Anger and Forgiveness

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by Martha C. Nussbaum


  its focus imperceptibly shifts from act to person. Thus projective disgust

  and anger become very difficult to disentangle. On the one hand, disgust,

  though directed at the person, is often triggered by allegedly wrongful

  acts: sodomy is a triggering proxy for what some people find disgusting

  about gay men.82 On the other hand, insofar as anger seeks lowering, it

  often slides over into a more general down- ranking of relatively stable

  personal traits, rather than a temporary down- ranking of a person on

  the basis of the wrongful act. (Criminals become a despised subgroup

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  and targets for disgust.) Thus the distinction between disgust and anger,

  which initially seems clear, turns out to be not clear at all— when the

  anger in question is of the status- focused sort.

  Hatred is another negative emotion that focuses on the entirety of the person, rather than a single act. Although anger is directed at a person,

  its focus is an act, and when the act is disposed of somehow, anger could

  be expected to go away. Hatred, by contrast, is global, and if acts are

  involved it is simply because everything about the person is seen in a

  negative light. As Aristotle remarks, the only thing that will really satisfy hatred is that the person cease to exist (1382a15). If we think that hatred—

  an intensely negative attitude to the entire being of another person— is

  always a bad emotion to have, we are not required to think this about

  anger, which is fully compatible with liking or even loving the person.

  Once again, however, things are not so easy. Transition- Anger has

  virtually nothing in common with hatred: it looks forward to good for

  all. The anger of a person who undergoes the Transition, focused on an

  act and aiming at social good, is also easy to distinguish from hatred.

  The person wants wrongdoing to cease, but may continue to love the

  person and wish her well. The minute the payback wish gets into the

  picture, however, things are more complicated: wanting payback looks

  like a kind of hatred of the person, since it clearly is not a constructive

  reparative act.83 And if the person chooses the road of status, the distinc-

  tion is blurred there too: she seeks to lower or humiliate the person, and

  that project easily segues into a negative attitude toward that person, not

  just a deed. People who want to lower others typically want the lowering

  to last.

  Contempt is another “reactive attitude” that is frequently associated with anger. At the outset, once again, the two emotions seem very different. Contempt is an attitude that views another person as low or base,

  usually on account of some enduring trait or traits for which the person

  is taken to be blameworthy.84 It presents “its object as low in the sense of

  ranking low in worth as a person in virtue of falling short of some legiti-

  mate interpersonal ideal of the person.”85 Of course the ideal may or may

  not be really legitimate, and the person may or may not really fall short

  of it. In many cases, contempt is not addressed to failings of ethical char-

  acter, but, instead, to lack of social standing, or wealth, or position. Thus the imputation of blameworthiness (which distinguishes contempt from

  condescending pity) is often mistaken: people often blame the poor for

  their poverty, thinking it a sign of laziness, and have contempt for them

  on that account. But it seems right to say that contempt usually involves

  the thought, right or wrong, that the person is somehow to blame for the

  characteristics that are contempt’s focus— even if they are just forms of

  weakness for which people are actually not responsible.

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  Contempt is thus like anger in having both a focus and a target: its

  focus is a trait or traits, and its target is the person seen as low because of those traits. In both cases, the target is a person. But the focus of anger is an act, that of contempt a relatively stable trait or traits.

  We may leave to one side the interesting question whether contempt

  for another person is ever morally justified.86 (One significant issue is that contempt frequently underestimates human fragility and the difficulty of

  developing good traits in an imperfect world.) What we can now observe

  is that, with contempt as with anger, distinguishing the two emotions is

  easy when we are dealing with Transition- Anger or anger leading toward

  the Transition. In both of these cases anger has nothing to do with a low

  ranking of the person, remains focused on the act, and ultimately seeks

  future good. It is also relatively easy to distinguish contempt from anger

  that takes the road of payback, since contempt lacks a payback idea, and

  seems to have no associated action tendency. (Thus there could be a sort

  of character- anger that would treat the person’s whole self- formation as

  a wrongful act, but it would remain different from contempt.)

  The distinction is far less easy when we consider status- focused

  anger, which seeks the down- ranking of a person in retaliation for the

  down- ranking inflicted on the self by an act. Still, there is an interesting difference of dynamic. In contempt, the starting point is the alleged lowness of the person: the person is thought to lack some good characteristic,

  whether moral or social. The negative attitude responds to the perception

  of lowness. With status- focused anger, by contrast, the negative attitude

  responds to something about oneself— the lowering allegedly inflicted

  by the act on which anger focuses— and then the emotion seeks to put the

  emotion’s target, a person, into a low position. Indeed, the person is not

  initially thought to be low at all, but powerful and capable of inflicting

  damage. So the two emotions end up in the same place, so to speak, but

  through a very different dynamic.

