Anger

Despite the diversity of viewpoints throughout the history of philosophy on the subject of blame, one thing philosophers appear to agree on is that blame is an irreducible feature of experience. That is to say , no philosophical approach makes the claim to have entirely eliminated the need for anger and blame. On the contrary, a certain conception of blameful anger is at the very heart of both modern and postmodern philosophical foundations. As a careful analysis will show, this is (...) true even for those philosophical arguments that pop up from time to time extolling the virtues of moving beyond blame and anger. In this paper, I assert that all forms of blame, including the cool, non-emotional, rational desire for accountability and justice and well as rageful craving for vengeance, are grounded in a spectrum of affective comportments that share core features. This affective spectrum includes irritation, annoyance, hostility, disapproval, condemnation, feeling insulted, taking umbrage, resentment, anger, exasperation, impatience, hatred, fury, ire, outrage, contempt, righteous indignation, ‘adaptive’ or rational anger, perceiving the other as deliberately thoughtless, rude, careless, negligent, complacent, lazy, self-indulgent, malevolent, dishonest, narcissistic, malicious, culpable, perverse, inconsiderate, intentionally oppressive, anti-social, hypocritical, repressive or unfair, disrespectful, disgraceful, greedy, evil, sinful, criminal, a miscreant. Blame is also implicated in cooly, calmly and rationally determining the other to have deliberately committed a moral transgression, a social injustice or injustice in general, or as committing a moral wrong. -/- I challenge the reader to recognize that every time you experience any of the blameful attitudes, emotions and assessments I mentioned above, you are displaying your own failure of understanding. I challenge you to do away with your need for concepts of blame, anger and punitive justice in any of their philosophical guises, and with them the equally unctuous discourses of forgiveness. -/- Anger is neither inherently immoral nor irrational and destructive, but represents a limited understanding of human behavior. To the extent that concepts of ethico-political justice imply appraisal of blameful, guilty intent, they also represent a failure of understanding and a form of violence and an impetus of conformity. There’s no such thing as adaptive, moral or righteous blame or anger. Modern legal concepts of justice, to the extent they imply blame, depend on an inadequate grasp of motivation and intent. (shrink)

Feminists have long argued that emotions have a rightful place in politics. Anger, specifically, is often said to play a crucial role in alerting people to oppression and motivating resistance. The task of this paper is to elaborate these claims and to outline a conception of the political value of anger. In doing so, I argue against the view that anger is valuable if and because it expresses a sound moral judgment. Instead, we should see rage, in the first place, (...) as simply a response to having one’s practical aims in the world thwarted—there need be nothing moral or righteous about this feeling for it to have political potential. Second, unlike those who highlight anger’s connection with love or claims for equal dignity, I emphasise its tendency towards aggression. With this non-moralized conception of anger in hand, we can see how rage reveals practical problems in a way that can spur on a dialectical process of political articulation and organized action. The resulting standpoint from which one can articulate and resist one’s oppression based on one’s rage is not inherent in the experience of anger—rather it needs to be seen as a political achievement in itself. (shrink)

Anger gaslighting is behavior that tends to make someone doubt herself about her anger. In this paper, I analyze the case of anger gaslighting, using it as a paradigm case to argue that gaslighting can be an affective injustice (not only an epistemic one). Drawing on Marilyn Frye, I introduce the concept of “uptake” as a tool for identifying anger gaslighting behavior (persistent, pervasive uptake refusal for apt anger). But I also demonstrate the larger significance of uptake in the study (...) of affective injustice: just as the concept of credibility names the epistemic behavior whereby we take someone seriously as an epistemic being, the concept of uptake names the uniquely affective cooperative behavior whereby we take someone seriously as an affective being. I answer Miranda Fricker’s epistemic notion of a prejudicial credibility economy with the affective notion of prejudicial uptake economies: uptake, like credibility, can be produced in a deficit for one social group relative to a surplus for another. Deviating from the parallels with Fricker, for whom the injustice of epistemic injustice is due to prejudice in the motives or character of individuals, as well as from accounts that ground it in aptness or affective goods, I suggest that the injustice of anger gaslighting behavior can be located at the structural scale of power relationships between social groups, in the tradition of Iris Marion Young. Anger gaslighting behavior counts as unjust wherever it (re)produces prejudicial uptake economies. Adapting sociological concepts of feeling rules and the emotion work they demand, I introduce the concepts of “uptake rules” and “uptake work” to further enable analysis of uptake economies as affective social structures, and to suggest a site for resistant or reparative affective agency. (shrink)

A widespread conception of anger both within and outside academia proposes to interpret it (along with other emotions) as an adaptive response to certain recurrent problems in our evolutionary past, which implies interpreting anger as a discrete, basic, innate and adaptive emotion. In view of the crisis that the Basic Emotions thesis is going through, and taking into account a number of important objections that have been raised to the idea that anger represents a discrete emotion, I will suggest that (...) the definitive abandonment of the concept of anger (and its close relatives, rage and indignation) has important hermeneutical advantages, including the possibility of approaching the problem of the phylogenesis of our sense of justice from a perspective that avoids the rupturist and continuist extremes that rely on a discrete conception of the emotions. (shrink)

