Anger and Forgiveness

by Martha C. Nussbaum

  fession and forgiveness by Mandela: he says that these ideas were utterly

  alien to his movement. At one point in the recent Mandela film, when

  Mandela appears on national television as violence impends, he is made

  to say, “I have forgiven them, and you too should forgive them.” Sachs

  Revolutionary Justice

  243

  tells me that this is utterly made up. Mandela said no such thing, but the

  screenwriters must have thought their audience could relate to it.61

  Of course the Commission was not a process that could be described

  as lighthearted, or “bubbling over with magnanimity.” It was solemn

  and in many ways tragic, as so many told their stories of loss and harm,

  and so many told of their own bad acts. And yet, at least as described,

  the process was respectful, not demanding humility, and certainly not

  humiliation, and as protecting the dignity of the wrongdoers as poten-

  tial equal citizens in the nation of the future. Nobody was asked to

  apologize as a condition of amnesty, and the statement of truth was not

  framed as a confession to an authoritative confessor, but instead as a

  straight retelling of what occurred. Nobody is asked to show contrition,

  or to promise not to do it again— a promise that, by the abasement it

  would enact, would surely prove counterproductive. If you really want

  someone to cooperate with you as an equal, the worst place to begin

  is by treating him as a likely criminal. So the promise not to offend

  would be, as I’ve said, “One thought too many,” branding the person

  as a suspect type.

  A nation that moves forward needs both trust and mutual respect. It

  seems that truth is very important for trust, but it also seems that a certain way of positioning the truth jeopardizes respect, hence reconciliation. By

  offering amnesty, South Africa wisely took the process out of the retribu-

  tivist framework that it might so easily have inhabited, facilitating atti-

  tudes of trust and emotions of national solidarity. Tutu’s reinterpretation,

  however, sneaks a subtle variety of retributivism back in, in the form of a

  confessorial enactment of humility and superiority. Instead of his title, No Future Without Forgiveness, we might well propose, “No Future Without Generosity and Reason.”62

  Significantly, Tutu himself has had second thoughts. In his recent

  The Book of Forgiving, coauthored with his daughter Mpho Tutu, he develops a picture of forgiveness that is both secular and unconditional.63 In

  fact the Tutus speak quite critically of the conditional, transactional model of forgiveness, which they call “the most familiar pattern of forgiveness”

  (20). It is like a gift “with strings attached,” they say. They only briefly

  state my objection that conditional forgiveness can be a covert form of

  payback (20, see also “mutual resentment,” 21); instead, they emphasize

  the point that conditional forgiveness keeps one tied to the wrongdoer

  and dependent on that other person’s conduct (21). Still, the model they

  themselves now prefer is totally unconditional. Since their book focuses

  on personal relations and on solitary work with and on oneself, I have

  discussed their proposals in chapter 4; but clearly they intend the pro-

  posal for the political sphere as well. In that sphere, although most of their spiritual exercises would have no place, the basic idea does have a place,

  244

  Anger and Forgiveness

  and it is much more consistent with the TRC than the conditional picture

  that Tutu previously endorsed.

  A nation torn by horrible acts may find itself unable to move for-

  ward. Angry feelings may have such a deep grip on people’s minds

  that they cannot be changed to forward- looking projects and feelings.

  Chapter 4 argued that in the personal case there is sometimes a lim-

  ited role for backward- looking forgiveness rituals, if they do prove the

  way to get people off the hook of the past, especially when no other

  approach has proven successful. This individual point has relevance to

  the political realm as well, since individuals damaged by other individ-

  uals and unable to let go of their anger may find a type of forgiveness

  ritual valuable— as in the well- known case of Eric Lomax, the “railway

  man,” who achieved reconciliation with the Japanese officer who had

  tortured him, after many years of being unable to move on in life.64

  Similar individual cases are known in South Africa.65 Surely any inter-

  action that helps people let go of overwhelming anger and bitterness

  should be favored, whether it meets the constraints of a philosophical

  norm or not.

