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?

The 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas is a foundational thinker in the history of Christian ethics. For Aquinas, hate is not the antithesis of love, or even opposed to it. In his most important work, the “Summa Theologiae,” he writes that hate responds to love. In other words, hate is a reaction to threats against what we love, or what we deeply value. We can better understand the experience of hate by getting clear on what it means to love.

Greek roots

Today, scientists know that feelings of love are related to biochemical processes that release chemicals in the brain, increasing pleasure and excitement. Beyond mere biology or even emotions, some philosophers and psychologists contend that love is also a practice.

Love can also refer to a virtue: a habit or settled disposition that increases the likelihood of people thinking, feeling and acting in ways that promote happiness and well-being. For example, the virtue of courage can help people endure and thrive in the midst of fear and uncertainty.

The concept of virtue is as old as philosophy itself. In the “Republic,” written in the fourth century B.C.E., Plato distinguishes between virtue in general and the individual virtues that he believes characterize well-being, such as wisdom, courage, moderation and justice.

Love is not among them. Instead, he associates love – for which he used the Greek word “eros” – with feelings of physical desire.

It was Aristotle, one of Plato’s students, who inched love closer toward virtue. In Aristotle’s “Nicomachaen Ethics,” he writes that virtue involves learning how to act and feel “at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way.” The individual virtues are cultivated over time through repetition.

For an act to be virtuous, one must consciously and deliberately act for the sake of some moral value. For example, Aristotle states that a generous person does good by giving wealth to the right people. Someone who spends with the aim of receiving some benefit in return merely appears generous. The person’s character and the spirit in which they give matters.

The virtuous life isn’t easy – but true friends can help. Aristotle believed that relationships of mutual respect and concern can empower us to develop virtues. Unlike friendships that are situational or superficial, these deeper connections are characterized by “philia,” a kind of love. Friendships based in philia are virtuous: They involve mutual accountability and concern for each other, as if each person were an extension of oneself.

Aquinas’ take

The Christian moral tradition builds and elaborates on these Greek foundations. For Christian theologians and moral philosophers, love can refer to an emotion, an affection, a duty and, yes, a virtue.

Aquinas considers virtue to be a stable disposition of the will – our capacity to choose – that contributes to a well-lived life. Individual virtues are good habits that influence how we relate to ourselves and other people in our daily lives, including love.

He also considers love to be a theological virtue – a gift of God’s grace that people can choose to embrace or reject. “Caritas,” or “charity” in Latin, is defined as friendship with God. Aquinas writes that it has a social benefit, too: Caritas inclines people toward treating their fellow humans with kindness, acting to advance others’ well-being.

The other types of love, eros and philia, are subjective. They respond to our perception of value in other people and things. Caritas creates value in other people, whether or not we are able to see it.

Love and hate

How can approaching love as a virtue – rather than an emotion, affection or biochemical reaction – help us understand feelings of hatred?

From Aquinas’ perspective, the feeling of hate is dependent on and conditioned by the people and things that we love, or that we consider good for ourselves and other people, whether that’s a sports team, a movie or an ideology.

Yet if we take love to be a virtue – a daily habit that we choose to guide our practices – then we can exercise a degree of control over how we respond to feelings of hatred.

Consider how much hate there is in politics, such as hatred of a particular policy, politician or belief – or hatred of injustice itself. But at root, perhaps that hate is a response to love; for example, love for one’s neighbors, one’s country or one’s ideals. Recognizing that possibility can help us respond with a loving choice, like peaceful protest, as a way to advocate for rights. By cultivating the virtue of love, people are more likely to engage in practices of care and empathy necessary for communities to thrive.

Distinguishing between feelings of love, practices of love and the virtue of love can empower us to respond to feelings of hatred. Becoming better lovers requires engaging with destructive emotions, rather than running from them.

Tucker J. Gregor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.