Anger and Forgiveness

by Martha C. Nussbaum

46.

  De Paenitentia, section 9. Since the term is Greek, it is clearly already in use before Tertullian (the first major Christian thinker to write in Latin), but he is credited with codifying it into a set of practices supervised by religious authorities.

  47. Nietzsche (1989).

  48. See also Daniel 9:9.

  49. This passage is not in the best manuscripts, so it may not be contemporaneous with the rest of the text. There is also the problem that ignorance mitigates culpability, so it is not terribly clear whether Jesus is offering forgiveness in the usual sense.

  50. See above n. 31.

  51. The difficult phrase “give place to anger” seems to mean clearing the way for God’s promised vengeance.

  52. For extensive extracts from the statements, see Stewart and Pérez- Peña (2015) and Nahorniak (2015).

  53. Its aftermath has certainly been Transitional, in the debates over the removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol, and the somewhat surprisingly lopsided votes that led, on July 9, to the final passage of a law ordering its removal.

  54. See for example Matthew 19:19, 22:39; Mark 12:31, John 13:34, 15:12.

  55. A salient example is Ephesians 4:30– 32, where charizesthai just means “be gracious,” “be generous,” and does not entail a reference to antecedent anger— and yet it is translated “forgive” in all translations I have been able to find. The standard word for forgiveness, aphiēmi, is not found anywhere in the context. On mistranslations of biblical texts concerning forgiveness, see also Konstan (2010, 99). Konstan’s entire chapter 4 is a valuable treatment of the biblical material, both Hebrew and Greek.

  56. My own translation; the precise distinction intended between thumos and orgē is not entirely clear.

  57. I have modified the King James Version, substituting “wrongs you” for “tres-passes against you,” and removing the gratuitous verbal additions in verse 4.

  58. Luke 15:12– 34, King James Version, with two alterations: I have put “and before you” in verse 21 as in verse 18, since the Greek is exactly the same; for no particular reason the translator has put “and in thy sight” the second time. Both are fine translations; the point is that the two statements ought to be exactly the same. The second change is more important: In verse 20, esplanchnisthē is translated “and had compassion,” which is too flat and weak for this rare word, and also inaccurately implies that the father was aware of the son as suffering, or in a bad way.

  59. The metaphor is from sacrifice, where the entrails of the victim are removed and devoured. See LSJ, s.v. splanchneuō. Such is the prestige of the King James Version that the nineteenth- century lexicographers also list a metaphorical meaning

  “Have compassion,” for which they attest only this passage— one reason why

  one should always look beyond the lexicon. In the New Testament, the word does occur a few more times, but not enough that we should think that the reference to

  “guts” has been lost and it has become a dead metaphor.

  60. On the classical antecedents of this generous spirit, see Harriss’s discussion (2001) of the ideal of philophrosunē, p. 149, and of Roman humanitas, p. 205.

  61. I have analyzed the symphony in detail in Nussbaum (2001, ch. 14).

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  Notes to Pages 82–92

  62. Mahler, program for the Dresden 1901 performance; quoted in De La Grange (1973, 785– 86), with a more literal rendering of the second paragraph substituted for his.

  63. De La Grange (1973, 786).

  64. Wagner (1850).

  65. Mahler frequently characterized musical creativity as feminine in its emotionality and receptivity (see Nussbaum 2001).

  66. See my discussion of geschlagen as both “heartbeat” and “downbeat” in Nussbaum (2001).

  67. Strictly speaking, the father is never angry with the son at all, so far as the story tells us.

  68. See Nussbaum (2001) for a more detailed argument on this point.

  69. An interesting case in point is Britten’s War Requiem, in which greed, anger, and destructive resentment certainly make their appearance— but then are surmounted, in settings of texts by Wilfred Owen that contrast the unconditional love of Jesus with the practices of the organized Church. More generally, it is interesting that music expressing (officially) a longing for revenge often expresses this- worldly joy instead. Thus the “revenge duet” in Verdi’s Rigoletto, “Si, ven-detta,” is actually full of joyful energy. When my daughter was three, it was her favorite piece of music on account of its joyfulness, and of course she had no idea what it was supposed to be “saying.” A search for real musical revenge would

  take us quickly to the realm of stifling and oppressive music, as with my comments about Strauss’s Elektra in chapter 1.

