Aristotle's Unique View of Anger and its Role in Justice

Anger,
Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Aristotles treatment of anger is remarkable not only for its complexity, but also for his
realization of the important, even indispensible role anger plays in moral life. If we
systematically gather and tie the various threads of his account, pulling them from texts
such as the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, the Politics, and the Rhetoric, we discover
that the emotion of anger is by its very structure, workings, and nature, interconnected
with justice and injustice. This paper attempts to reconstruct Aristotles position
specifically on these three matters.

Anger has to do in particular with perceptions about justice and injustice, and it orients
responses, not only of emotion but also of action, to rightly or wrongly) perceived
injustices. Anger does by its nature involve seeking retribution, and Aristotle thinks that in
many cases, rightly oriented and limited anger will be a necessary component n the
workings of justice. So, in simple terms, anger, both in terms of emotional response and in
terms of characteristic action and motives, can often be a good, even necessary response,
an insight not recognized by many modern theories or perspectives on violence and justice.

At the same time, Aristotle exhibits wariness of common human tendencies to go wrong
with respect to anger, and for potentials of badly oriented anger to lead to violence that
contravenes justice, to subvert the workings of justice, to generate further anger as a
response, and to stand in the way of forgiveness when it ought to occur. He also provides
us resources, however, for developing better understanding and capacity for judgment
about the workings of anger and its interplay with justice.

This paper is divided into five sections. The first part discusses how Aristotles position is
unusual, even anomalous in Ancient (and even in Medieval and Modern) moral theory in its
attentiveness to and positive assessment of anger. The second section examines Aristotles
definition of anger in each of its elements, determining precisely how anger becomes
connected with conceptions of justice and injustice. The third section focuses on the
liability for conceptions of justice to become loci of contestation and perceptions of
injustice, thereby becoming occasions for anger. In the fourth section, I address how
rightly fest and directed anger serves the purposes of justice. In the final section, I turn to
how, in Aristotles view, anger can just as easily go wrong with respect to justice and
injustice.

I.

Among Ancient philosophers, Aristotle stakes out a rather unique position in relation to the
common experience, workings, and moral evaluation of anger. As we move into the end of
antiquity into the Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern periods, except among those
influenced by Aristotle or incorporating his thought (e.g. Thomas Aquinas), philosophical
approaches treating anger as an emotion in any way positive remain relatively rare. Along
with primarily negative moral valuations of anger, one also tends to find more or less
reductive or simplistic accounts of what anger is, how anger works, what dynamics or
structures it works along, and how it fits into other moral phenomena.

Rough Draft version of this paper for the 2013 Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy.
Not to be cited from or reproduced without authors permission
Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Before we look at Aristotles own more complex and adequate account, consider just a few
examples from antiquity. In Platos thought, thumos is the middle part of the soul with
which we get angry. It is also the part with which desire and seek honor, develop and
exhibit courage or cowardice, and it is to those latter two aspects that Plato generally turns
his attention. There is, strictly speaking, no Platonic account of anger itself. As Platos
tripartite psychology gets adopted and adapted by later, particularly Christian authors,
anger becomes not only a passion but a vice, disordering this turbulent part of the soul.
For both Stoics and Epicureans, anger serves no useful purpose, and tends to produce harm
not only for its object, but for the person angered. Whether or not ataraxia and apatheia
admit positive affectivities, both are incompatible with the emotion of anger. Even
philosophers who eclectically synthesize perspectives of the schools tend to steer away
from Aristotle on this matter, Cicero providing a prime example. He tells us that the
otherwise excellent contribution of the doctrine of the mean is marred by the fact that
they praise anger and say that nature usefully provides us with it. But in every matter, it
should be rejected and rooted out (repudianda).1

On anger at least, Aristotle and his followers are thus placed at odds with many other
philosophical schools and traditions. Is his position, in this respect, perhaps more closely
aligned with the practitioners of other disciplines: With the rhetoricians, who at least aim
to provoke and use anger? With the poets, who give expression to anger either in their
own words or those of their characters? With historians, interested in chronicling human
interactions, motives, and actions? Perhaps with professions more active by nature, like
soldiers and their commanders? It is not as if practitioners in any of these disciplines
swing to another extreme and unqualifiedly endorse anger. Poets and historians tell
cautionary tales. Rhetoricians remain aware that anger is like the sorcerers apprentice.
Military commanders know that rage and spiritedness provide an unstable and
unpredictable force, useful perhaps at times but a dangerous and troublesome substitute
for actual military science. Aristotle himself is critical of his own cultures tendencies
towards less adequate interpretations of anger, for instance in confusing vicious or akratic
lapses into the emotion as signs of courage or virility.

The Aristotelian stance towards anger is evaluatively complex, qualifiedly valuing anger as
a positive emotion, studying anger for its own sake, but also quick to point out where and
how anger easily shifts into something negative. So, one can say that Aristotle and the
Peripatetic tradition are unique in this respect. Adding to this, among the modes of
affectivity studied by Aristotle, anger itself is also accorded a unique status. When Aristotle
seemingly remains committed to Platonic tripartite psychology, he focuses much more on
angers paradigmatic role in the workings of the thumotic part. When he shifts to the
alternate bipartite division, anger, whether as org or thumos, over and over again assumes
a status demarcating it from other path, even other modes of orexis.

