The emotion of anger gets something of a mixed press. Although it is often presented as a dark and destructive aspect of human nature, there is a countervailing view that holds that, so long as it is suitably directed by reason, it can be an expression of virtue. Indeed some philosophers who take this view go as far as to suggest that not to feel anger in the face of serious immorality constitutes a vice since it fails to take wrongdoing seriously enough. Jeffrie Murphy, for example, claims that a failure to feel anger at moral injuries is a failure to care about the value incarnate in our own moral persons and thus a failure to “care about the very rules of morality”.
In this post, I don’t want to consider all of the ways in which this view of anger might be assessed or developed, but I do want to consider very briefly a particular style of argument against unconditional forgiveness that it sometimes motivates. The argument that I have in mind holds that it is wrong to grant forgiveness unconditionally and immediately because it fails to take the wrong seriously enough: in virtue of a positive assessment of the role of anger in the emotional repertoire of the virtuous agent, a negative view of unconditional forgiveness is inferred.
Whilst this argument seems to me to be worthy of serious philosophical consideration, the first point that I want to make in relation to it is that, instead of accepting its conclusion, we might see it as a reductio of the key premise. After all, those who are able to show unconditional forgiveness might be seen as illustrating the possibility of taking wrongdoing seriously without feeling anger. Consider – in this regard – the case of Gordon Wilson whose daughter was killed in the 1987 Enniskillen bombing. In the immediate aftermath of the atrocity, Wilson said that he felt no anger or ill will towards the perpetrators, yet it would seem strange to claim that he didn’t care about the norms that his daughter’s killers had violated (e.g. norms prohibiting the taking of innocent life) since he subsequently worked tirelessly for peace and reconciliation, engaging in dialogue with loyalist and republican paramilitaries and helping to set up a peace-building charity, all with a view to preventing other people suffering the kind of loss that he had suffered.
The second point that I’d like to make is that the argument seems to be much more plausible in the case of self-directed anger and forgiveness than other-directed anger and forgiveness. There does seem to be something right about the claim that those who self-forgive too quickly are failing to take their own misdeeds seriously, but this point doesn’t seem so plausible in the third-person case. It is therefore interesting to speculate on what accounts for this apparent asymmetry. Why does anger (perhaps in the modulated form of guilt) seem to be a more fitting and necessary response to our own misdeeds than to the misdeeds of others?
Jeremy, as usual, great post. I think you're right that anger does seem more fitting as a response to our own misdeeds than to the misdeeds of others, and this is philosophically interesting because initially it is not at all obvious why. Here are first two half-baked ideas that struck me as candidate explanations for the asymmetry you raise: one explanation is broadly epistemic, the other broadly biological. Roughly, the epistemic line of explanation would go like this: Suppose you and your friend both do some apparently morally equivalently bad thing, such as, forget to pick a mutual friend's child up from school. Even if we suppose your friend gives you 'full disclosure' of her reasons for forgetting to pick up the child, you nonetheless have a different kind of epistemic access (which is more directly transparent) to your own reasons, motivations and psychology as it is relevant in explaining your own failure. This epistemic asymmetry might be relevant in accounting for the 'fittingness of anger' asymmetry because, while you cannot (perhaps) completely understand what led your friend to make this moral failing, you can rather well understand this in your own case; and in your own case, you can recognise further (given your asymmetrically better access to your own psychology) cases where there are no mitigating circumstances to exculpate your failing (while you are less sure, given this epistemic asymmetry, that there are no mitigating circumstances to exculpate to some degree the failing of your friend. That is, again, a rough sketch of how the epistemic explanation would go. Here's another potential explanation: a 'biological' explanation that turns also on considerations to do with the connection between anger and harm. Firstly, a descriptive biological fact: we are (typically) hard-wired to not harm ourselves, and much more inclined to react violently toward others. (Of course, there are plenty of self-harmers, but these are not the norm, and a tendency to self-harm is unusual). That said, the conditional likelihood that one will act in a way that is harmful, given that one is angry, is raised. Let's just suppose further that actual harm is prima facie bad. If all that's right, then it's more fitting (in the sense that it's prima facie better) to be angry at yourself than at others because (i) anger raises the likelihood of harming someone; (ii) you're less likely to harm yourself than others, and (iii) harm is prima facie bad. Taken together, this seems like a potential explanation for why it is more fitting to be angry at yourself than others. But again, these are just somewhat incohate ideas and I'd need to consider them more. Thanks again for the post!
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