  70. Thus Schoenberg could not permit Moses to sing, in his opera Moses und Aron: the religious attitude must be expressed in speech, leaving operatic music to Aaron and his followers.

  71. Perhaps these examples just go to show that Mozart and Verdi were joyous and generous souls, who wrote Requiem masses out of cultural convention, rather than because of any profound spiritual affinity— as indeed is often said about the Verdi work. But the inner connection of music with love seems to me to lie deeper, and it is difficult indeed to think whom one would commission to compose a Requiem in the spirit of the analysis of divine anger I have presented. Of course a composer can ventriloquize the mentality I have described without writing an entire work in its spirit (as Wagner superbly ventriloquizes loveless narcissism in the music of Alberich and Hagen, though the work as a whole is supremely concerned with loving generosity). But an entire Mass? Wouldn’t this be like an entire Ring sung by Alberich and Hagen? I have suggested that Elektra is like that, but it is a short work designed to be almost unendurable, and it is an outlier in Strauss’s output.

  72. In what follows, I am indebted to Halbertal (forthcoming), so far published only in Hebrew, but an English translation was made for the author by Joel Linsider, and sent to me for reference. A short version was published in Jewish Review of Books, Fall 2011.

  73. See Halbertal (forthcoming).

  74. Griswold (2007, 12– 17).

  75. Epictetus, Encheiridion, ch. 48.

  Chapter 4

  1. All translations are mine. I discuss the play in detail in Nussbaum (1994b, ch. 12) 2. Again, we can note that the Greeks and Romans typically do not hold this view.

  Indeed they are inclined to think that even should some people think anger

  Notes to Pages 92–99

  277

  attractive in the outer world, they will quickly grant that it is destructive in the family. See Harriss (2001, 29), discussing Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.54. Cicero addresses the Peripatetics, who defend a moderate anger (rather than, as Cicero prefers, its complete elimination): “This warrior irascibility of yours, when it has come back home, what is it like with your wife, children, and slaves? Do you

  think that it’s useful there too?”

  3. See Hieronymi (2001).

  4. The case of anger between siblings is fascinating, but my account can easily be extrapolated to fit it. Anger at strangers who damage one of our loved ones will be discussed in the next chapter.

  5. See Sherman (1989, ch. 4 and 118– 56).

  6. Baier died in New Zealand in November 2012, at the age of eighty- three. Apart from her many other accomplishments, she was the first woman in almost a hundred years to be President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association (in 1990, and preceded only by Mary Whiton Calkins in 1918), and

  the first woman ever to give the Carus Lectures in that same association.

  7. See Baier (1995), “Trust and Anti- Trust” and other essays. For two other good philosophical accounts, see Hawley (2012) and O’Neill (2002).

  8. Thus I agree in part and disagree in part with Hardin (2006). Hardin holds that trust is “cognitive,” meaning that it involves beliefs. Since he does not te
ll the reader whether he thinks that emotions are partly cognitive, it is not possible to tell whether he would agree with my claim that trust involves the sort of cognitive appraisal that frequently plays a constituent role in an emotion. He then says that because trust is cognitive it is not possible to decide to trust— thereby bypassing a large philosophical debate about whether one can decide to believe something, and simply failing to consider the sort of willingness to be vulnerable that is in part a life- choice.