Before mentioning four signs of angers unique status in Aristotles thought, a few words
need be said about Aristotles Greek terminology. As a substantive, the most common
terms for anger are org and thumos. The former can always be taken as signifying

1
De Officiiis, 1.25

anger, but while the latter does so in some Aristotelian passages, it also retains a broader
sense encompassing other forms of thumotic, i.e. rivalrous, contentious, aggressive
reactions, emotions, drives, desires, and behavior. At its most expansive, it signifies a part
or faculty of the soul similar to Platos conception of thumos. There are some passages in
which Aristotle clearly uses thumos as a synonym for org,2 others where it clearly means
something of broader signification, and yet others where the sense seems ambiguous,
straddling both of these. When it comes to adjectives and verbs Aristotle employs a much
more extensive and colorfully suggestive vocabulary of anger-terms.

So, how does anger assume a special status in Aristotles thought? Consistently
distinguishing three basic modes of affectivity or desire (orexis) (which, I have argued
elsewhere, ought not be taken to be a completely exhaustive classification on Aristotles
part), Aristotle separates appetitive desire (epithumia) and wish (bouleusis) from thumos.
In a Rhetoric discussion of seven main causes of human action, he sets all three of these
among those basic springs or sources, but alternates between using thumos and org.
Although Aristotle never explains this in detail, presumably thumos in general and org in
particular function differently from other sorts of affective states.

Another distinctive feature of Aristotles treatment of anger is that in his discussions of
virtues and vices, he accords the emotional response, the characteristic actions, the
attitudes, and ensuing habits its own analyses. Aristotelian virtue ethics represents a
departure from an ongoing tradition of focus on the four cardinal virtues and their opposed
vices, resisting temptations to assimilate other moral matters to that scheme. One might
contend that this does not argue for angers uniqueness, however, since Aristotle singles
out a number of other virtues and vices for specific treatment. It is worth pointing out
though, that while setting good temper (prats) as the virtuous mean, Aristotle does not
place this between merely two extreme vicious states, but explores multiple ways in which
people go wrong.

In examinations of moral responsibility, looking not just at causes for human action, but the
relative rightness or wrongness of a persons actions, decisions, motivations, and emotional
responses, Aristotle not only brings up anger as an example of a mode of affectivity that can
lead us astray. He also contrasts it against other motives for moral failure, weakness, or
error as less morally problematic, for several reasons. One of these, revealed in his
discussions of akrasia, is that anger is in certain ways more human, more relatable, more
integral to our shared experience and culture than other motives. Except in its more
vicious forms, anger is usually quick to respond, active and spontaneous, reflexive rather
than reflective. And so, in comparison with desire for pleasure or wealth, its lapses come
out as morally better, or at least less bad.

Anger is also better because it is more intimately involved with two other distinctively
human characteristics. Aristotle regards it as the emotion most particularly connected
with rationality, its fault consisting largely in that it does not listen to reason adequately,
but in its employment of practical rationality subverts and seduces it into its own service.

2
for instance in Rhetoric bk. 1 1368b, where he uses them both in the same sentence

Human possession of logos not only makes language and reasoning central dimensions of
our very way of being, but as Aristotle observes in a key discussion of the Politics, permits
us to apprehend (aisthesis), discuss, and share in distinctively moral qualities, among them
the just and the unjust. It is of the very essence of anger that it concerns itself with this pair
of moral qualities as well. Human anger, anger felt, exhibited, acted upon by human beings,
thus differs from merely animal responses similar enough in certain respects for Aristotle
to use the same vocabulary in discussing them.

II.

What precisely is anger in Aristotles view? I have argued elsewhere that attention to
portions of his corpus containing discussions of org or thumos reveals that what Aristotle
calls anger is not a simple phenomenon. It can be examined through several
complementary dimensions of analysis, which is precisely what Aristotle does in practice,
without making the full scheme of these dimensions explicit. He does hint at this early in
On The Soul, noting that while emotions are rational structures embodied in matter (logoi
enuloi, 403a25), when it comes to defining or determining them (an horisainto), the natural
philosopher and the dialectical philosopher will focus on different aspects of anger, the
former focusing on the changes or movements in matter, the latter attending to its form or
rational structure (403a29-b3).

If we look to the varied analyses of anger spread throughout Aristotles works, and the
matters upon which he focuses, it gradually becomes clear that there are at least three
distinct dimensions of analysis present. There is a physical-somatic dimension to anger,
discussed (though not in great depth) in On the Soul, Parts of Animals, On Dreams, and On
Memory. There is also an emotional-psychological dimension to anger, discussed in a
number of works, and particularly in the Rhetoric, On the Soul, both of the Ethics, Topics,
and the Politics. A third ethical-prohairetic dimension can also be distinguished, running
through many of these works, and particularly emphasized in the two Ethics. This third
dimension of analysis is not reducible to either of the other two, and is key to
understanding anger as a moral phenomenon. Still other determinate dimensions of
Aristotelian analysis of anger can be distinguished, but for brevitys sake I eschew
discussion of those here.

Interested primarily in emotional-psychological and moral-prohairetic dimensions of
anger, it is to Rhetoric book 2 that we must go to find Aristotles most adequate definition
of anger. It runs, along standard lines of translation: a desire (orexis), accompanied by
pain (meta lups), for apparent retribution (timrias phainomens), [aroused] by apparent
slighting (dia phainomenn oligorian) against oneself or those connected with oneself, the
slighting being undeserved (m proskontos) (1378b -). He supplements and clarifies the
terms of this definition, this formula revealing the rational structure, of anger at several
places in his works, and two of these points are particularly relevant to the purposes of this
paper.