  Following the sketchy lead of the Tutus’ new book, we can now make

  a similar point about nations. There is evidence that in the scarred soci-

  ety of Rwanda, forgiveness rituals have had a good effect. Such efforts

  are encouraged by the nation and implemented in a range of ways, but

  one such project is run by an NGO called AMI, which counsels small

  groups of Hutus and Tutsis over many months, culminating in a formal

  request for forgiveness and a grant of forgiveness— typically solemnized

  by a gift of food from perpetrator to victim and a shared song and dance

  celebration.66 Forgiveness rituals are clearly no substitute for a formal

  process such as that of the TRC, which creates public trust and confers

  public amnesty. And as the Tutus argue, unconditional forgiveness is in

  many ways preferable to conditional forgiveness. But forgiveness ritu-

  als, even when in some ways conditional, may be a useful supplement to

  more formal procedures, allowing the past to be discharged in an effec-

  tive way, for people who might have resisted all urging toward generous

  love and forward- looking rationality. In South Africa too, where people

  need to live with neighbors who have done bad things, an approach

  based upon personal forgiveness, but elevated to a public plane, some-

  times has merit, forging human connection between formerly alienated

  individuals.67

  Nonetheless, such backward- looking rituals can easily be hijacked by

  the spirit of revenge, and the conditional form of forgiveness can become,

  itself, a form of revenge. As Pumla Gobodo- Madikizela says of her com-

  plicated reaction to imprisoned police chief Eugene de Kock, whom she

  interviewed for forty- six hours over a three- month period: “[T] he victim

  Revolutionary Justice

  245

  becomes the gatekeeper to what the outcast desires— readmission into

  the human community… . In this sense, then, forgiveness is a kind of

  revenge… . I sometimes sensed this feeling of triumph myself while vis-

  iting de Kock. I felt a sense of power over him as a person who needed

  my understanding.”68

  So the errors embedded in anger need to be pondered at all times,

  and techniques of non- anger need to be assiduously cultivated. Let me

  end this chapter, then, with just one more Mandela story, which shows

  him renouncing both the status error and the payback error. Mandela

  is talking here about an interaction with a white Afrikaner warder who

  watched him while he was in the transitional prison, Viktor Vorster, prior

  to his
official release. The question was how the dishes would get done, a

  question in many households all over the world:

  I took it upon myself to break the tension and a possible resent-

  ment on his part that he has to serve a prisoner by cooking and then

  washing dishes, and I offered to wash dishes and he refused. … He

  says that this is his work. I said, “No, we must share it.” Although

  he insisted, and he was genuine, but I forced him, literally forced

  him, to allow me to do the dishes, and we established a very good

  relationship. … A really nice chap, Warder Swart, a very good friend of mine.

  It would have been so easy to see the situation as one of status-

  inversion: the dominating Afrikaner is doing dishes for the once-

  despised ANC leader. It would also have been so easy to see it in terms of

  payback: the warder is getting a humiliation he deserves because of his

  complicity in oppression. Significantly, Mandela doesn’t go down either

  of these doomed paths, even briefly. He asks only, how shall I produce

  cooperation and friendship?

  This remarkable capacity for generosity and reciprocity was Mandela’s

  genius— the fruit, as he tells us, of years of critical self- examination on

  Robben Island. It’s a difficult goal, but it is that goal that I am recom-

  mending, for both individuals and institutions. Even when there is no

  charismatic leader to show the way forward, and anger appears to be the

  only recourse for people who want to protect important human goods,

  it is a bad strategy and a fatally flawed response. Anger is a prominent

  part of most people’s lives. I’ve argued that, although it has limited value

  as a signal and a motivator, anger lacks most of the virtues often claimed

  for it, and has both normative and practical problems all its own, in both

  personal and political relations.

  We might sum it all up in the words of one of Mandela’s most worthy

  successors (albeit an educator, not a power in national politics), Jonathan

  Jansen, the first non- white rector of the University of the Free State,

  246

  Anger and Forgiveness

  Blomfontein, right in the heart of Afrikaner society. In 2009, Jansen said

  this to the graduating class: “I urge you, in a country where there’s still a lot of rage, never respond by rage, respond through reason, and you will

  have gotten not just a degree, but an education.”

  That, in all our lives, would be a revolutionary transformation indeed.

  8

  Conclusion

  The Eyes of the World

  During the darkest days of World War II, Gandhi said, “We must look

  the world in the face with calm and clear eyes even though the eyes

  of the world are bloodshot today.”1 That’s basically the message of the

  Eumenides: the world has been propelled, to a large extent, by rage and retribution, but let us create something better, in ourselves and in our

  political culture. Let’s not be the way the world is right now.

  A likely response to Gandhi’s call, and to this book, is to say, “How

  on earth can that be?” Or: “That’s too hard. We’re in and of the world.”

  Or: “We’re only human.” But that’s not an adequate reply. Lots of things

  are done badly most of the time, and we don’t stop trying to do them bet-

  ter, even when it’s very difficult. We do not think that the prevalence of

  cancer gives us reasons not to devote massive efforts to cancer research.