There is an ethics of blaming the person who deserves blame. The Christian scriptures imply the following no-vengeance condition: a person should not vengefully overtly blame a wrongdoer even if she gives the wrongdoer the exact negative treatment that he deserves. I explicate and defend this novel condition and argue that it demands a revolution in our blaming practices. First, I explain the no-vengeance condition. Second, I argue that the no-vengeance condition is often violated. The most common species of blame (...) involves anger; anger conceptually includes a desire for vengeance; and there are many pleasures in payback. Third, I clarify that it is possible to blame non-vengefully in anger and highlight three good uses for anger in non-vengeful blame. Fourth, I offer two reasons that justify the divine command prohibiting vengeance, and I note that the Christian God is merely sufficient to make non-vengeance morally obligatory. Fifth, I defend the no-vengeance condition against four biblical objections. (shrink)

There has been recent discussion of a puzzle posed by emotions that are backward looking. Though our emotions commonly diminish over time, how can they diminish fittingly if they are an accurate appraisal of an event that is situated in the past? Agnes Callard (2017) has offered a solution by providing an account of anger in which anger is both backwards looking and resolvable, yet her account depends upon contrition to explain anger’s fitting diminishment. My aim is to explain how (...) anger can fittingly diminish even when there is lack of contrition. I propose a permissivism about fittingness by showing that both anger and compassion are fitting responses to blameworthy behaviour. I argue that anger is rendered fitting because it accurately appraises the behaviour, whereas compassion becomes fitting as a valuational response to what the behaviour reveals about the lived experience of the offender. I then respond to some worries my account raises, and I clarify details of my account to show that it is not unrealistic to the way some of our anger actually does diminish. I end with a proposal that our anger can fittingly diminish through the act of forgiveness when compassion is not a forthcoming affective response. (shrink)

Ancient philosophical schools developed and discussed perspectives and practices on the emotion of anger useful in contemporary philosophical practice with clients, groups, and organizations. This paper argues the case for incorporating these insights from four main philosophical schools (Platonist, Aristotelian, Epicurean, and Stoic) sets out eight practices drawn from these schools, and discusses how these insights can be used by philosophical practitioners with clients.

With the #MeToo movement and the Women’s Marches behind us, it has become clear that women are angry. This anger is often criticised for being disruptive or uncommunicative, with calm rationality being praised as a superior alternative. In this article, I use the framework of Fricker’s (2007) Epistemic Injustice to examine the communicative disadvantages and merits of what I call feminist anger. I explain how feminist anger can be subject to both testimonial and hermeneutical injustices, but that this does not (...) mean it should not be used to communicate. Importantly, feminist anger can challenge the patriarchal status quo and it can provide an epistemic bridge towards hermeneutical justice. By listening to feminist anger, both our own and others’, we can get one step closer to epistemic equality. (shrink)

This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of responsibility associated with attributability, answerability, and accountability-it distinguishes between basic and non-basic desert conceptions of moral responsibility and considers a (...) number of skeptical arguments against each. It then outlines an alternative forward-looking account of moral responsibility grounded in non-desert-invoking desiderata such as protection, reconciliation, and moral formation. It concludes by addressing concerns about the practical implications of skepticism about desert-based moral responsibility and explains how optimistic skeptics can preserve most of what we care about when it comes to our interpersonal relationships, morality, and meaning in life. (shrink)

Anger, far from being only a personal emotion, often signals a breakdown in existing societal structures like the justice system. This does not mean we should uncritically submit to our angry impulses, but it does mean that anger can reveal larger issues in the world worthy of attention. If we banish anger from the socio-political landscape, we risk losing its insights. To defend that claim, I turn to a range of sources from ancient China and Greece—philosophy, poetry, drama, and political (...) theory—that depict and analyze anger in a variety of situations and people. My basic claim is not that anger is simply “good” or “bad” but rather that it helps reveal and clarify our values, often pointing us towards real situations deserving of our ethical scrutiny. I situate the project amidst ongoing debates in analytic philosophy of emotions and feminist philosophy, joining the conceptual precision and clarity of the former with the latter’s attention to lived experience. Such cross-cultural, multidisciplinary conceptual analysis of anger parochializes Aristotelian understandings of anger by introducing different types and functions of anger. What role does anger play, for example, in a minister rebuking the king in an ancient Chinese court? How do Greek sources depict female anger differently than male anger, and why? By using ancient and comparative sources, I show how deeply anger is shaped by particular cultural and social structures, whilst remaining recognizably anger. (shrink)

