Introduction
In this post, I meditate on the nature of anger.
Anger
In Anger and Forgiveness, Nussbaum (2016) defines anger, as the philosophical tradition understands it, as follows:
Anger is a retaliatory and hopeful outward movement that seeks the pain of the offender because of and as a way of assuaging or compensating for one’s own pain. (Chapter 2, Section 4)
This definition, in addition to those mentioned below, implies the following:
Proposition 1 If an individual (A) is angry with an individual (B), then A believes that B either has caused, or is going to cause, him to experience pain; A desires for B to not cause him to experience pain; and A desires for B to experience pain.
First, if an individual (A) is angry with an individual (B), then A believes that B caused him to experience pain. This is implied in the phrase “seeks the pain of the offender because of and as a way of assuaging or compensating for one’s own pain”. If an individual “seeks the pain of the offender because of and as a way of assuaging or compensating for one’s own pain”, then the individual must believe that the offender caused him to experience pain. This is also expressed in Rhetoric in which Aristotle (350 BCE/2018) argues as follows:
Let anger be desire, involving pain, for apparent revenge, because of apparent contempt on the part of someone unfitted to treat the person himself, or one of those close to him, with contempt. If, then, this is what anger is, the angry person must always be angry at some particular individual […] because the individual has done or is going to do something to him or one of those close to him. (Book 2, Chapter 2)
Second, if an individual (A) is angry with an individual (B), then A desires for B to not cause him to experience pain. If A believes that B caused him to experience pain, but A does not desire for B to not do so, then A will not be angry with B. For example, in The Bodhicaryāvatāra, Śāntideva observes:
I feel no anger towards bile and the like, even though they cause intense suffering. Why am I angry with the sentient? They too have reasons for their anger. (Chapter 6, Verse 22)
Therefore, if A is angry with B, then A must have desired for B to not cause him to experience pain.
Last, if an individual (A) is angry with an individual (B), then A desires for B to experience pain. This is expressed in the phrase “seeks the pain of the offender”. This is also expressed in Ethics in which Spinoza argues that “a person who hates endeavours to get rid of the thing that he hates and to destroy it” (Part 3, Proposition 13).
Cause of Anger
Proposition 2 Anger is caused by ignorance.
Anger is caused by ignorance. If an individual is not ignorant of the effects of anger, then he will not be angry. In The Bodhicaryāvatāra, Śāntideva argues that “the person who realises that hatred is an enemy, […] and who persistently strikes it down, is happy in this world and the next” (Chapter 6, Verse 6).
Effects of Anger
Proposition 3 Anger is neither useful nor virtuous.
First, anger is not useful both to the self and to others. In the Kodhana Sutta, the Buddha (1997) argues that anger is not useful to the self:
These are the seven things [i.e., loss of good looks, sleep, profit, wealth, reputation, friends and a good afterlife] – pleasing to an enemy, bringing about an enemy’s aim – come to a man or woman who is angry.
And, in On Anger, Seneca (40 CE/2014) argues that anger is not useful to others:
Next, if you choose to view its results and the mischief that it does, no plague has cost the human race more dear: you will see slaughterings and poisonings, accusations and counter-accusations, sacking of cities, ruin of whole peoples, the persons of princes sold into slavery by auction, torches applied to roofs, and fires not merely confined within city-walls but making whole tracts of country glow with hostile flame. See the foundations of the most celebrated cities hardly now to be discerned; they were ruined by anger. See deserts extending for many miles without an inhabitant: they have been desolated by anger. See all the chiefs whom tradition mentions as instances of ill fate; anger stabbed one of them in his bed, struck down another, though he was protected by the sacred rights of hospitality, tore another to pieces in the very home of the laws and in sight of the crowded forum, bade one shed his own blood by the parricide hand of his son, another to have his royal throat cut by the hand of a slave, another to stretch out his limbs on the cross. (Book 1, Chapter 2)
Second, anger is not virtuous. In On Anger, Seneca (40 CE/2014) argues that “anger […] is a vice” (Book 1, Chapter 20):
to be constantly irritated seems to be the part of a languid and unhappy mind, conscious of its own feebleness, like folk with diseased bodies covered with sores, who cry out at the lightest touch. (Book 1, Chapter 20)
and that
there is no greater proof of magnanimity than that nothing which befalls you should be able to move you to anger. (Book 3, Chapter 6)
In The Analects, Confucius (500 BCE/2023) argues that a gentleman requites injury with uprightness:
Someone asked, “What do you think of the saying, ‘Requite injury with kindness’?”
The Master replied, “With what, then would one requite kindness? Requite injury with uprightness, and kindness with kindness.” (Book 14 Verse 34)
The injunction to “requite injury with uprightness” is apparent in the following passage from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which Hamlet addresses Polonius about some theatrical players who are visiting:
Hamlet: Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
Polonius: My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
Hamlet: God’s bodkins, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.
