Anger and Forgiveness

by Martha C. Nussbaum

  Apology can certainly be useful evidence (as with children) that the

  wrongfulness of the behavior is understood, and thus a sign that a future

  relationship might be possible (whether marital or of some other type).41

  But demanding apology seems all too controlling, not too different from

  the Puritans hanging that A around Hester’s neck.

  What’s the real problem? It is one of deep loss. Two selves have

  become so intertwined that the “abandoned” one has no idea of how to

  have fun, how to invite friends to dinner, how to make jokes, how to

  choose clothes even, if not for and toward the other one. So it’s like learn-

  ing to walk all over again, and that is particularly true of women without

  strong independent careers and social networks, since those who do have

  careers have many parts of their lives that have not been blasted by the

  betrayal, friends of their own who are not attached to the spouse, and

  lots of useful work to do. Children have all of their adolescence to learn,

  gradually, how to live apart from their parents, and they expect to do so

  all along. A betrayed spouse often has no preparation for separateness,

  and no skill at leading a separate life. I’ve so often seen recently separated women flummoxed by the sheer act of going out to dinner alone with a

  friend, not being part of a couple. Their whole self- definition was not as

  “Louise B.” (her maiden name) but (as culture urges) as “Mrs. George C.”

  Without George, she doesn’t exist.

  So that is the problem. It is easy, in that situation, to think that the

  best future is one involving some type of payback, since that future,

  unlike the future of self- creation, is easy to imagine. It’s still intertwined with the other person. It is like not breaking up. You can go on being part

  of a couple, and keeping that person at the center of your thoughts.

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  But anger does nothing to solve such a person’s real problems, and

  it positively impedes progress, for a number of reasons. First, it diverts

  one’s thoughts from the real problem to something in the past that cannot

  be changed. It makes one think that progress will have been made if the

  betrayer suffers, when, in reality, this does nothing to solve the real prob-

  lem. It eats up the personality and makes the person quite unpleasant

  to be with. It impedes useful introspection. It becomes its own project,

  displacing or forestalling other useful projects. And importantly, it almost

  always makes the relationship with the other person worse. There was

  something likable about the person, and even if marriage is no longer

  possible or desirable, some other form of connection might still be, and

  might contribute to happiness. Or it might not. But the whole question

  cannot be considered if angry thoughts and wishes fill up the mental

  landscape. Far from being required in order to shore up one’s own self-

  respect, anger actually impedes the assertion of self- respect in worth-

  while actions and a meaningful life.

  What does seem like a reasonable demand (when the other party

  is still somehow on the scene) is that the wrongdoer acknowledge the

  truth: a wrong has been done. (This is what I shall say about political

  cases in chapters 6 and 7.) Being heard and acknowledged is a reasonable

  wish on the part of the wronged party, and asking for truth and under-

  standing is not the same thing as asking for payback. Indeed, it often

  helps the Transition. However, often the extraction of acknowledgment shades over unpleasantly into payback and even humiliation, and this

  temptation should be avoided.

  Because anger is a very large problem in contemporary life, a large

  therapeutic literature on “forgiveness” focuses on how people can free

  themselves from obsessive and corroding anger.42 Typically the label

  “forgiveness” does not suggest that a transaction between two people

  is envisaged. Instead, the other person is usually entirely absent, and

  the effort of the therapist is to get the betrayed person to stop being

  dominated by anger. It is a struggle in the self to surmount negative and

  retributive wishes, fantasies, and projects (such as litigation, influencing

  children and friends, etc.).

  In this process, a common device does involve changing the way the

  patient thinks of the betraying spouse: with empathy and understanding,

  not as a monster, and so forth. To that extent, the process has some links

  to the forgiveness process described by Griswold, albeit in a one- sided

  form, since the other person is not in the picture. It is thus a type of unconditional forgiveness, and as such is not free of the moral dangers inherent

  in that attitude: moral superiority, and an undue focus on the past. A fur-

  ther problem is that it is often hard to tell, reading these therapeutic texts, whether the goal is really forgiveness, or simply getting rid of anger by

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  any feasible stratagem. If hypnosis worked, one feels that these therapists

  would use it, since they are not typically concerned with the moral value

  of forgiveness as such, only with its instrumental usefulness.

