Thinking Our Anger
The events of September 11th have occasioned a wide variety of responses, ranging from calls to turn the other cheek, to calls to nuke half the Middle East – and every imaginable shade of opinion in between. At a time when emotions run high, how should we go about deciding on a morally appropriate response? Should we allow ourselves to be guided by our anger, or should we put our anger aside and make an unemotional decision?
D. H. Lawrence once wrote:
My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle. What do I care about knowledge? All I want is to answer to my blood, direct, without fribbling intervention of mind or moral, or what not.
At the other extreme, the Roman philosopher Seneca argued that we should never make a decision on the basis of anger – or any other emotion, for that matter. In his treatise On Anger, Seneca maintained that if anger leads us to make the decision we would have made anyway on the basis of cool reason, then anger is superfluous; and if anger leads us to make a different decision from the one we would have made on the basis of cool reason, then anger is pernicious.
This disagreement between Lawrence and Seneca conceals an underlying agreement: both writers are assuming an opposition between reason and emotion. The idea of such a bifurcation is challenged by Aristotle. For Aristotle, emotions are part of reason; the rational part of the soul is further divided into the intellectual or commanding part, and the emotional or responsive part. Both parts are rational; and both parts are needed to give us a proper sensitivity to the moral nuances of the situations that confront us. Hence the wise person will be both intellectually rational and emotionally rational. Emotional people whose intellectual side is weak tend to be reluctant to accept reasonable constraints on their behaviour; they are too aggressive and self-assertive for civilized society – too "Celtic," Aristotle thinks. They answer directly to their blood, without fribbling intervention of mind or moral, and much hewing and smiting ensues. But intellectual people whose emotional side is weak are often too willing
To highlight such differences between Aristotle and Hobbes we must first discuss the definition of virtue laid out by each. According to Aristotle virtue is a “mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency”. From what we already know about Aristotle’s ...
My Ántonia brings together the life of a young boy and young Bohemian female in the old prairie. The book details this hardships and memories together as they grow older and their lives change in the ever-different worlds. The one thing that keeps them close through all of the turmoil is their personal memories. Neither Jim or Ántonia ever recall large historical events though but rather only the ir personal memories which keeps them closer than they think if when they are separated for long periods of time through the novel.
That such a man should sacrifice all the wealth of his human spirit - his kindness, his love, his very soul - to become a victim to continual fears, a tyrant ruthlessly murdering in the vain attempt to feel safe, finally to be killed like a foul beast of prey - this is terrible, and pitiful, too. Shakespeare has here achieved for us most poignantly the ambivalence of the tragic effect Aristotle described. We
Seneca who was a Roman philosopher between 4 B.C and 65 B.C has given his opinion about anger in his essay 'On Anger '. This essay will illustrate his views on anger by looking at his definition on anger, the discordances of anger with nature, the decision and causes to start anger, his argument on anger and the remedies of it.
If we look at philosophy the way Nussbaum suggests, with both emotion and reason, we can improve our beliefs. With both reason and emotion in mind, philosophy can amplify our thoughtfulness for universal moral values and encourage our willingness to stand up for the moralities of fairne...
This saga is an exquisite account of a life-long reverence for a women who Jim has known as a friend and companion since his childhood when he, an orphaned boy from Virginia, and she, a fourteen year old immigrant from Bohemia, travelled to the unsettled, unbroken plains of Nebraska at the turn of the century. The reader follows the mesmerizing tale of immigrant origins, hardships, as Jim celebrates the strength and the beauty of a heroine, Ántonia Shmirida, whose strength to overcome, has won both his love and soul. While Jim lives on his grandparent’s already successful farm, the immigrant family is forced to reside in a grass house carved into the side of a hill. The Bohemian immigrants struggle against nature to learn how to farm, to survive the hardship presented in this foreign, unaccepting land. Although her name is in the title, it is not truly her story. The preposition “my” in the title carries possession, so Jim’s story is his version. The subsequent story is his account, his perspective, of his first
According to Seneca, anger is a bad thing that can destroy the universe, and he argued that one had to be reasonable and get rid of anger in order to achieve a state of mind not subject to emotions (Kim 2). To Rene Descartes anger is the most dangerous emotion, and it is more violent than other emotions(55).
In the book Heart of Darkness, a sailor named Marlow describes his past journey thought the Congo during the Industrial Era, focusing especially on how the natives were treated by the Europeans. Joseph Conrad portrays Marlow’s first experience as dreadful and appalling through dismal diction and detail, and syntax. This demonstrates how people will often turn away from their respectable intentions to malevolent morals.
