5 philosophers on anger - Delaney Thull
Anger is a complicated emotion.
It can feel reasonable and righteous
or impulsive and uncontrollable.
But is it ever morally right to be angry?
And if so, when?
One of the most foundational
understandings of anger
comes from the Greek philosopher Aristotle
who proposed an idea called
“the doctrine of the mean.”
In this model, there’s a sweet spot
for our actions and emotional reactions,
and it's up to you to develop practical
wisdom about when you should feel what
and how strongly to feel it.
For example, let’s say you’re going
to sleep early
because you have
an important meeting tomorrow
and your neighbor just started
blasting music.
If you can’t sleep,
you might botch your meeting,
so feeling angry is
definitely understandable.
But how much anger should you feel?
And what actions, if any, should you take?
To answer these questions,
Aristotle would need to know more details.
Have you previously talked
to your neighbor about this issue?
Is it a reasonable time
to be playing music?
Is your neighbor trying to antagonize you,
or are they just enjoying their evening?
Relying on practical wisdom
in Aristotle’s case-by-case approach
makes a lot of sense for navigating
interpersonal conflicts.
But what about when there’s
no one to blame for your anger?
Imagine a tornado completely
destroys your house
while your neighbor’s home is untouched.
No amount of anger
can undo the disaster,
and there isn’t really a suitable target
for your frustration.
Yet for the ancient Stoics,
the tornado and the noisy neighbor
are basically identical.
The Stoics believed life is like an
uncontrollable cart we’re all tied to,
and we can either learn
to go with the flow
or hurt ourselves fighting its momentum.
In their logic, we all live
at the whims of fate,
and our actions can never
actually change things—
whether it's a natural disaster
or how others act towards us.
So Stoics believe anger is always wrong,
since it causes pain
and is ultimately futile.
The 8th century Indian Buddhist
philosopher Śāntideva
also questioned our free will
and the value of anger,
arguing that because people often lack
rational control over their emotions,
we should endeavor not to let their anger
and cruelty spread to us.
But even if it’s hard for us
to control our anger,
there might be something
we can learn from it.
Philosopher PF Strawson’s
theory of reactive attitudes
suggests that experiencing anger
is a natural part of human psychology
that helps us communicate blame
and hold each other accountable.
In this model, anger can be
an important part
of letting us know when something immoral
is happening,
so removing it would impair
our social lives and moral communities.
But finding the right response to those
psychological alarm bells can be tricky.
For instance, if you were supervising
cruel, disrespectful young children,
it might be natural to feel anger,
but it would be wrong to treat
their moral mistakes
like those of fully formed adults.
So when should you act on anger?
And can it ever help
change things for the better?
Let's imagine your community is
experiencing serious health issues
because a nearby factory is illegally
polluting the water supply.
A long tradition in political philosophy
argues that the righteous anger
often invoked by witnessing
this kind of injustice
can be invaluable for fueling change
and motivating community action.
In unjust situations like this,
it could be a moral mistake
to suppress your anger,
instead of channeling it
into positive action.
But other philosophers argue that anger
has an inherent negative element
that limits its transformative power.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum pointed
out that famous civil rights activists
such as Gandhi, Nelson Mandela,
and Martin Luther King Jr
warned that giving yourself over to even
the most righteous anger
can lead one to become bitter, vengeful,
or hateful of others.
They cautioned that we should carefully
calibrate our emotional responses
to ensure that we see others
not as enemies
but as community members with whom
we must learn to coexist,
regardless of our ever-changing emotions.