  We do not think that the fact that producing a well- functioning economy

  is a task both difficult and elusive gives us reasons not to work at the

  task as hard as we possibly can. And, as William Harriss points out in the

  conclusion to his remarkable study of Greek and Roman anger, apropos

  of the objection that anger is difficult to manage: we do not think that the

  fact even the best historians inevitably make some mistakes means that

  they should not strive extremely hard to avoid making them.2

  We typically do not treat our own lives with the concessive casual-

  ness this objection displays. We think it makes sense to work hard getting

  247

  248

  Anger and Forgiveness

  between twelve and twenty years of full- time education, in order to

  develop our skills and our knowledge. When we become parents, we

  typically insist that our children work hard in school even when they

  don’t want to. And most of us think that it makes sense to work extremely

  hard at eating well and achieving fitness through exercise, even though

  we often don’t do what we think we should. If we continue to smoke,

  we usually don’t console ourselves by saying, “It’s too hard, I’m only

  human.” Instead, we probably think that we should try harder.

  Anger is hard. But so are many other things in life. Why do con-

  temporary Americans tend to think that health, and learning, and fitness

  deserve tough personal effort, and anger does not? Why do we think that

  medical and economic research deserve our public political effort, and

  that the social disease of anger does not?

  Here are three likely reasons. One is that Americans may believe the

  tendency to anger is hardwired in human nature. To a large extent, this

  book has tried to show, that belief is inflated. Anger may have evolu-

  tionary roots, but its centrality in society is far more a construction of

  cultural norms and personal cultivation or lack thereof. Let’s grant that

  there is some truth to the belief in inherited roots: still, what is inherited is a tendency, not its inevitable outward expression in action. We work

  hard to correct many tendencies or propensities that are hardwired in

  human nature, from myopia to memory lapses. As with diet and exer-

  cise: we do not have to believe that we will ultimately free ourselves from

  all illicit cravings in order to embark on a program of self- cultivation.

  Who knows? Maybe non- anger will make our lives go so much better

  that we will not even miss the strife- torn days of our past, any more than

  we always retain an acute craving for French fries and donuts. And even

  if we continue to experience anger, we need not make public policy based

  on its misleading normative promptings.

  A second reason for our cultural reluctance to pursue non- anger may

  be that we believe that it entails an inhuman, extreme, and unloving type

  of detachment. Gandhi’s example is surely not reassuring in this regard,

  nor is that of the Stoics.3 But I have made it very clear that the pursuit of non- anger does not entail this unattractive goal. It allows us to maintain

  deep loves, friendships, and other commitments (for example, to causes

  and projects), and to maintain the vulnerability to grief and fear that such

  loves entail. Nor do we need to be harsh with ourselves when we fail,

  as we often do. Gandhi was harsh, but this harshness, I have argued,

  was not an entailment of non- anger, it was actually a type of self- anger,

  although he apparently did not recognize this.

  The largest reason why we typically do not embrace the pursuit

  of non- anger, both personal and social, is that, despite the fact that

  Conclusion

  249

  modern cultures are deeply torn on this ques
tion, many people in mod-

  ern American society continue to think anger is good, powerful, and

  manly. They encourage it in their children (especially boys), and they

  indulge it in both self and others. They encourage legal policies based

  upon its alleged goodness. The Greeks and Romans, by contrast, did not

  encourage anger. Although they still got angry a lot, and although they

  differed about whether anger should be wholly removed or just greatly

  restrained, for the most part they saw anger as disease and as weakness,

  and they viewed the angry person as infantile (or, in their terms, femi-

  nine), rather than powerful (and, in their terms, male).4 Getting to that

  insight is half the battle. Self- cultivation is hard, but it is impossible if one never gets started.

  If this book achieves anything, I hope it achieves that sort of square-

  one reorientation, getting its readers to see clearly the irrationality and

  stupidity of anger. Whether readers take the next step is up to them. As

  chapter 5 makes clear, I don’t always take my own medicine, succumb-

  ing to the lure of thinking that the world of airlines, banks, and Internet

  repair people ought to be rational, and yielding to anger when (predict-

  ably) the real world does not meet that expectation. It’s hard not to be

  stupid.

  Even if people don’t work hard on, or even perhaps embark on, per-

  sonal self- cultivation, however, it seems simply inexcusable to tolerate

  and even encourage political and legal institutions that embrace and val-

  orize the stupidity of the retributive spirit. Our institutions should model

  our best selves, not our worst. They should exemplify adulthood, even

  if we are often children.5 Even if every single person continues to nour-

  ish personally a degree of irrational retributivism, we should not toler-

  ate stupidity in systems of law and justice. Instead, we might treat the

  problem of crime the way people usually treat the challenge of building

  the economy: as a highly difficult, multifaceted intellectual and practical

  problem that requires expert ex ante strategies with many parts, as well as some related ex post strategies linked rationally to a valuable goal. All too often, instead, we dream that the world of a modern society is like a

  shootout on the (fantasy of the) old frontier, which was not like that at all, really, and, insofar as it was occasionally like that, was not such a great