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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