What I aim to elucidate in this article is Baldwin's moral psychology of anger in general, and black rage in particular, as seen in his nonfiction. I'll show that Baldwin's thinking is significant for moral psychology and is relevant to important questions at the intersection of philosophy of emotions, race, and social philosophy. It also has pragmatic application to present-day anti-racist struggle. Baldwin's theoretical account of Black rage, I'll argue, dignifies Blacks by centering them as people with agential capacities and (...) provides them with a pragmatic politics of rage that is useful in the fight against white supremacy and racial injustice. (shrink)

This article treats rituals of apology and reconciliation as responses to social discontent, specifically to expressions of anger and resentment. A standard account of social discontent, found both in the literature on transitional justice and in the social theory of Axel Honneth, has it that these emotional expressions are evidence of an underlying psychic need for recognition. In this framework, the appropriate response to expressions of anger and discontent is a recognitive one that includes victims of injustice in the political (...) community by showing them that they are valued members. In the aftermath of injustices, such recognitive responses are thought to include acknowledgments of victim suffering, reconciliatory gestures, and rituals of contrition. I will argue, against this narrative, that treating victim anger as evidence of an underlying need for recognition threatens to depoliticize emotional responses to injustice by treating them as symptoms of psychic injuries instead of intelligible political claims. Discussing mainly the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation process set up to deal with the history of the Indian Residential School system, I show how rituals of reconciliation and apology, in the context of settler-colonial states and neoliberal politics, serve as a biopolitical management of “bad” emotions. This will serve as a critique both of the politics of reconciliation and of social–theoretic approaches that treat expressions of discontent exclusively through a lens of recognition. Instead, I argue, in politics as well as theory, we need to engage with emotional expressions as intelligible political claims that exceed the psychic need for recognition. (shrink)

Often, when we are angry, we are angry at someone who has hurt us, and our anger is a protest against our perceived mistreatment. In these cases, its function is to hold the abuser accountable for their offense. The anger involves a demand for some sort of change or response: that the hurt be acknowledged, that the relationship be repaired, that the offending party reform in some way. In this paper, I develop and defend an account of a different form (...) of anger, called "outrage anger". Outrage anger does not aim to hold an abuser accountable, nor to demand repair or reform. Drawing on the work of Maria Lugones, I argue that outrage anger is directed at the state of affairs in which a violation is unintelligible to the dominant moral community. The central function of outrage anger is a psychological boundary setting: it closes off the victim’s ability to feel empathy for their abuser. Outrage has an important role to play in the context of political injustice, but that it also comes with significant costs. (shrink)

For Aristotle, some wrongdoers do not deserve blame, and the virtuous judge should extend sungnōmē, a correct judgment about what is equitable, under the appropriate excusing circumstances. Aristotle’s virtuous judge, however, does not forgive; the wrongdoer is excused from blame in the first place, rather than being forgiven precisely because she is blameworthy. Additionally, the judge does not fail to blame because she wishes to be merciful or from natural feeling, but instead, because that is the equitable action to take (...) under the circumstances. Moreover, while Aristotle does claim in his discussions of the virtues of megalopsychia and praotēs that the virtuous person will sometimes fail to become angry at blameworthy wrongdoers, Aristotle’s reasons for repudiating anger or forestalling blame have little to do with the sorts of reasons that one would or could be forgiving for. Although an Aristotelian virtuous agent does let go of anger for her own reasons, she does not forgive. As a result, I argue that since Aristotle’s account of equity entails that forgiveness is positively vicious, forgivingness is not merely a virtue left out of Aristotle’s account, but is in fact incompatible with his account. (shrink)

The phenomenon of self-anger has been overlooked in the contemporary literature on emotion. This is a failing we should seek to remedy. In this paper I provide the first ef-fort towards a philosophical characterization of self-anger. I argue that self-anger is a genuine instance of anger and that, as such, it is importantly distinct from the negative self-directed emotions of guilt and shame. Doing so will uncover a potentially distinctive role for self-anger in our moral psychology, as one of the (...) strongest affective motiva-tors for self-change. (shrink)

The orthodox view of anger takes desires for revenge or retribution to be central to the emotion. In this paper, I develop an empirically informed challenge to the retributive view of anger. In so doing, I argue that a distinct desire is central to anger: a desire for recognition. Desires for recognition aim at the targets of anger acknowledging the wrong they have committed, as opposed to aiming for their suffering. In light of the centrality of this desire for recognition, (...) I argue that the retributive view of anger should be abandoned. I consider and dismiss two types of moves that can be made on the part of a proponent of the orthodox view in response to my argument. I propose that a pluralist view, which allows for both retribution and recognition in anger, is to be preferred. (shrink)