  9. See Lerner (1985), to be discussed in what follows.

  10. Butler (1827, Sermon 9).

  11. Williams, “Persons, Character, and Morality,” in Williams (1982, 1– 19). In its original context the phrase refers to the moral reasoning of a man who saves his wife in a lifeboat situation, not with the thought that it is his wife, but rather, “that it was his wife and that in situations of this kind it is permissible to save one’s wife” (18). My use of the phrase is thus quite different and does not require the repudiation of impartial morality. Its link with Williams is that both of us oppose a spirit of moral discipline and strict moral scrutiny that he associates with Kant and I with one strand in Judeo- Christian ethics.

  12. See Baier (1995), “Trust and Anti- Trust.”

  13. Dickens (2004, ch. 4). Note, too, the terrible view of animals that this comparison betrays.

  14. Orwell (1952).

  15. Trollope (2014, ch. 3); see my analysis in “The Stain of Illegitimacy,” in Nussbaum and LaCroix (2013).

  16. Dr. Thorne’s fellow heretics, in the nineteenth- century British novel, are, significantly, usually either female (Peggotty, Betsey Trotwood) or true social outsiders (Mr. Dick).

  17. I say this in order to include children of divorced parents who divide their time between them.

  18. Or other caregivers, of course. This chapter focuses on the familiar nuclear family, but the analysis applies to any intimate group that focuses on the child’s well- being.

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  Notes to Pages 99–118

  19. See Baier (1995) again.

  20. Baier (1995).

  21. See Plato, Symposium, where, however, it is only pretty low and unimaginative people who try to make themselves immortal by having children, rather than, say, by writing books or participating in politics.

  22. It’s not surprising that the two brothers are not just contrasting individuals but contrasting types of American Jews. The Swede’s name says it all: athletic, tall, reserved, he’s the successful assimilated WASP- Jew (he even marries a former Miss New Jersey, after all, although she is a Catholic, not a WASP), whereas Jerry is closer to the urban Jewish norms Roth depicts obsessively.

  23. There is one flaw in this interpretation of Swede Levov. As Zuckerman invents the past, one time, asked by the prepubescent daughter to kiss her on the lips, he briefly, but passionately, complies. One could then read Merry’s later problems as imputable to him— although prior to that time she already has the stutter, the hatred of her mother, and the signs of obsessive- compulsive disorder, that form her later trajectory. I actually think the kiss a literary error of Roth’s— or at least of Zuckerman’s— since the character depicted throughout the novel would not do that, however Oedipal such relationships often are. Zuckerman, child-less, sex- obsessed, has reconstructed history after his own fashion. But then, as Zuckerman says, “getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again” (35).

  24. Lerner (1985, 69– 70).

  25. Lerner (1985, 76).

  26. Lerner (1985, 77).

  27. Lerner (1985, 79).

  28. See also Tavris (1982), who emphasizes this point throughout.

  29. I omit here the violent and terrible things children more rarely do to their parents, on which see Condry and Miles (forthcoming), and Condry (2007).

  30. Murray (2010, ch. 1).

  31. Returning us to the issue raised in chapter 2, this case of grief does appear to involve a wish to change the past, and to have at least an element of magical thinking, and she lets go of that.

  32. For one typical contrasting Stoic example, in which a refusal of anger is part of a global program of emotional detachment, see Juvenal x.357– 62, discussed in Harriss (2001, 226 and n. 99).

  33. Really, any sort of intimate adult partnership, but I will use marriage as a shorthand.

  34. Not of course a blanket permission, as has often been believed.

  35. On the ambiguities of Tess’s rape/ seduction by Alec, and the larger issues of shame and purity, see Baron (2012, 126– 49). A related case is Mrs. Gaskell’s Ruth (original edition 1853), in which Ruth, seduced at a very young age, then lives

  “blamelessly” for many years, and is admired by all for her character and values; but the revelation of her long- ago “sin” makes her an outcast.

  36. See also Tavris (1982, ch. 8), “The Marital Onion,” which contains many examples of a similar type.

  37. I owe this point to Sharon Krause. On the futility of the “blame game,” I have learned from Iris Marion Young’s marvelous posthumous book, Responsibility for Justice (2011). As the author of a foreword to that book, I expressed some skepticism about Young’s repudiation of retrospective analysis, but I am now totally on her side.