  Envy and its close relative jealousy resemble anger in being negative emotions directed at a person or persons.87 Envy is a painful emotion that

  focuses on the good fortune or advantages of others, comparing one’s

  own situation unfavorably to theirs. It involves a rival, and a good or

  goods appraised as important; the envier is pained because the rival pos-

  sesses those good things and she does not. As with anger, the good things

  must be seen as important not in some abstract or detached way, but for

  the self and the self’s core sense of well- being.88 Although envy, unlike

  anger, does not involve the idea of a wrongful act, it typically involves

  some type of hostility toward the fortunate rival: the envier wants what

  the rival has, and feels ill will toward the rival in consequence. If the

  advantages are thought to have been unfairly gained, envy and anger

  draw very close, and envy may engender similar payback thoughts,

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  similarly unhelpful. As with anger, it is only where the focus of envy is on

  relative position alone, not any more tangible advantages, that the pay-

  back can actually improve the envier’s situation: and that narrow focus

  has normative problems similar to those involved in anger. A focus on

  relative position is extremely common in envy. Indeed, two psychologists

  who have produced a fine systematic study of the emoti
on end up defin-

  ing it in terms of positional goods: “The object of envy is ‘superiority,’ or

  ‘non- inferiority’ to a reference group or individual.”89

  Jealousy is similar to envy: both involve hostility toward a rival

  with respect to the possession or enjoyment of a valued good. Jealousy,

  however, is typically about the fear of a specific loss (usually, though not

  always, a loss of personal attention or love), and thus about protection of

  the most cherished goods and relationships of the self. Its focus is on the

  rival, seen as a potential threat to the self. Although there may be as yet

  no (known) wrongful act, jealousy can easily shade over into anger at the

  rival for (allegedly) intending such an act. Payback wishes and actions

  are a common result. Unlike envy, jealousy is rarely about relative posi-

  tion alone: it typically stays focused on important goods, and that is why

  it is so difficult to satisfy, since security with respect to important goods is almost never available.90

  This brief exploration informs us that anger is a distinct emotion, but

  difficult to distinguish from quite a few others— especially when it takes

  what I have called the road of status. Anger does have something going for it: it can be what I’ve called well- grounded, as disgust cannot. But its characteristic payback wish (which it shares with envy and jealousy, but

  not with grief) is deeply problematic. We need to keep our eye on these

  fine distinctions as we move forward.

  X. Anger’s Gatekeeper: The Gentle Temper

  How might someone become less prone to the errors of payback fantasy

  and/ or status- obsession, and more prone to make the Transition? Adam

  Smith offers one very useful proposal, and Aristotle’s discussions of anger

  and the associated virtue of “gentleness of temper” offer two more.91 All

  three are variants of the idea that avoiding anger requires becoming less

  wrapped up in the narcissistic wounds of the ego.

  In general, Smith’s procedure is to figure out the proper degree of

  any passion by imagining the response of a “judicious spectator,” who

  is not personally involved in the events. This device, he says, is particu-

  larly needed in the case of anger, which more than most emotions “must

  always be brought down to a pitch much lower than that to which undis-

  ciplined nature would raise them.”92 The spectator, he argues, will still

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  feel anger when he contemplates injuries done to another person. But his

  anger will be tempered, first by his distance and non- involvement— and

  second, interestingly, because he has to consider the situation of the per-

  son against whom anger is directed, and this thought of the other will

  block demands for revenge.

  In other words, when we move outside of narcissistic self-

  involvement, we are aided in two ways: first, we don’t have the bias

  inherent in thinking that it’s all “about me,” and, second, we have to

  consider everyone’s welfare, not just that of the wronged party. Smith’s

  judicious spectator is thus a device that promotes the Transition from

  excessive ego- involvement to general social concern. It is an imperfect

  such device: as we saw, people can become ego- invested in their friends’

  suffering, or even in general causes. But Smith has the right idea: as a

  proto- Utilitarian, he moves from concern for the ranking of the fragile

  self toward more general and constructive social concern.