The first is that anger not only intrinsically involves pain, but also at the same time or
alternating, the opposite of pain, pleasure. Not only does Aristotle write of the pleasure of
imagining or hoping for imposing retribution upon those who have angered one (1378b ),
it seems the state itself can be or become pleasurable, particularly but not exclusively for
the person who is vicious with respect to anger. The second is that while anger is in part
caused by antecedent pain, and also involves some painfulness when one feels anger, it
cannot be adequately understood as primarily a mode of pain, unpleasantness, discomfort,
or the like. In the Topics, Aristotle insists that anger is not pain as such (hapls), nor is it a
state classifiable within a broader genus of pain (125b28-35).

Aristotles analysis and definition reveals that anger possesses a complex affective
structure. It not only mixes together pleasures and pains, but also involves an orexis, a
term typically translated as desire, but also extending to affectivity more generally. As
noted earlier, one main mode of orexis is in fact thumos, so presumably anger is not simply
any kind of desire, but that determinate type. The desire involved in anger is intentional,
conative, responsive and active. The angered person desires and seeks out timria to be
imposed upon the object of their anger.

Both timria and oligoria are qualified by the term phainomen. It does make sense to
render this as apparent, but two additional senses of the term ought also be kept in mind
in thinking about Aristotles definition of anger. One of these senses is imagined. The
phainomenon is not necessarily what does appear, what has actuality, but can have its
place, occur, be developed or inferred within the imagination, the phantasia of the person.
For a person incapable of satisfying his or her anger by actually punishing a person, a
largely imaginary revenge, or even actions which do not affect their target but are imagined
to harm them, may suffice. The other sense involves bringing to light, making public or at
least interpersonal. Anger is not, for the most part, an emotion one feels and acts upon in
entire isolation from others. The angered person feels wronged, and wants right restored,
imposed, acknowledged in the presence of other persons (though these can also be
imaginary or imagined).

Oligoria, slighting, literally means making less of, and by extension treating as less
worthy or as having little value. This represents some sort of action on the part of the
angering person, about which a judgment or assumption is made by the angered person.
Interestingly, the judgment or assumption on the part of the angered one is precisely about
a judgment or assumption the other person is presumed to make, and to render actual
(energeia doxs, 1378b) through word, deed, choice or attitude. Aristotle names three main
types of slighting: kataphronsis, literally looking down upon, and figuratively devaluing,
holding in contempt; epreasmos, maliciousness or spitefulness, working against another
just to do so, threatening; and that richly ambiguous and extensive term, hubris, which
includes insolence, insult, and wanton aggression.

Another important component of Aristotles definition is that the slight is perceived as
being against oneself, or against those persons or things connected with oneself (eis. . . tn
autou, 1378a). The range of who or what a person cares about, identifies him or herself
with, or is invested in widens the scope for angers production and projection. And again,

we see the role of imagination and appearance at work in this mode of affectivity. All it
takes, as far as this component of anger goes, is for the person to assume, to think, to feel, to
imagine that somehow they, someone or something that matters to them, to be slighted,
and anger is provoked. It may well be that the person has no good reason to connect the
other person or even thing with themselves.

After these explanations, we possess a somewhat fuller picture of the nature and general
workings of anger. Some slighting is perceived by the person who is angered, which causes
them pain and arouses a desire in them, an affective condition accompanied, and likely
mixed up with pleasure and pain3 There is the dimension of the apparent, and possibly
the involvement of the imagination. What else must we attend to in order to fully
understand anger in its general outlines? There are processes of practical reasoning, habit,
and choice(s) coming to bear in the emotional response and actions comprising anger, but
these we will discuss in the fourth section. What else? The timria desired as a motivating
end, and the m proskontos qualifying the slighting. Both of these are terms inherently
imbued with value, having their homes within a moral dimension. Timria involves setting
things right, restoring the tim , the honoring or valuation, that appears to have been
denied or disrupted. The proskon refers us to what is due or befitting, what it is
appropriate between the people involved.4

From the very beginning then, anger is an emotion particularly concerned with perceptions
of right and wrong, with actions that wrongly harm, impede, injure, disvalue, and with
actions intended to set right what has been made wrong. Even considered solely at the
psychological level of emotion, anger essentially involves and incorporates a moral
dimension. Not only does it move within the realm of values such as painful and
pleasurable, useful and harmful, noble and base, or even the good and bad broadly
speaking. By its very nature, at least within human beings, anger inherently extends to,
incorporates, and takes a stand upon the values of the just and the unjust.

III.
From the Politics passage mentioned earlier, one might easily make the mistaken
assumption that moral values are primarily matters upon which human beings tend to
agree. We perceive (ekhein aisthsin), Aristotle tells us, the useful and harmful, the
pleasant and painful, the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, and all the others
(1253a-), including the noble and the base. We manifest these values to others in language
(ho logos. . . dloun), we share and have community in these (koinnia). But, as we also

3
While Aristotle thinks we can distinguish different psychological entities from each
other, including faculties, this does not mean that they are thereby separate, or even in
some cases separable from each other. It requires some effort, in real life, experience, and
practice, to be able to neatly and rightly distinguish (and even identify) affective states
from each other in a subject
4
The original sense of the term, which Aristotle does not seem to have in mind here,
refers to relations of kinship, neighbors, friends, networks of commonalities. This does
resonate with the more generic sense proskon takes on in the Rhetoric passage.

know from the Rhetoric in particular, we also contest these matters, and we debate about
these values. When they exist, what they in fact are, who and what bear them, all of these
are suitable objects for persuasion and argument.