  And is the forgiveness emphasis even instrumentally useful? Of

  course the therapists say so, but they would: it is their trade. We must

  remember that they have not tested the relative helpfulness of anger-

  therapy by contrast to other devices for restoring the self, such as work,

  friendship, shopping, exercise. Therapy invites the betrayed person to

  focus hours and hours of mental and emotional energy on the person

  who has left, when, as I’ve suggested, what she really needs to do is to

  learn how to go forward— to enjoy being alone, to cultivate a range of

  friendships and activities. It can be a crutch, keeping her leaning on the

  past, rather than on herself. Even though the person is gone, he really

  isn’t, because every day brings some new drama concerning him. It will

  be said that no new projects will work until the person “works through”

  her anger. But working through grief is something that simply happens as

  life goes on: new ties replace the old, the world revolves less around the

  departed person. Is anger really different, and, if so, why? As with grief,

  as life moves on, the importance of the damage actually shifts. When

  we see a person for whom the dead person is still at the center of life

  five years later, we feel that a case of pathological mourning. New values

  replace the old. Anger ought to move on too: what was damaged, and the

  damage itself, become, as life goes on, much less important. Anger typi-

  cally does not remain fixed like a tumor. Indeed the idea that it does, and

  that one must access and express one’s buried anger, is one of the most

  damaging tales of therapy.43 If anything, it is the therapeutic insistence on accessing buried anger that keeps it fixed and immovable, like a stone.

  The real issue is, after all, the loss, and how to move on from that.

  In short, if a person is dominated by angry and punitive thoughts,

  something needs to be done about that, and a struggle within the self

  needs to be fought. Is the quest for “forgiveness” a useful for
m of that

  struggle? It’s like struggling with loss of faith by thinking about God all

  the time. There is a lucrative profession of anger therapy, and so those therapists convince people that forgiveness (of the internal sort) is valuable.

  But maybe singing lessons, or going to the gym, or, more generally, focus-

  ing on areas of competence and self- esteem, and making new friends (a

  task that is not assisted by a persistent focus on anger and blame) would

  be better ways of throwing off the dead weight of the past.

  Notice, too, that although these therapists typically avail themselves

  of one of Aristotle’s good suggestions, focusing on empathy, they are far

  from taking seriously his other suggestion, about lightheartedness and

  play. Indeed when one reads a long series of such books, one gets a very

  strong impression of people who have never laughed. By dragging the

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  patient into a grim and frequently lugubrious process they certainly dis-

  courage lightheartedness and they may impede any creative response to

  helplessness.

  To sum up: Intimate relationships are perilous because of the expo-

  sure and lack of control they involve. Being seriously wronged is a

  constant possibility, and anger, therefore, a constant and profoundly

  human temptation. If vulnerability is a necessary consequence of giv-

  ing love its proper value, then grief is often right and valuable. It does

  not follow, however, that anger is so. From my analysis it does follow

  that anger is often well- grounded: what has been harmed by another’s

  wrongful act is truly important, and the other person really did act

  wrongfully. However, here as before, the payback wish characteris-

  tic of anger is a kind of magical thinking that makes no sense— if one

  remains focused on the genuine goods of love and trust, which pay-

  back cannot replace.

  It will be said that this way of viewing breakups is cold and hyper-

  rational, a refusal of love and vulnerability. I deny this. My view in

  this domain is not Stoic. Grief and mourning are legitimate and indeed

  required, when one loses something of such great value. And I even

  grant that, to the extent that what is damaged has value, anger has good

  grounds. It’s just that it gives such bad advice. Indeed, I think the shoe is on the other foot. It is Medea, the angry person, who is trying to be invulnerable by devoting herself to projects of controlling others. Her anger is

  a way of sealing the self, not really mourning or accepting vulnerability.

  IX. Anger at Oneself

  Finally, we must talk about a relationship that is among the most inti-

  mate of all: our relationship to ourselves. In some ways, this is indeed a

  relationship of privileged intimacy: we are with ourselves every minute

  of every day, from birth to death, so we have a lot of evidence that others

  don’t have. We also show ourselves things that we don’t typically show

  others. And we appear to have capacities for changing ourselves that we

  don’t have for changing the character or behavior of others.

  To a great extent, however, the asymmetry is illusory. We may

  in some sense be “with ourselves” all the time, but we change, forget,

  evolve: so the actions of a youthful self may be far stranger to us than the

  actions of a friend today. We also deceive ourselves a lot; even when we

  don’t, we are ignorant of many of our motives and patterns, and we are

  highly biased interpreters— one reason why Aristotle held that friends

  offer us a self- knowledge we can’t get from ourselves.44 Finally, we just

  don’t notice lots of things about ourselves that others notice. We don’t

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  even have superior knowledge of our own bodies. We do see and feel

  some things that others don’t, but others see us much more completely,

  so they have a lot of evidence that we don’t have.