  Aristotle makes a complementary suggestion: we avoid inappro-

  priate anger through positional thinking, assuming the point of view of

  the person who has offended us. Aristotle does not share my view that

  garden- variety anger is always normatively inappropriate. But he does

  think that error falls far more often on the side of too much / too often

  rather than too little. Therefore, he gives the virtuous disposition a name

  that suggests extremely little anger: “gentleness” ( praotēs, 1125b26– 29).93

  The hallmark of praotēs is good reasons: The gentle- tempered person “is typically undisturbed and is not led by passion except as reason dictates”

  (1125b33– 35). Nor is he afraid to incur disapproval on that account: “He

  gives the appearance of going wrong in the direction of deficiency: for

  the gentle- tempered person is not vengeful, but inclined to sympathetic

  understanding ( suggnōmē)” (1126a1– 3).94

  What Aristotle says, then, is a person who sees things from the point

  of view of others, understanding what they experience, is unlikely to

  desire payback. What is the connection? First of all, this sort of mental

  displacement can weed out some errors about blame: we may be able to

  see that the person was negligent or even just mistaken, rather than fully

  culpable.95 We may also be able to appreciate mitigating factors such as

  duress of various types, or the pressure of conflicting obligations. Such

  discoveries might block anger from forming altogether. This point con-

  nects to Aristotle’s observation about good reasons: participatory imag-

  ining helps us figure out which reasons are and are not good, and how

  strong they really are.

  But even if anger turns out to be grounded in true facts, taking the

  time to see things from the other person’s viewpoint can potentially

  block or counteract the two errors we have discovered in anger. First, it

  makes us think hard about payback and what it can and cannot achieve.

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  Thinking of the other person getting retributively clobbered makes us

  wonder whether that really does anyone any good, and we may well start

  to see the error in this familiar type of magical thinking. Second, displace-

  ment also counteracts the narcissistic tendency to focus on one’s own sta-

  tus, thus aiding the Transition. Sympathy steers anger in the direction of

  a balanced focus on harm and correction of harm, rather than on personal

  down- ranking, with its connection to revenge. Retribution is made a lot

  easier by a mindset that sees the other person as a mere obstacle to one’s

  own status, a thing. Sympathetic understanding already steers thought in

  the direction of general social good.

  And while we are heading there, we might note, sympathetic under-

  standing makes it a lot easier to get there. When you can understand

  your adversaries, you are much more likely to be capable of devising

  constructive projects that include them— an issue I’ll discuss in chapter 7

  in relation to the career of Nelson Mandela.

  Aristotle’s other valuable insight concerns the importance of a light-

  hearted and playful temper. In the Rhetoric he observes:

  People are gentle when they are in an opposite condition to those

  who get angry: when they are at play, or laughing, or feasting,

  or feeling prosperous or successful or satisfied, and in general

  when they are enjoying freedom from pain or pleasure that does

  not harm others or decent hope. (1380b2– 5)

  These comments are unexplained, but let us look into them. Why should

  people in all these conditions be less inclined to inappropriate anger?96

  All the named conditions, i
t turns out, conduce to a diminished emphasis

  on narcissistic vulnerability. I have suggested that people often grab onto

  anger and payback fantasies in order to exit from an intolerable condition

  of vulnerability and helplessness. People who feel prosperous or success-

  ful or satisfied are not likely to take a setback as a terrifying type of helplessness. Similarly with those who are free from pain, or enjoying some

  non- harmful pleasure. (Recall King’s concern that despair would lead

  to violent retaliation.) When someone looks to the future with “decent

  hope”— by which Aristotle seems to mean the hope characteristic of a

  decent or fair- minded person (not, therefore, a hope of riding roughshod

  over others), he is less vulnerable to payback wishes— or to competitive

  anxiety.

  But what about being at play and laughing? Those seem the most

  obscure of the items on the list, and yet they may be potentially the most

  revealing. First, what does he mean by “at play” ( en paidiai)? Aristotle certainly cannot be talking about competitive sports, where people are

  highly prone to anger (and this is a staple of Greek society and Greek

  philosophy, not just a modern issue).97 But paidia does not mean athletic

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  competition, it means a sort of relaxed and playful activity, of which the

  games of children ( paides) are an example. By coupling it with laughter, he gives us a sense of the subset of playful activities he has in mind. The

  ego at play, playing around (and paidia is often contrasted to what is serious), has a way of not taking itself too gravely; in such a condition, the

  ego is worn lightly and slights loom less large. Play is also a way of cop-

  ing with anxiety and helplessness: as children we learn to manage poten-

  tially exhausting fears through drama and games. Instead of grasping

  onto other people and insisting that they assuage our terror, the person at

  play is relaxed and confident in the world and able to allow other people

  to exist as who they are. Play helps with both payback anger and status

  anger: people at play are less likely to be rigidly focused on their stand-

  ing, and they are also less likely to need the useless project of payback to

  assuage their anxiety.

  Aristotle is not Donald Winnicott: he does not have a theory of play.98

 

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