nothing other than the power or effort (conatus) by which each thing persists in its being. Tendency sustains itself. “The more one strives to seek what is useful (preserving one’s being), the more one is able to do so; conversely, to the extent that one neglects to preserve what is useful (one’s being), one is powerless.”
That is why we must help children preserve their power. How? Power develops in and through action. The philosopher Alain explains this clearly: “The most important thing is to give children a high regard for their own power and to reinforce it through victories.” The “overcome difficulty” is “the incentive that suits human beings” (Reflections on Education). The power to act is always joyful. “When the mind contemplates itself and its power to act, it is filled with joy.” The joy of being able to move, through active engagement, toward greater perfection.
According to this third approach, therefore, to overcome hatred, one must experience self-satisfaction. Indeed, “the joy that results from self-regard is called self-love or self-satisfaction”; hence the necessity, noted above, of loving oneself!
Finally, it should be noted that the power to act pertains just as much to the body as to the mind. For Spinoza, “thinking substance and extended substance are one and the same substance.” Therefore:
“The effort (or power) that animates the mind when it thinks is, by its very nature, equal to and simultaneous with the effort (or power) that animates the body when it acts.” Therefore, anything that increases the “capacity of the body” is beneficial, and anything that diminishes it is harmful:
“The more a body is capable, compared to others, of doing or enduring several things at once, the more its mind is capable, compared to others, of perceiving several things at once.” Could there be a more fitting tribute to physical education and sports, which will add its benefits to the practice of love and the development of reason?
Understanding, loving, acting—these could therefore be, if we follow Spinoza, the three guiding principles of an educational project whose goal would be to equip people to combat hatred. And to help them live joyfully.