When blame is understood to be emotion-based or affective, its emotional tone is standardly identified as one of anger. We argue that this conception of affective blame is overly restrictive. By attending to cases of blame that emerge against a background of a particular kind of hope invested in others, we identify a blaming response characterized not by anger but by sadness: reactive disappointment. We develop an account of reactive disappointment as affective blame, maintaining that while angry blame and disappointed (...) blame are both condemnatory responses, they have distinct evaluative foci and occupy different but complementary roles in our accountability practices. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that there is what has been called a non-hypocrisy norm on the appropriateness of moral blame; roughly, one has standing to blame only if one is not guilty of the very offence one seeks to criticize. Our acceptance of this norm is embodied in the common retort to criticism, “Who are you to blame me?”. But there is a paradox lurking behind this commonplace norm. If it is always inappropriate for x to blame y for a (...) wrong that x has committed, then all cases in which x blames x (i.e. cases of self-blame) are rendered inappropriate. But it seems to be ethical common-sense that we are often, sadly, in position (indeed, excellent, privileged position) to blame ourselves for our own moral failings. And thus we have a paradox: a conflict between the inappropriateness of hypocritical blame, and the appropriateness of self-blame. We consider several ways of resolving the paradox, and contend none is as defensible as a position that simply accepts it: we should never blame ourselves. In defending this startling position, we defend a crucial distinction between self-blame and guilt. (shrink)

This public philosophy piece examines moral responsibility and alternatives to angry blame as exemplified in the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 2, February 2022.

A reconciliation of different approaches to anger in the Christian moral tradition, with cautions and recommendations for virtuous anger formation.

Anger is arguably one of the most important emotions in a human being’s life. An array of contemporary studies show that, far from being detrimental, anger can foster one’s self-esteem, improve their social interactions, and even benefit physical and mental health. In his Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume explicitly recognized the importance of anger. And yet, few topics have been so neglected in the Hume scholarship as his account of this passion. The following chapter aims to fill the gap (...) in the literature by showing that Hume’s analysis of anger is worth studying and strictly connected to some of the most intriguing problems in his philosophy. (shrink)

Moral experience comes in many flavors. Some philosophers have argued that there is nothing common to the many forms moral experience can take. In this paper, I argue that close attention to the phenomenology of certain key emotions, combined with a clear distinction between essentially and accidentally moral experiences, suggests that there is a group of (essentially) moral emotions which in fact exhibit significant unity.

The aim of the book is to encourage discussion among experts on De ira, a text of philosophical nature, by reading it page by page, from a philosophical, philological, and literary perspective (a multidisciplinary choice which is the conditio sine qua non of all judicious research on Seneca). Moreover, the way in which each of these close readings is conducted adds an additional value: they each deal with a section of the text, presenting all the data necessary for its understanding. (...) All together, they cover the whole work. Each of them is also an attempt at a global interpretation of the treatise, examined through the particular framing of the textual passage around which the “Lectures plurielles” are conceived. Around this “polyphonic” analysis of the text, we have built a structure that aims to offer the reader a complete reference work on all the issues of the De ira. Sources, manuscript tradition, images, political and philosophical concepts, posterity – in short, all the aspects that a traditional commentary of the text would not have allowed us to distinguish so clearly – find their place here. This book is therefore aimed at specialists as well as students or anyone interested in the thought of emotions in antiquity. (shrink)

The aim of the present article is to accomplish two things. The first is to show that given some further plausible assumptions, existing challenges to the indispensability of knowledge in causal explanation of action fail. The second is to elaborate an overlooked and distinct argument in favor of the causal efficacy of knowledge. In short, even if knowledge were dispensable in causal explanation of action, it is still indispensable in causal explanation of other mental attitudes and, in particular, some reactive (...) attitudes and factive emotions. Taking into account this sort of causal efficacy in determining which mental states are genuine mental states opens up new perspectives for defending the view that knowledge is the most general factive and genuine mental state. (shrink)

I argue that fitting resentment tracks unacceptable ‘ecological’ imbalances in relative social strength between victims and perpetrators that arise from violations of legitimate moral expectations. It does not respond purely, or even primarily, to offenders’ attitudes, and its proper targets need not be fully developed moral agents. It characteristically involves a wish for the restoration of social equilibrium rather than a demand for moral recognition or good will. To illuminate these contentions, I focus on cases that I believe demonstrate a (...) corollary thesis, namely, that strength, broadly construed, is a necessary condition of resentment-worthiness. I argue that weakness can make resentment unfitting in two ways. First, weakness may prevent a wrongdoer from shifting the balance of social power. Second, a weak wrongdoer may do social damage but be so lowly that resentment, which would represent him as excessively strong, would be inapt. Finally, I consider how accepting the ecological view might affect our theorizing about moral responsibility and the ethics of blame. (shrink)

