Through Windows of Love and Hatred: A Critical Phenomenology of Dehumanization

This paper draws upon phenomenological value theory and conceptions of love and hatred (especially Max Scheler) for understanding dehumanization and forms of socio-political violence. Mohr argues that dehumanization cannot sufficiently be explained psychologically, i.e., as conceiving others as having a subhuman essence (in the view of David Livingstone Smith). The phenomenon is more deeply rooted within preconceptual devaluation, or regarding others as bearing negative value, whose destruction is regarded as value-positive. Such devaluation arises on account of attitudes of hatred. Mohr claims that love, as the movement toward the appreciation of value and the realization of higher possibilities of value, is the emotive counter to hatred and its dehumanizing effects.