If Aristotles account, spanning a number of his works, is correct about the nature of justice,
we not only have to acknowledge that this moral value corresponds to a complex of
analogically related matters, but also that justice and injustice will invariably and inevitably
be matters upon which human beings will find themselves at odds with each other, not only
theoretically, but in action and emotion as well. Confining ourselves for the moment
entirely to Nicomachean Ethics book 5, how many distinct accounts of justice does Aristotle
set out? At the very least, there are six: justice as legality (nomimon), justice as complete
virtue (arte teleia), justice in distribution (en tais dianomais), rectificatory justice
(diorthtikon), reciprocity (to antipenthnos), and equitableness (epieikia).5

When we foray into the murky waters of specific situations, actual persons, i.e. the
Aristotelian particular that resists easy intellectualizing generalization, we are bound to
experience myriad encounters between agents armed with competing conceptions of what
justice demands, or even looks like. This is in part due to the very polysemy at the heart of
Aristotelian justice itself. But, it is also due to the fact that moral agents are almost never
entirely rational and perfected in virtue, so that factors other than the analogical nature of
justice itself will intervene and introduce differences between perspectives. For those who
are unable to introduce some degree of emotional distance between (or bracketing of) their
particular perspectives and their personalities, there is always the risk that they will
interpret justice, its demands and prerogatives, in contesting and competing rather than
complementary ways.

Already in the N.E. discussion of distributory justice, an important set of fault lines emerge.
While everyone agrees that matters need to be in accordance with desert, where
disagreements arise is over how this general principle ought to be applied. The
democratically minded [make the criterion] freedom (eleutheria), the oligarchically minded
[make it] wealth, or high-birth, the aristocratically minded make it virtue (1131a25-29).
Each of these perspectives, in Aristotles view, makes some legitimate claim to be taken into
account.

As soon as we leave the Nicomachean Ethics for the Politics and Rhetoric, even for the
Topics, all sorts of potential sources of disagreement emerge about where boundaries
between justice and injustice lie. As Aristotle notes in book 6 of the Politics,

The democratically minded say that what is just is what appears so to the larger
number, whereas the oligarchically minded say it is what appears so to those who
possess more property. . . But both views involve some inequality and injustice.
(1318a19-21)

5
On this cf also Rhet. I, 145-7

This divergence of viewpoint motivated by experience, group membership, and interest is a
common theme in Aristotles works. As he notes earlier on in the Politics:

Everyone grasps some notion of justice, but they only work it through up to a
certain point, and what they express is not justice in its full extent (to kurios
dikaion). For instance, it seems that justice is equality, and indeed it is, though it is
not just for everyone, but for those who are actually equals. Inequality also seems to
be just, and indeed it is, except not for everyone, just for those who are actually
inequals. The one group ignores one factor, the other the other factor, and they both
judge poorly (1280a9-15)

This thematic of biased and partial, but nevertheless to some extent on-track,
interpretations of justice and injustice, falling out along political and cultural class lines of
the many and the few, the people and the powerful, could be elaborated further by
reference to numerous other passages. The main goal of this paper, however, is to sketch
out how differences about justice and injustice feed into the dynamics of anger as Aristotle
understands them, so another connected set of examples would be better to focus upon,
namely those involved with friendship

One passage which bridges these two themes is found in the N.E. books devoted to
friendship. One of the problematics which arises in Aristotelian theory is that of
equalizing unequal friendships, determining what sorts of exchanges, assumptions, and
actions will introduce or preserve justice between those who cannot be entirely equals.
And, the fault lines, where the different parties are likely to charge each other with (or at
least feel the other has engaged in) injustice, with doing wrong, have to do with their
abilities to provide dissimilar goods.

Each claims to be deserving of a greater share than the other, and when this occurs,
the friendship can break up. For, if one of them is a better person, that person
believes that he or she is owed (proskein auti) more, for goodness deserves a
greater portion. It goes similarly when one of them is of more usefulness to the
other, for if a person is not useful to the other [friend], they say matters ought not to
be equal, for then its more a matter of public service (leitourgian) than of
friendship. . . . For people think in a friendship, it is like in a sharing in property [e.g.
a business partnership], that those who contribute more get a larger share. But the
person in need sees it quite differently. It is the role of the friend or the good person
to supply the ones in need. (1163a)

Again, Aristotle thinks that both parties are correct, insofar as they remain within the limits
of where they have rightly understood matters. Insofar as they extend their claims beyond
those limits, absolutizing their perspective, their own views not only on justice but also
within the friendship, they err. What both of them are missing is the other side to their
own particularized point of view. His own assessment is that:

It seems that both of them judge correctly, since each of them ought to be accorded
more out of the friendship, just not of the same thing (1163b1-2)

Aristotle emphasizes similarities here between this dynamic at work in friendship, in
commercial association, and in the political community. One cannot reasonably expect to
get every sort of good for oneself, but rather what is appropriate or proportional.