In this article I argue that characterizations of anger as a hostile emotion may be mistaken. My project is empirically informed and is partly descriptive, partly diagnostic. It is descriptive in that I am concerned with what anger is, and how it tends to manifest, rather than with what anger should be or how moral anger is manifested. The orthodox view on anger takes it to be, descriptively, an emotion that aims for retribution. This view fits well with anger being (...) a hostile emotion, as retribution is punitive. I will argue that a different view of anger deserves our attention. On this alternative view, anger aims for recognition of harms done, rather than for the punishment of those who have committed them. I argue that we have reason to favour a strong view that excludes retribution from anger’s main aims. In addition, I offer a diagnosis of the reasons that led the retributive view of anger to become, and remain, orthodoxy. This diagnosis provides indirect reason to give my descriptive proposal serious consideration, for it highlights that the orthodox view has dominated folk and philosophical conceptions of anger for reasons that do not speak in favour of the view’s veracity. The view that anger is a hostile emotion will therefore emerge as in need of serious scrutiny. (shrink)

Anger is often an appropriate reaction to harms and injustices, but is it a politically beneficial one? Martha Nussbaum (Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1), 41–56, 2015, Anger and Forgiveness. Oxford University Press, 2016) has argued that, although anger is useful in initially recruiting agents for action, anger is typically counterproductive to securing the political aims of those harmed. After the initial shockwave of outrage, Nussbaum argues that to be effective at enacting positive social change, groups and individuals (...) alike, must move quickly out of the state of anger. Feminist theorists (Frye, The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press, 1983; Lorde, 1997; Narayan, Hypatia 3 (2): 31–48, 1988) on the other hand have for long highlighted the efficacy of anger, as well as its moral and epistemic value, in fighting against the oppressive status quo. It might be thought therefore that for political action to be effective, a continued state of anger is preferable. Protestors must after all create and sustain a sense of moral obligation and justice. A main way of doing so is to promote successive moral shocks that trigger outrage (Jasper, Emotion Review 6 (3): 208–213, 2014). I present a novel, empirically informed defense of anger’s efficacy in political action. Nussbaum holds a traditional view on the nature of anger, inherited from Aristotle and the Stoics, which holds that anger constitutively involves a desire for retribution. The view that anger is counterproductive falls out of this and is dominant in academic work as well as in our personal and political lives. Based on work in social psychology, I argue that we need to reconsider this. In doing so, I highlight anger’s aim for recognition, rather than retribution, as key. Furthermore, I uncover conditions for anger’s political efficacy, as well as reasons for why the traditional view of anger has been so pervasive. (shrink)

Shun argues that the distinction made between emotions experienced from the first-person perspective and those from the third-person perspective does not capture our everyday emotional experience. My proposal is that even if we accept this claim, first- and third-person perspective taking is still crucial in the development of our emotional psychology. This is so in two respects. First, the features of intimacy and impartiality that mark adult emotional response are a product of a developmental process that involves perspective taking. Second, (...) perspective taking is a crucial part of refining and developing virtuous emotional responses. (shrink)

Moral philosophers have defended anger as an important part of our moral lives. In spite of these defenses, skeptics have nonetheless argued that it would be better all things considered to get over anger to the extent that we can. They will often point to moral exemplars like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi to show both (a) that we can successfully overcome our feelings of anger and (b) that we would be morally better off doing so. In this chapter, (...) I argue against this aspiration. Those who advocate for such an aspiration fail to recognize that getting over anger would require us to radically reshape our moral psychology. I argue that feelings of anger are more central to our moral emotional lives than skeptics realize and that they cannot be removed without altering other valuable moral commitments. (shrink)

Greta Thunberg has rapidly become a household name due to her passionate involvement in the youth climate movement. However, Thunberg has also received criticism, among other things for her anger. Is such anger really productive, people ask, or is it harming the cause of climate justice? In this article, I examine that question from a philosophical perspective. I look at two commonly mentioned disadvantages of anger, namely that it is a retributive emotion and that it reduces uptake of one’s message, (...) and I provide some reasons why these might not be disadvantageous after all. Then, I look at four different advantages of anger: its motivational power, its revolutionary potential, its use for community building, and its epistemic value. Each of these points is linked back to the climate movement as it is personified by Greta Thunberg, in order to analyse the anger that is at times very prominent in her activist message. While a definite conclusion about the productivity of Thunberg’s anger is difficult to reach, I conclude that her anger should be listened to regardless, since we have much to learn from it. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of forgiveness that is sensitive to recent work on anger. Like others, we claim anger involves an appraisal, namely that someone has done something wrong. But, we add, anger has two further functions. First, anger communicates to the wrongdoer that her act has been appraised as wrong and demands she feel guilty. This function enables us to explain why apologies make it reasonable to forgo anger and forgive. Second, anger sanctions the wrongdoer for what she (...) has done. This function allows us to explore the moral status of forgiveness, including why forgiveness is typically elective. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile anger in sports has been explored in philosophy, the phenomenon known as having a ‘chipped shoulder’ has not. In this paper I explore the nature, causes, and effects of playi...