...ignificantly and strove to maintain that balance. Some writers did favor reason over emotion in their works, however, they still addressed the emotional approach within their work. In Shakespeare’s King Lear and Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to make much of Time”, for example both favored the rational approach and associated reason with success. However, both of these works directly corresponded to the emotional appeal as well. “The Flea” was a poem that focused largely on the emotional appeal, yet it still maintained a rational approach as well, through the speaker’s convincing of his companion to engage with the speaker. Thomas Hobbes acknowledged both emotion and reason, in his book, Leviathan. The authors of the seventeenth century regarded the relationship between reason and emotion delicately as they believed that each approach to writing was significant.
Jim’s visit to Antonia allows him to rediscover “the precious, the incommunicable past” (pg. 144). The times that existed in the past are now gone, and Jim realizes this. However, he still is able to feel great happiness when he looks back on the day of his youth. This relationship with the past is very American. We, like Jim, sometimes lose our way and focus only on material acquisition. However, this can lead one to an empty life filled with the feeling of loss for something cherished. It is only when we chose to live in the present, and put effort into our most important relationships, that we feel
Marlow is the raconteur of Heart of Darkness, and therefore is one of the more crucial characters within the plot. He embodies the willingness to be valiant, resilient, and gallant, while similarly seeming to be cautiously revolutionary. He is, seemingly the epitome of bravery, going into the jungle. Marlow’s voyage is, in essence, a “night journey into the unconscious, the confrontation with an entity within the self” (Guerard 38). The ominous coast is an allegory for the idea of the unconscious mind. “Watching a coast as it slips by the ship […] there it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering” (1...
Greek philosophers centralized on reason and inquiry - "they depended on reason and observation to illuminate the true nature of the world around them, and they used rational argument to advance their views to others" (Greek Philosophy). In Oedipus Rex and Antigone, Sophocles praises man for his ability to reason, but he also displays man's flaw: emotion. In both stories, Creon and Oedipus's emotions got the best of them, and eventually, they suffer for having been so irrational. However, although their emotions brought them pain, both became better people because of it. This is Sophocles's complex attitude toward rationality and emotionalism: while emotions can lead to humanity's downfall, the resilience of man allows him to still do good things.
Aristotle believes that right and wrong decisions exist, while according to Hume, judging someone is basically impossible because humans make decisions based on their passions, and one cannot judge someone else based off their passions. All human actions aim at some good according to Aristotle, but finding the mean in all actions is nearly impossible. When one finds the mean in all things and is aware of their quality, then Aristotle believes one has achieved happiness or supreme good. Instead of a supreme good, Hume believes that passions a fall subordinate to one 's will. For example, if one has a passion to murder someone then they will decide to kill people. Hume’s views on decision making connect directly to his theory about judgement, because all human perceptions differ when it comes to all things, including murder. Both Aristotle and Hume believe that one can attain the quality of being a virtuous person, but what virtue means is different according to the two philosophers. Aristotle believes one is virtuous when they have found the mean in all things and have achieved the qualities of nobility and kindness. Hume also believes that kindness matters when deeming one virtuous or vile, but Hume does not believe one must find the mean in anything. Hume simply believes that one must be a benevolent person and have benevolent desires to be considered virtuous. Aristotle and Hume share clashing views about the same parts of morality, the two drastically differ in regards explaining judgement, reasoning, and how to be
...en logic and emotions do not seem problematic when they are balanced: every person and audience has different range of perceptions of emotion or logic (The Rule of Balance, n. d.). In everyday life these tensions can be seen when a person buys something, for example, a new car. In this case a person is guided by emotions reflecting on desire and wishes and by logic when reflecting on price and better option for purchase. According to Solomon (1977) emotions are not a set of brainless or “stupid drives”, because he considered them as a “judgment” that interprets experience. Consequently emotions are “extremely subtle, cunning, sophisticated, cultured, learned, logical and intelligent” (Solomon, 1977). Emotions are something that can move a person, whereas logic is a reason for decision. They cannot be separated, as well as emotions cannot be stated as inappropriate.
The quote above summarizes in a nutshell how anger can be a destructive force, a force that can harm not only people around us but can harm us greatly too. In fact, history bears testimony to the fact that too much of anger has almost always led to the downfall of