One who does not contribute some good to the common stock is not respected (ou
timatai), for the common stock is give to those who do in fact actively benefit the
community, and honor is part of that common stock. One cant [reasonably] expect
to make money from the community and also be honored by it. For nobody wants to
receive the smallest share. (1163b6-10)

Of course, many people are in this respect unreasonable. They do desire and expect more
than their fair share. Likewise:

The person who is better thinks that it is appropriate (proskein) that they get more,
for goodness deserves more. Similarly the one who provides greater benefits, for
they say one who is of no usefulness should not be treated equally, for this becomes
more like a public service or charity (leitorugian) than a friendship. . . . People think
that in friendhsips, it ought to be like in commercial partnerships, where those who
invest more get to take out more. . . But the one who is inferior or in need views
things in the opposite manner. He retorts: what good is it to be friends with the
good person or the powerful, if theres nothing likely to be gained by it? (1163a24-
32)

Considerably more could be said about these matters but the goal here is to steer our way
back towards anger and its interelations with justice and injustice. In that light, the key
point we can take from these and many other similarly themed passages is that human
beings are apt to differ and disagree with each other about the demands and expressions of
justice, friendship, and appropriateness, especially when we move into the realm of the
particulars, where we human beings actually live, feel, act, chose, practically reason, and
have our complex webs of relationships. This tendency towards different interpretations is
due not only to human ignorance or mistaken understandings about the nature of justice,
nor to a lack of proper moral formation or training, nor to the fact that matters get messy
and murky at the level of particulars and action. There is an inextricable complexity and
ambiguity to these moral values and phenomena, which renders them ever liable to
divergent interpretations. Since these are not merely theoretical matters, but eminently
practical ones, differences of viewpoint, assumptions, or interpretation will find themselves
reflected in disagreements about choices, words, and actions.

These sorts of disagreements in turn provide a fertile ground for provocation,
characteristic activity, and continuance of anger, because they are always at risk for
generating situations in which apparent slighting can be perceived, imagined, felt, and then
in turn acted upon. Even in seemingly innocent situations in which human beings are
actively making conscious efforts to do right by each other, misunderstandings and
occasions for anger can still arise. Leaving those behind and focusing on more typical
situations, in which human beings often have deficient conceptions of justice, and

frequently set these aside as motivations, instead following their own interests, desires,
and passions against the taxing demands of good and fine values and relationships, we will
see anger even more frequently flare up.

IV.
For Aristotle it is not only the case that perceptions of injustice, injury, insult, wrongdoing
and disvaluing, directed against oneself or against persons or things connected with
oneself, will provoke anger as a response. This is one way in which anger, justice and
injustice are essentially connected. There are many cases and conditions in which it is
understandable, even legitimate, for a person to become angry, and to act upon those
feelings of anger. Aristotle goes further, however, in maintaining that there are situations
in which and agents for whom anger is not only allowable, morally neutral, but actually
something morally positive, i.e. something actually appropriate, morally good, fine or noble.
There are times when a person ought to get angry, and ought to act upon anger, where to
fall short in this respect would actually be to fail as a moral agent, as a person.

Put in slightly different terms, the feeling and characteristic actions of anger can and should
be a matter of justice in a quite different set of ways. Many of these can be brought
together in the thesis that rightly felt and directed anger is something needed for justice to
be done and restored, injustice resisted and remedied. In other words, anger can not only
be structured by but also serve justice, as a necessary component or condition within its
workings. I would like to go further than this and to suggest that, within an Aristotelian
understanding of anger, justice, and injustice, anger can play another role, contributing to
helping a person rightly perceive that injustice is taking or has taken place, and how they
ought to respond to it.6 In making these claims, I do not mean to imply that anger is usually
aligned in these ways with justice and against injustice. In fact, in Aristotles view, that is
much less frequently the case than one would like. But I put off discussion of some of the
many ways anger can lead into and perpetuate injustice until the next and final section.
Here, I am interested in how anger goes right, not wrong, and assumes a centrality in
righting the wrong.

How does anger, responding to perception of some injustice, work in service, and towards
ends of justice? Aristotle never spells this out this relationship explicitly, as for instance he
does in many discussions of closely related moral phenomena concerned with courage. But
there are five suggestive lines of discussion within his texts arguing for such a relation
within the substructure of his thought. These are: the fact that anger does admit of a
virtuous mean; the nature of timria; the affective force for action anger provides; the
necessity or nobility in taking care of ones self; and, the responsibilities one bears towards
others.

As Aristotle notes:

6
In phenomenological terms, anger is an affective value-response to a disvalue. The
fundamental question to be asked then: How revelatory of the fullness of being can anger
actually be? Or: does it reveal, but also just as much conceal in the process/
Rough Draft version of this paper for the 2013 Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy. 10

Anyone can get angry that is easy. . . But doing so towards the right person, to the
appropriate amount, when one ought to, on account of the right things, and in the
right manner, that indeed is not easy for everyone (1109a27-9)7

We are not praised or blamed, i.e. judged as feeling and acting rightly or wrongly by others,
solely on the basis of whether we are or are not angry, but rather whether we feel and act
rightly (1105b34-6a1), how we habitually or characteristically behave in terms of anger
(1105b26-8). In Aristotles view, there is in fact a virtuous mean state, developed through
habituation, expressive of choice and character, with respect to the anger response. He
calls this state prats, often translated as gentleness or mildness, but more closely
rendered good temper or even right anger. While the virtuous disposition does render
a person more liable to forgive (1126a2), and while possession of the virtue renders a
person less likely to become angry indiscriminately, the virtue does also consist in part in
actually getting angry, remaining angry, and acting upon anger. The good tempered person
will become angry when it is reasonable to think or feel that injustice of some sort has been
committed.