Qu’est-ce que l’indignation ? Cette émotion est souvent conçue comme une émotion morale qu’une tierce-partie éprouve vis-à-vis des injustices qu’un agent inflige à un patient. L’indignation aurait ainsi trait aux injustices et serait éprouvée par des individus qui n’en seraient eux-mêmes pas victimes. Cette émotion motiverait la tierce-partie indignée à tenter de réguler l’injustice en l’annulant et en punissant son auteur. Cet article entreprend de montrer que cette conception de l’indignation n’est que partielle. En effet, l’indignation ne porte pas que (...) sur les injustices, mais plus généralement sur les torts injustifiés. Ce faisant, l’indignation peut être une émotion morale, mais aussi une émotion conventionnelle ou esthétique. De plus, elle peut être éprouvée par les individus victime des torts : elle n’est pas uniquement éprouvée par des tierces-parties. De la sorte, les individus indignés qui subissent les torts peuvent eux-mêmes chercher à les annuler et à punir leurs auteurs. Puisqu’elle peut être éprouvée tant par des spectateurs que par les personnes qui subissent les torts et qu’elle incline ceux qui l’éprouvent à faire appel à d’autres personnes pour réguler ces torts, l’indignation vécue individuellement est partageable : elle peut devenir une émotion collective jouant un rôle fondamental dans la régulation sociale en contribuant au renforcement de normes sociales existantes ou à l’émergence de nouvelles normes sociales associées aux idées du juste prévalant dans la société considérée. (shrink)

I argue that recent attempts to vindicate blame have failed to fully face the vengeful feelings and angry outbursts that have led to scepticism about blame’s ethical status. This paper ende...

This chapter argues that adequately facing and responding to medical error requires making space for blame. In vindicating blame as a response to medical error, this essay does not advocate a return to a “bad apple” blame culture in which unlucky practitioners are unfairly scapegoated. It does, however, defend the targeted feeling and expression of angry, and even resentful, blaming attitudes toward health-care providers who make at least certain kinds of mistakes. The chapter makes the case that the angry and (...) resentful feelings associated with blame reflect a conception of oneself as a person worthy of consideration, and that expressing these feelings allows victims and families to fight for their dignity and self-respect. Along the way, it distinguishes between shaming and blaming, explaining that blaming, unlike shaming, characteristically aims to draw offenders into a moral dialogue. As a result, a good blaming practice can provide a logic within which providers who make costly errors may seek forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. (shrink)

Abstract: If anger is the emotion of injustice, and if most injustices have prominent epistemic dimensions, then where is the anger in epistemic injustice? Despite the question my task is not to account for the lack of attention to anger in epistemic injustice discussions. Instead, I argue that a particular texture of transformative anger – a knowing resistant anger – offers marginalized knowers a powerful resource for countering epistemic injustice. I begin by making visible the anger that saturates the silences (...) that epistemic injustices repeatedly manufacture and explain the obvious: silencing practices produce angry experiences. I focus on tone policing and tone vigilance to illustrate the relationship between silencing and angry knowledge management. Next, I use María Lugones’s pluralist account of anger to bring out the epistemic dimensions of knowing resistant anger in a way that also calls attention to their histories and felt textures. The final section draws on feminist scholarship about the transformative power of angry knowledge to suggest how it might serve as a resource for resisting epistemic injustice. (shrink)

In this chapter I give an account of how our judgments of anger often play out in certain political instances. While contemporary philosophers of emotion have provided us with check box guides like “fittingness” and “size” for evaluating anger, I will argue that these guides do not by themselves help us escape the tendency to mark or unmark the boxes selectively, inconsistently, and erroneously. If anger—particularly anger in a political context—can provide information and spark positive change or political destruction, then (...) we have moral reasons to evaluate it properly. But can we? And what are the limitations and errors we often face when evaluating anger? -/- I will begin by laying out the ways in which we evaluate emotions and the moral and epistemic errors we attribute to the angry agent in judgments of disapproval. Then I attempt to answer the question: How do we judge political anger improperly? An improper evaluation, in my view, does not take into account relevant information that is needed to evaluate the anger. An overly generous, uninformed, biased, or selfish process of evaluation produces an improper evaluation. We see this occur when we immediately evaluate anger. I will also identify two social discursive practices of improper evaluation as well as the moral and epistemic errors committed when anger evaluators participate in these practices. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that susceptibility to suitable emotional responses is part of what it is to value something. Indeed, the value of at least some things calls for such emotional responses – if we lack them, we don’t respond appropriately to their value. In this paper, I argue that susceptibility to anger is an essential component of valuing other people, ourselves, and our relationships. The main reason is that various modes of valuing, such as respect, self-respect, and love, ground (...) normative expectations towards others and ourselves. And holding someone accountable for violating legitimate normative expectations involves emotions from the anger family, such as resentment and indignation. I hold that such forms of anger, which aim at getting the target to conform to expectations or lower their unduly elevated status, are neither inherently problematic or dispensable parts of the package of attitudes involved in valuing. Finally, thinking about anger’s role in valuing also helps see when it is out of place or immature – roughly, it is often excessive, because we easily exaggerate the magnitude of the value involved, the harm or threat to it, or the degree of the target’s moral responsibility. (shrink)