  Notes to Pages 119–134

  279

  38. Hieronymi (2001).

  39. I am grateful to Emily Buss for suggesting this example.

  40. The play is “Mojada,” by Luis Alfaro.

  41. See Martin (2010).

  42. Some representative titles would include Robert D. Enright, Forgiveness Is a Choice: A Step- by- Step Process for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope (Washington, DC: APA LifeTools, 2001); Beverly Flanigan, Forgiving the Unforgivable: Overcoming the Bitter Legacy of Intimate Wounds (New York: Wiley Publishing, 1992); and Michael E. McCullough, Steven J. Sandage, and Everett L. Worthington, Jr., To Forgive Is Human: How to Put Your Past in the Past (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997).

  43. See Tavris (1982).

  44. EN IX, and see Cooper (1981).

  45. See Nussbaum (2004a, ch. 4).

  46. See Herbert Morris’s sensitive observations on this issue in Morris (1976, ch. 2).

  47. See Nussbaum (2004a, ch. 4), and Nussbaum (2001, ch. 4).

  48. See Sherman (2011).

  49. On all this, see Nussbaum (2001, ch. 4).

  50. Morris (1976), especially ch. 3.

  51. Morris (1976, 96– 103). The longer discussion explores this picture in a detailed and attractive way.

  52. Williams (1985) makes a number of distinct arguments against Kant, and I am developing only one prominent strand. He and I have a related disagreement

  about the role of shame, which I shall not investigate here.

  53. As a graduate student I observed with interest the fact that German scholars reconstructing the chronology of Aristotle’s writings typically reasoned that he would not have made sharp criticisms of his teacher Plato during Plato’s lifetime, while Anglo- American scholars, and my thesis advisor G. E. L. Owen in particular, reasoned that Aristotle would have become able to see the truth in Plato’s doctrines only after Plato’s death.

  54. Nietzsche (1989, II).

  55. See Croke (2014).

  56. See Halberstadt (2014), an article ranging widely over recent research on animal emotions.

  57. In Nussbaum (1986, chs. 2 and 3); “Flawed Crystals: James’s The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy,” in Nussbaum (1990); Nussbaum (2000a); and

  Nussbaum (2013, ch. 10).

  58. Williams, “Ethical Consistency,” in Williams (1973, 166– 86). Compare Nussbaum (1986, ch. 2).

  59. Meaning that I follow the spirit of his critique of Utilitarianism, although he did not apply it directly to the case of moral dilemmas: see “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Smart and Williams (1973, 77– 150).

  60.
To recant properly I must be more precise. In “Ethical Consistency,” Williams uses the word “regret,” not “remorse.” (In Moral Luck [1982], in a different context, he coins the term “agent regret,” to which I’ll return.) In The Fragility of Goodness (1986) I said that the agent’s emotion should include the thought “that this is an act deeply repellent to him and to his character,” and that for this reason “regret”

  is too weak a term. “His emotion, moreover, will not be simply regret, which

  could be felt and expressed by an uninvolved spectator and does not imply that he himself has acted badly. It will be an emotion more like remorse, closely bound

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  Notes to Pages 134–138

  up with the wrong that he has as an agent, however reluctantly, done.” In Love’s Knowledge (1990) I went further, in writing about James’s The Golden Bowl (1904).

  There I spoke of the proper emotion as “guilt,” and suggested that the perva-

  sive nature of these conflicts, particularly in the family, was a secular analogue of the biblical notion of original sin. I did not define guilt, and I’m really not sure whether I meant it as self- anger, including a wish for self- punishment. In the case of two conflicts late in the novel, I did observe that to respond with that emotion would be poisonous to the future of a loving and trusting relationship— so love, I said, required of Maggie Verver and of her husband a morally imperfect response.