The timria that anger desires to bring about will in some cases correspond to justices
dictates. When it is rightly felt and directed, anger, this will typically be the case. If
slighting in its various forms represents an actualization of disvaluing, retribution is a
corresponding revaluation, a reckoning that restores, reimposes, or at least reasserts a
right valuation of persons, things, or relationships. In Politics. bk. 7, Aristotle writes of just
acts of retribution (hai dikaiai timriai) and of punishments (kolaseis), viewing these as
good things. They derive from virtue and are also necessary, so they contain something
noble or fine (to kals) but only conditionally (ex hupotheses), not absolutely. He writes:

[I]t would be preferable that there be no need for such things, either for a man or
for a political community. . . . for [this kind of things] are a removal of some evil. . .
[whereas other good actions] are the equipment for or the generators of good
things (1332a11-19)

So long and insofar as both punishment (which Aristotle asserts to be needed for those
lacking moral formation, upon whom argument towards the noble or good does not really
work) and retribution are needed, they are not merely necessary evils, but actually
positive, though limited goods.8

As noted earlier in the Rhetoric, Aristotle asserts anger to be one of the basic springs of
human action. In other works, he reinforces his view that there is some necessary
contribution of affectivity in producing human action. Although it can also assume passive,
repressive and reactive forms, among the emotions, anger is one of the more active and
agitational affects. As with Plato, who envisioned an irreplaceable role for thumos as the

7
Cf also 1126a34-6
8
This goes beyond scope of paper the experience of others getting angry at one,
reacting in anger, as part of moral development. Pruning away some of our naturally
selfish, animalistic tendencies, awakening us to value which was destroyed.

enactor and enforcer of reasons rule, when rightly felt, directed, and acted upon
Aristotelian anger supplies a person with the energy and affectivity they will require to
persevere in doing justice. It steers and steels them towards appropriate value-restoring
responses. This is not to claim, of course, that anger is in all or even most cases a
necessary condition for righting injustice. Instead it is a recognition that anger supplies a
vital and often needed force or impetus to confront and act against injustice.

One might object that Aristotle does distinguish between two different ways of being in the
virtuous mean of good temper, one of which depicts the person being untroubled
(ataraxos) and not being driven by the emotion, but rather doing as reason would
determine (1125b34-5). It is important, however, not to read into Aristotles text a more
Stoic freedom from or eradication of emotion. This type of good-tempered person would
feel angry, but would simply allow reason to channel and decide what ought to come from
that feeling. And, given that the other type of good-tempered person actually does feel and
is moved by the emotion of anger, in this case, it would seem that right reason would take
its cues from virtuous examples provided by people who do feel, exhibit, and act upon
anger in ways conforming to the mean (which reference then again, brings practical reason
back in, as well as phronsis).

What particularly highlights the role right anger plays in service of justice to oneself is the
way Aristotle characterizes the vices of deficiency. Although he views the vices of excess as
more common and as more problematically opposed to the mean, he does briefly discuss
several examples of defect, among them the slavish person (anapodds) who puts up
with insult and injury, and the spiritless (anorgtos) person who does not get angered
and is considered foolish or simple. Such people appear unable to defend themselves
(ouk. . . amuntikos) and to be willing to put up with even (literally) having mud thrown on
one (proplakizomenon, 1126a4-8). In the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle adds that people of
this sort take insult readily and are humble in the face of slights and belittling (pros tas
oligrias, 1231b12-3). Clearly Aristotle thinks that there are situations in which and
people with whom one ought to become angry, to stand up for oneself, and to seek
retribution. In public life or partnerships, failing to do so might not only represent a lack of
justice towards oneself and a defective dispositions with respect to anger, but also perhaps
small souledness, which makes a person liable to accord themselves less than they
deserve, inviting others to devalue them (1123b10-2). In friendships, as well as in public
life, this might also be a expression of obsequiousness, which makes people keep things
pleasant [pros hdonn], and put up no resistance [outhen antiteinontes], but think they
ought not give pain [dein alupoi. . . .einai] to those they happen across (1126b13-4).

Anger also appears to play an important role in standing up for others. As noted in the
definition, people do become angry not only on their own account but on account of those
who matter to them, who are connected with them in one way or another.9 Aristotle does
in fact think that there are some people who one ought to defend from slighting. In the
Rhetoric, he names parents, children, wives, and dependents or clients (arkhomenous,

9
Interesting discussion of thumos as like but not the same as courage defending
young

1379b). If we generalize away from an interpretation of Aristotle Lacan rightly called an
ethics of masters, what we can say is that we ought to feel anger when those with whom
we are connected, those to whom we feel responsible, those who we rightly admire or hold
dear, are wrongly treated. Getting angry and acting upon it in a virtuous manner is
something that we owe to others.10 It is a needed component in the fabric of relationships
and friendships, particularly those asymmetrical ones which Aristotle calls unequal, like
those between parent and child. In fact, anger virtuously felt and acted upon on behalf of
others would be the pros heteron form of the virtue, which makes it a part of (complete)
justice.

Can a virtuous disposition with respect to anger go beyond responding to injustice and
enforcing or restoring justice? Does anger as an emotional response possess a further
capacity to reveal to us the actuality that injustice, wrongful disvaluing has occurred? Does
it not only drive us towards and give us desire for retribution, but also reveal to us the
justice conditioning retribution, the limits it would have observe in order to rectify the
wrong? Can anger felt about one matter, in one situation, reveal broader and longer-
standing patterns of injustice calling to be put right? Put in other terms can anger as an
Aristotelian emotion have not only a motivational function but also an epistemic function
as well? There are two vantage points from which to examine this, both of which provide a
positive answer.