  Still, the difference between self and other, if in many respects illu-

  sory, still has ethical significance. We’re entitled to make decisions for

  ourselves (even our future selves) that we would not be entitled to make

  for others, except in special circumstances. Self- control can be carried too far, or become destructive, but in general it is a fine thing, whereas control over others is usually not a fine thing. Similarly, being tough with ourselves, or holding up very stringent standards, or making a rigid time-

  schedule, may be fine, if it works for a particular person; being similarly

  tough with others, even one’s own children, is usually not so great. Even

  in small ways there is moral asymmetry. A person who works a lot may

  find that in order to relax she has to say to herself, “Now you have my

  permission to go read a mystery novel.” That would be a pretty annoying

  way to talk to a friend, or a child— even, I think, quite a small child.

  The first thing to say about self- anger is that Transition- Anger is

  common here, and a very important force for moral improvement.

  Noticing some substandard act (whether moral or nonmoral), one thinks,

  “How outrageous! I’d better make sure not to do that again.” Since the

  act is judged outrageous against the background of ongoing aspirations

  and goals, the anger is basically forward- looking (if it is anger at all),

  and it is constructive. Rather than inflict pain on oneself as if it balanced, somehow, the damage done by one’s act (whether to others or simply to

  cherished ideals), one simply resolves, going forward, to be watchful and

  do better.

  A lot of anger at self, however, is accompanied by self- inflicted pain,

  which is a type of payback; and it is often thought that this pain is an

  important part of the moral life. This sort of self- anger is often called

  guilt, and guilt, indeed, encompasses a good deal of self- related anger.

  Guilt is a negative emotion directed at oneself on the basis of a wrongful

  act or acts that one thinks one has caused, or at least wished to cause.45

  It is to be distinguished from shame, a negative reaction to oneself that

  has a characteristic, or trait, as a focus. We can see that guilt parallels

  anger: both focus on acts.

  This focus on acts, rather than the self, is auspicious, since separating

  the deed from the doer is a constructive aspect of moral (or nonmoral)

  change. Another promising aspect of guilt is that, focusing on an act, it

  typically focuses on damage to our relationships with others, an impor-

  tant and (unlike more or less permanent traits) a remediable aspect of our

  conduct.46 The problem comes, as usual, when we focus on the wish for

  payback.

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  My previous analysis suggests the following analysis of anger at self:

  (1) genuine anger at self, even if well- grounded on account of the genu-

  ine wrongfulness of the action, always contains a wish for the suffering

  of the wrongdoer. (2) This retributive wish makes no sense as such, if

  the focus is on the seriously wrongful act for which it is supposed to be

  “payback”: one’s own suffering does not undo or “balance” whatever

  harm one has caused. (3) But if one thinks that the real issue is one of

 
; relative status, then the payback wish makes perfect sense: if one per-

  son is lowered, the relative position of the other really does go up. This

  narrow status- focus, however, is ethically problematic. (4) Therefore a

  rational person will remain focused on the harm that has been done or

  intended, but will steer clear of the futile thought of payback and seek

  to do something useful or good in the future to ameliorate the situation:

  hence the Transition.

  Does this analysis make sense in the context of relations with one-

  self? (1), (2), and (4) appear to make perfect sense. It is (3) that seems at first blush mysterious. What is the zero- sum game here, when there is

  only one person involved? Well, now we must point to a further symme-

  try between self- self and self- other relations: both involve multiple enti-

  ties. We don’t need to buy any particular theory of the divided self, such

  as Plato’s divided soul or Freud’s triad of superego/ ego/ id, in order to

  feel that in cases of self- accusation different aspects of the personality are involved. Often, the commanding or judging self puts down the infantile

  pleasure- seeking self; sometimes the creative self wants to put down the

  rigid judgmental self; sometimes it’s just a struggle between the present,

  highly focused self and a lax or inattentive former self. In any case, it isn’t at all difficult, after all, to make sense of (3) in terms of an internal debate.

  You ate that extra bagel; now you must be put in your place.

  So the parallel makes pretty good sense. What we need to ask is

  whether the theory developed so far is correct for this unusual case. Is

  anger a deflection from useful future- directed thought? And is forgive-

  ness, similarly, for the most part a red herring?

  Here’s what I used to think.47 Guilt at one’s own aggressive or

  otherwise harmful actions and wishes is a major creative force in the

  moral life, because it leads to reparative activity. Following the psycho-

  analytic accounts of Klein and Fairbairn, I argued that our interest in

  other- regarding morality, and, in general, a good deal of creative human

  endeavors, are the outgrowth of a need to make reparations for aggres-

  sive wishes or acts committed or wished toward those who care for us. So

  guilt, although it may be excessive or even misplaced (as when soldiers