Can we ever have politics without the noble lie? Can we have a collective political identity that does not exclude or define ‘us’ as ‘not them’? In the Ethics, Spinoza argues that individual human emotions and imagination shape the social world. This world, he argues, can in turn be shaped by political institutions to be more or less hopeful, more or less rational, or more or less angry and indignant. In his political works, Spinoza offered suggestions for how to shape (...) a political imaginary and create collective identities that are more guided by hope than by fear or anger. In this talk, using the framework of Spinoza's theory of emotions, I will investigate how Barack Obama's promise of 'hope' was translated into Donald Trump's rhetoric of hate. Such a transition, from hope to fear is one that would be unsurprising to Spinoza. Spinoza worried about the political and personal effectiveness of hope. He argued that hope can easily be turned into what he called ‘indignatio’ or indignation – an emotion that he believed eroded trust in political institutions and was the limit of state power. Spinoza warned about the danger of governance that relies upon the emotions of anger and hatred. In the Ethics, Spinoza painstakingly reconstructs the way in which individual emotions, ideas and motivations are shaped within social worlds. He argued that emotions based on pain, including hatred and indignation, diminish the power of the individuals who experience them and the political collective in which those individuals reside. Anger, fear and indignation weaken the state. In the second section of the paper, I will set out how the Trump administration’s reliance on the motivational forces of hate and anger risk what Spinoza called indignation. Trump's reliance on exclusionary conceptions of American identity have fanned the flames of racial, ethnic and religious hatred to motivate his base have had widespread social and political effects. I will offer arguments and examples which bear out the Spinozan worries about the effects of anger and indignation on the political and the social. Spinoza’s political works were written not just to explain the worries about an angry and indignant multitude, but also to show how to turn political indignation and anger into a chastened, and perhaps more rational, hope. Finally, I will propose that we may derive from Spinoza participatory, democratic institutions and collective identities that can overcome this indignation. (shrink)

Forgiveness and reconciliation are central to moral life; after all, everyone will be wronged by others and will then face the dual decisions of whether to forgive and whether to reconcile. It is therefore important that we have a clear analysis of each, as well as a thoroughly articulated understanding of how they relate to and differ from each other. -/- Forgiveness has received considerably more attention in the Western philosophical literature than has reconciliation. In this paper I aim to (...) give it the attention it deserves and develop an account of interpersonal reconciliation. On my view reconciliation is fundamentally bilateral (whereas forgiveness is fundamentally unilateral). It entails transparency and agreement between the wrongdoer and the victim as to the nature of a past wrong or set of wrongs. And, it requires that moral repair be made between the two parties (which entails that both parties bear proper attitudes towards each other). In making my case I contrast reconciliation with toleration and collaboration, in order to demonstrate that reconciliation also entails forgiveness (though forgiveness does not entail reconciliation). (shrink)

Recent empirical work suggests that emotions are responsible for anti-consequentialist intuitions. For instance, anger places value on actions of revenge and retribution, value not derived from the consequences of these actions. As a result, it contributes to the development of retributive intuitions. I argue that if anger evolved to produce these retributive intuitions because of their biological consequences, then these intuitions are not a good indicator that punishment has value apart from its consequences. This severs the evidential connection between retributive (...) intuitions and the retributive value of punishment. This argument may generalize to other deontological intuitions and theories. (shrink)

Many wrongly believe that emotion plays little or no role in legal reasoning. Unfortunately, Langdell and his “scientific” case method encourage this error. A careful review of analysis in the real world, however, belies this common belief. Emotion can be cognitive, and cognition can be emotional. Additionally, modern neuroscience underscores the “co-dependence” of reason and emotion. Thus, even if law were a certain science of appellate cases (which it is not), emotion could not be torn from such “science.” -/- As (...) we reform legal education, we must recognize the role of cognitive emotion in law and legal analysis. If we fail to do this, we shortchange law schools, students, and the bar in grievous ways. We shortchange the very basics of true and best legal analysis. We shortchange at least half the universe of expression (the affective half). We shortchange the importance of watching and guarding the true interests of our clients, which interests are inextricably intertwined with affective experience. We shortchange the importance of motivation in law, life, and legal education. How can lawyers understand the motives of clients and other relevant parties without understanding the emotions that motivate them? How can lawyers hope to persuade judges, other advocates, or parties across the table in a transaction without grasping affective experience that motivates them? How can law professors fully engage students while ignoring affective experience that motivates students? Finally, we shortchange matters of life and death: emotions affect health and thus the very vigor of the bar. -/- Using insights from practice, modern neuroscience, and philosophy, I therefore explore emotion and other affective experience through a lawyer’s lens. In doing this, I reject claims that emotion and other affective experience are mere feeling (though I do not discount the importance of feeling). I also reject claims that emotion and other affective experience are necessarily irrational or beyond our control. Instead, such experience is often intentional and quite rational and controllable. After exploring law and affective experience at more “macro” levels, I consider three more specific examples of the interaction of law and emotion: (i) emotion, expression, and the first amendment, (ii) emotion in legal elements and exceptions, and (iii) emotion and lawyer mental health. To provide lawyers and legal scholars with a “one-source” overview of emotion and the law, I have also included an Appendix addressing a number of particular emotions. -/- Keywords: Emotion, Cognitive Emotion, Reason, Logos, Pathos, Legal Analysis, Legal Reasoning, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Persuasion, Rhetoric, Expression, First Amendment, Free Speech, Common Law Murder, Mental Health, NAACP v. McCrory, Anger, Contempt, Disgust, Hate, Malice. (shrink)