Witnessing another person becoming angry might attune us or draw our attention to
features of a situation we had not previously noticed, or mistakenly did not think unjust.
The vehemence of a legitimate angry reaction of another person to derogatory terminology,
mean-spirited joking, stereotyping assumptions targeting themselves or those who matter
to them can alert us to the wrongness of our own actions and those of still other people in
the situation. Or to adapt one of Aristotles own examples, namely that people become
angry when they strongly desire something and another person frustrates their desire,
noting another person becoming angry unexpectedly might make one realize that one has
inadvertently stymied that persons desire, and perhaps verged on doing them some
injustice.

Those sorts of cases are more about coming aware and taking account of the desires,
emotions, thoughts, and valuations of other people, which we then can incorporate within
the matrix of our own. But does anger reveal anything new to the person who feels it?
Does it contribute anything to moral knowledge or perception? A number of authors in the
last few decades have begun to explore this aspect of emotion in Aristotles work. We
might speak, as Deborah Achtenberg does about the role of emotions in cognition or
perception of value in particulars and determinate situations.11 Or we might speak of

10
One area well worth exploring is the tutelary function of coming to the aid of
another. For instance: My child is angry, but unable to manage or successfully act upon
their anger. I can tell them to let it go, get angry at them in turn for making trouble for me,
take their side entirely even if they are in the wrong or I can show them how to behave
rationally and angrily in situations calling for it on the behalf of another.
11
Achtenberg. . . . .

seeing through emotions and their role in perceiving ethical salience, as does Nancy
Sherman. We might attend, as does Steven Leighton, to how emotion alters judgments (as
Aristotle maintains in the rhetoric), producing a new operative judgement informed by the
emotion, in place of the old judgement.12 Clearly a case can be made for a productive
capacity on angers part to reveal to us features pertaining to justice and injustice in
determinate situations. Anger can reveal to us the existence of injustice, help us
understand not only affectively but cognitively the disvalue in the situation and its
particulars, rightly dispose us towards opposing and rectifying it, and assist us in
determining what restoration of justice requires in the way of retribution.

V.
In reading such a capacity on the part of anger as an emotion into Aristotles moral theory, I
might well give the impression that anger could provide us an entirely reliable guide in
matters of justice and injustice. And since anger of all of the modes of affectivity (besides
perhaps bouleusis) is most closely connected with rationality, perhaps we ought to simply
substitute anger for practical reason and phronsis, or at the least place these in harness to
the affective guidance of anger. That would be a misreading of what I have been
suggesting, as well as a mistaken interpretation of Aristotle, one insufficiently attentive to
the numerous passages where he reminds us that most people are far from virtuous.

If we adopt an Aristotelian moral theory, we need to adequately understand and to
assiduously cultivate the virtue of good temper precisely for the reason that anger so easily
does lead us astray. Simply between the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle
identifies what are arguably five distinct vicious dispositions of excess with respect to
anger.13 If we add to these the many different dynamics involving anger discussed in the
Rhetoric, not only in the long sections devoted to anger and calmness but also those
concerned with friendship and hatred, we multiply the manners in which people can
habitually or characteristically go wrong with anger. At a number of places in his works,
Aristotle notes that most people have tendencies not only to be less than virtuous with
respect to feeling anger, but also to do things that can be wrong and unjust. In fact, this is

12
Aristotle and the Emotions . . . .
13 These are:
1) the Quick-Tempered (orgiloi): they get angry quicker than they ought to, with the wrong
people, over the wrong things, but their anger is quickly dissipated In E.E., Rhet, these are
oxuthumos.
2) the Rageful (akrokholoi): they get angry quickly, and over everything
3) the Bitter-Tempered (pikroi): they remain angry for a long time, because they keep their
anger in, so they remain resentful E.E. they guard their anger Rhet. they are motivated
by vengeance
4) the Troublesome (khalepoi): they become troublesome (khalepainontas) more than they
should and for a longer time, and will not be reconciled without retribution or punishment.
In E.E., these are the thumds
5) Discussed in E.E. the Violent orAbusive (plkts, loidortikos), which has more to do with
their engaging in retaliation

so common that, so long as the bad act is not due to a genuinely vicious disposition,
motivation of anger actually makes the action more easily forgiven or excused. 14

Why should this be the case? Aristotle consistently treats anger as motivating force
involving the higher parts of a human being and personality, as a better and more
honorable motivation than, for instance, desire for pleasure or for wealth. As already
noted, anger by its very essence refers to conceptions and perceptions of justice and
injustice. Aristotle also regards anger as closely connected with rationality. But
interestingly, this latter reason is precisely why anger can become such a pernicious
problem. Its affinity with reason allows anger in the human being to subvert, seduce, and
selectively employ human rationality. In his discussion of akrasia with respect to anger,
Aristotle writes:

It seems that anger [thumos] listens to something that reason says, but garbles it
[parakouein], just like hasty ones among servants who before having heard all that
was said start out, and then make a mistake [hamartnousi] about the order. . . . In
this way, through its natures heat and swiftness, anger listens but does not hear the
command, and rushes off towards retribution. For first reason or imagination
shows [edlsen] that there is outrage or slighting, and then something like a
process of reasoning [hsper sullogismamenos] determines that one should
straightaway wage war on anyone who troubles one. (1149a26-32)

The fertile connection between anger and imagination, noted earlier in terms of the
phainomen, is evident in this passage as well. Anger involves the higher cognitive
capacities of the person, but it also restricts their operation at the same time. One of the
key aspects of anger is that it tends to focus a persons cognitive and affective faculties
upon the desire, the pain, and the pleasure involved in anger. A person thinks about the
occasion of anger, the person causing the anger, the sense that wrong has been done, and
about obtaining retribution.