In the passage, Hamlet asks Polonius to treat the players well. If he treats them well, then they will speak well of him. However, if he does not treat them well, then they will speak ill of him. Polonius objects. Instead, he treats them as they deserve. Hamlet points out that, if everyone is treated as they deserve, then any would be lucky to escape a whipping. Instead of treating them according to their merit, we should treat them according to our honour and dignity.
Morris (2014) argues that “the high path of moral action is to act well toward others because of who we are, and not just in response to who they are”. In agreement, Nussbaum recognises that “we can recognise that a lot of behaviour is subpar, without thinking that we owe it to ourselves to descend to the level of the aggressor or insult-giver” (p. 153).
Non-Anger
The treatment of anger is motivated by a corollary to Proposition 1:
Corollary 1 An individual (A) will not be angry with an individual (B) if either A does not believe that B caused him to experience pain, A does not desire for B to not cause him to experience pain or A does not desire for B to experience pain.
First, an individual (A) will not be angry with an individual (B) if A does not believe that B caused him to experience pain. Because A will believe that B caused him to experience pain only if A neither avoids nor ignores B, A will not be angry with B if he either avoids or ignores B. Seneca (45 CE/2014) advises us to avoid individuals who are likely to cause us pain:
Since we know not how to endure an injury, let us take care not to receive one: we should live with the quietest and easiest-tempered persons, not with anxious or sullen ones: for our own habits are copied from those with whom we associate, and just as some bodily diseases are communicated by touch, so also the mind transfers its vices to its neighbours. (Book 3, Chapter 8)
Seneca (40 CE/2014) also advises us to ignore individuals who are likely to cause us pain:
It is better not to see or to hear everything: many causes of offence may pass by us, most of which are disregarded by the man who ignores them. Would you not be irascible? Then be not inquisitive. He who seeks to know what is said about him, who digs up spiteful tales even if they were told in secret, is himself the destroyer of his own peace of mind. Some stories may be so construed as to appear to be insults: wherefore it is best to put some aside, to laugh at others, and to pardon others” (Book 3, Chapter 11)
Nonetheless, it is sometimes impossible to either avoid or ignore individuals who are likely to cause us pain. In these situations, it can be helpful to “empty ourselves of ourselves”. After all, the belief that an individual has caused us pain is possible only if we latch on to a sense of self, or “us”, to begin with. Zhuangzi (476 BCE/1891) advises us to “empty ourselves of ourselves”:
If a man is crossing a river in a boat, and another empty vessel comes into a collision with it, even though he be a man of a choleric temper, he will not be angry with it. If there be a person, however, in that boat, he will bawl out to him to haul out of the way. If his shout be not heard, he will repeat it; and if the other do not then hear, he will call out a third time, following up the shout with abusive terms. Formerly he was not angry, but now he is; formerly (he thought) the boat was empty, but now there is a person in it. If a man can empty himself of himself, during this time in the world, who can harm him? (Outer Chapters, The Tree on the Mountain)
Seneca (40 CE/2014) suggests that this can be achieved through humour, especially since doing so “requires stepping out of one’s own immersion in one’s ego-injury” (Nussbaum, 2016, pp. 167-168):
There are many ways in which anger may be checked; most things may be turned into jest. It is said that Socrates when he was given a box on the ear, merely said that it was a pity a man could not tell when he ought to wear his helmet out walking. (Book 3, Chapter 11)
Second, an individual (A) will not be angry with an individual (B) if A does not desire for B to not cause him to experience pain. In turn, A will not desire for B to not cause him to experience pain if A expects B to cause him to experience pain. In the Aghata Sutta, the Buddha advises:
There are these 10 ways of subduing hatred. Which 10?
Thinking, ‘He has done me harm. But what should I expect?’ one subdues hatred.
Thinking, ‘He is doing me harm. But what should I expect?’ one subdues hatred.
Thinking, ‘He is going to do me harm. But what should I expect?’ one subdues hatred.
Thinking, ‘He has done harm to people who are dear and pleasing to me. But what should I expect?’ one subdues hatred.
Thinking, ‘He is doing harm to people who are dear and pleasing to me. But what should I expect?’ one subdues hatred.
Thinking, ‘He is going to do harm to people who are dear and pleasing to me. But what should I expect?’ one subdues hatred.
Thinking, ‘He has aided people who are not dear and pleasing to me. But what should I expect?’ one subdues hatred.
Thinking, ‘He is aiding people who are not dear and pleasing to me. But what should I expect?’ one subdues hatred.
Thinking, ‘He is going to aid people who are not dear and pleasing to me. But what should I expect?’ one subdues hatred.
One does not get worked up over impossibilities.
These are 10 ways of subduing hatred.
Last, an individual (A) will not be angry with an individual (B) if A does not desire for B to experience pain. Because A will not desire for B to experience pain if A extends loving-kindness towards B, A will not be angry with B if A extends loving-kindness towards B.
Conclusion
References
Nussbaum, M. C. (2016). Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice. Oxford University Press.