Love and hate seem like obvious opposites. Love, whether romantic or otherwise, involves a sense of warmth and affection for others. Hate involves feelings of disdain. Love builds up, whereas hate destroys.
However, this description of love and hate treats them as merely emotions. As a religious ethicist, I am interested in the role love plays in our moral lives: how and why it can help us live well together. How does our understanding of the love-hate relationship change if we imagine love not as an emotion but as a virtue?