Why and how do norms emerge? Which norms emerge and why these ones in particular? Such questions belong to the ‘problem of the emergence of norms’, which consists of an inquiry into the production of norms in social collectives. I address this question through the ethnographic study of the emergence of ‘norms against violence’ in the political collective Occupy Geneva. I do this, first, empirically, with the analysis of my field observations; and, second, theoretically, by discussing my findings. In consequence (...) of two episodes categorized as sexual assaults that occurred in their camp, the members of Occupy Geneva decided to tackle those issues in a general assembly. Their goal was to amend their first charter of good conduct in order to reform its norms and complete it with norms aiming to regulate ‘facts’ of ‘unjustified violence’. During a collective deliberation, new norms were devised, debated and consensually adopted. The writing of the new charter took place in a second general assembly during which the wording of the written norms was collectively decided. I show that indignation over the sexual assaults was the main motive that led to the collective deliberation, and that the entire process of the making of these norms was characterized by different collective emotions. Indeed, indignation, contempt and fear played major roles in the emergence of norms prohibiting violence, allowing punishment and exclusion of wrongdoers, and prescribing collective intervention against an aggressor to neutralize the threat represented. These findings prompt me to hypothesize that social norms emerge from emotions thanks to the latters’ internal structure; and that emotions provide causal and grounding explanations for this emergence. Thus, emotions allow us to answer the questions: ‘Why do norms emerge?’ and ‘Why do they have their specific forms?’ In short, I argue that social norms have emotional foundations. (shrink)

Philosophers writing on forgiveness typically defend the Resentment Theory of Forgiveness, the view that forgiveness is the overcoming of resentment. Rarely is much more said about the nature of resentment or how it is overcome when one forgives. Pamela Hieronymi, however, has advanced detailed accounts both of the nature of resentment and how one overcomes resentment when one forgives. In this paper, I argue that Hieronymi’s account of the nature of forgiveness is committed to two implausible claims about the norms (...) bearing on forgiveness. Her account is highly instructive, however, for it brings into relief how certain intuitive views about the norms of forgiveness should be used to constrain our theories about its nature. I conclude by defending this methodological proposal. (shrink)

I argue that the evolutionary history of anger has substantive implications for normative ethics. In the process, I develop an evolutionary account of anger and its influence on action. First, I consider a prominent argument by Peter Singer and Joshua Greene. They conclude that evolutionary explanations of human cooperation debunk – or undercut the evidential value of – the moral intuitions supporting duty ethics (as opposed to utilitarian or consequentialist ethics). With this argument they aim to defend consequentialist theories. However, (...) their argument also threatens to debunk intuitions that support consequentialist theories. I give a novel argument that overcomes this difficulty. Specifically, I offer an evolutionary story about anger that can explain retributive, duty-oriented intuitions concerning punishment. This explanation debunks these intuitions (and not others) by showing that they were selected for their biological consequences rather than their accuracy (concerning duties to punish). I develop this explanation by raising and resolving three additional problems. First, prominent evolutionary explanations of retributive motives fail because they appeal to models that apply only to organisms with strategic insight. To mitigate this problem, I explain the existence of a retributive-like motive in rodents by appealing to an economic model of resource competition, which applies to organisms without strategic insight. Second, I show that human anger was shaped by resource competition of this kind. To do so, I develop evidential criteria to determine when psychological systems in different species share common evolutionary origins. I deploy these criteria to argue that human anger and the retributive motive in rodents derive from the same ancestral trait. Finally, the continuity of anger across human and nonhuman animals stands in tension with the idea that anger causes purposive behavior like retribution or retaliation. I argue that differences between the angry behaviors of human and nonhuman animals are differences in degree and not in kind. In the end, this evolutionary story both explains and undermines retributive intuitions, but not in the straightforward way that Singer and Greene suppose. (shrink)