Given how many different conditions Aristotle specifies as central for rightly felt anger,
there are many potentials for spillover of the affect beyond the limits within which virtuous
anger would remain. A person angry with one person may easily become angry at others
as well, particularly if they seem unsympathetic or even similar to the person causing the
anger. One may become angry with the very person who ones anger is supposed to be
defending. A person may become much more intensely angry than is called for by the
situation, reading the slighting as much more insulting or injurious than it actually is. A
person might remain angry for a much longer time than is warranted, nursing grudges,
refusing to allow time to erode their angry affect. Many people, once angry, are primed to
more easily become angry about additional matters, interpreting them as involving
slighting, or to affectively blur or conflate distinct matters with each other. One could go on

14
There is more forgiveness, Aristotle says, for those following forms of affectivity
(akolouthein orexisin) that are natural, e.g. anger (thumos) and bad temper (khalepots), or
appetites that are common to all, insofar as they are common (1149b4-7).


sketching out ways a person can go wrong with respect to anger, drawing on the variety of
examples Aristotle provides across his corpus. It is perhaps better to bring matters to a
close with a few summary reflections and one particularly apt distinction.

Precisely because of its connections with imagination and rationality, with justice and
injustice, there are three connected risks anger poses for all but the virtuous. The first has
to do with practical rationality and what measure a person possess of phronesis. The risk is
of seducing oneself into believing that one is acting in a fully rational manner when thumos
is really driving and dominating ones reactions and reasoning. The second hazard is of too
easily convincing oneself that ones emotional response and ones resulting actions embody
justice, when at best they represent partial justice, and often in fact produce injustice of
some sort as a result. The third is really a converse to the second. The danger is of too
quickly assessing actions, attitudes, expressions as instances of injustice, slighting,
impropriety, devaluing when perhaps a cooler examination would reveal that they are not,
or that they are less serious offenses than anger would have one think.

A prime example of how these three problematics can coincide arises when considering the
distinction Aristotle makes between different modes of harmful actions. In both the
Rhetoric and the Nicomachean Ethics, he distinguishes between atukhmata or
misfortunes, hamartmata or errors, adikmata or unjust actions, and actions of an
unjust or vicious person (1135b12-25, 1374b2-). Misfortunes are cases where harm
occurs but it is unexpected and involuntary on the part of the person committing the
action. Errors likewise are less then entirely voluntary, but they are the sort of thing a
person could expect to occur. Wrongful, unjust actions are a different matter. In the
Rhetoric discussion, such actions are voluntary and are also signs of a persons bad
character. In the Nichomachean Ethics, it is possible for a person to commit injustice
without him or herself being unjust. The actions of vicious and unjust people are
qualitatively the worst, since they deliberately choose and act, expressing just what kind of
persons they are.

Interestingly, one of the examples of this sort of condition is in fact when a person acts
through anger (dia thumon) or through other emotions which arise with compelling force
or naturally for human beings (1135b20-2). The response of anger can lead to actions that
are in themselves unjust (which is why, elsewhere, Aristotle says the law forbids those
typical responses) but which are not necessarily signs of an unjust or vicious character. In
fact, in some cases, Aristotle argues that the person acting in anger ought not be seen as the
instigator of the action, but rather the person who angered them, for anger arises in
response to apparent injustice (1135b29).

The problem precisely with anger, however, is that under its influence the person is likely
to grasp particulars and to practically reason wrongly, subsuming under the rubric of
clearly vicious injustice cases that cooler heads would readily perceive to be matters of
misfortune and error, or even unjust acts that do not stem from the agent him- or herself
being unjust. If the person becoming angry can realize that the person who seems to slight
them does not do so voluntarily, or even intends the opposite of what happens, then the
angered person can become calm, or at least less angry (1380a10-3). But, even in those

who are not vicious, anger all too easily starts trains of reasoning that will lead to
interpreting the other persons action as deliberate and vicious slighting. For those who
are themselves vicious with respect to anger, this interpretation of the other person as the
unjust one is even more likely to occur.

In anger, there is thus a natural tendency to allow our sense of and sensibilities about
justice and injustice to be hijacked, to perceive injustice on the part of others more often, in
more places, over more issues than is really warranted. In the person who is akratic or
who experiences akrasia temporarily, anger subverts rationality into its own service,
drawing conclusions about the provocative actions of the other person and practically
reasoning towards the end of seeking out the satisfaction timria promises. This happens
even more and goes even worse for the person vicious with respect to anger. The struggle
within the self-controlled person in the case of anger will not be along clear lines of reason
versus desire or emotion, but rather between a fuller rationality and a reasoning process,
imbued and caught up with thumotic affectivity. And yet, there will be cases for the
enkratic and the virtuous person where the emotional response of anger will be the right
response, an attempt to reintroduce justice into situations where injustice has imposed
itself upon oneself or those who matter to oneself.


Aristotle's Unique View of Anger and its Role in Justice

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Anger,

Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

Anger, Justice, and Injustice in Aristotle by Gregory B. Sadler greg@reasonio.com

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