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The Aptness of Anger by Amia Srinivasan
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I found this article absolutely brilliant after an initial skepticism: the best kind of philosophy! I have a point that is potentially nit-picky: a central point made in the paper, and one I generally agree with, is that anger's aptness is not measured based on the consequences of anger. But might this be false when one is angry because of a tragedy for which there are no wrongdoers, such as something bad happening from an inanimate object? For example (and this is a really silly example): when my keys fall behind the sofa I sometimes get angry, and I think 'I shouldn't get angry because it won't motivate me in any way: it will just make me more flustered.' Or imagine I am seriously injured on a hike because of a fall I couldn't have prevented: it seems less apt to be angry if it won't help me reach safety.
But perhaps that sort of anger is not apt or not-apt, it's just rational or irrational, and those are different sorts of things. Or perhaps such anger is never apt, because there are no wrongdoers or wrong.
ps. Rebecca's comment about grief might be related to my comment above: grief is sometimes (though obviously not always) a response to a tragedy for which there are no wrongdoers, as when one's loved one dies from an incurable disease. So maybe grief is apt if and only if a real tragedy has occurred, and one recognises that a tragedy has occurred, regardless of whether there is a wrongdoer. But the same injustice might arise: if someone must stifle their own grief, because of the bad consequences of having such grief, then maybe they are a victim of injustice as well. Or at least worse off in some important sense. There are all sorts of emotions that can be apt and not apt, and it's super interesting to think about the conditions for aptness, and the injustices that arise when someone must choose between some apt emotion and some better consequences. For example, the aptness of happiness: some people might face bad consequences as a result of showing their happiness, and if the happiness is apt, then they may be a victim of injustice.
I also really enjoyed the article, and have found it has given me a lot to think about. One of my current interests is how parents of children labelled with SEND engage with professionals and how the current discourse of parent participation encourages a calm and rational approach from parents, suggesting this is the best way to improve outcomes for their disabled child/child labelled with SEN. I therefore am particularly interested in how this paper firstly argues that anger can be seen as rational (ie there is a false dichotomy between anger and reason) and how anger can have a place in rational politics (p141-2), and also the discussion of affective injustice.
To respond to Mollie’s point, I wonder if this is an omission in the discussion because the primary focus of the discussion about the aptness of anger appears to be as a way to argue how anger can play a role/be productive in the public sphere. Whereas your examples are more in the private sphere and are not about political engagement. Are there examples of situations, like those you suggest, that are in the public sphere, or would they all be private situations? Also in some, could the anger be directed at yourself? For instance when I lose my keys (frequently) I get cross that I didn’t put them away in the drawer or my bag where they should be. When I bang my leg on the end of my bed in the night on the way to the bathroom (again!) I get angry with myself for not being more careful and remembering where the end of my bed is!
Rebecca, are you thinking about how anger as a part of grief can be productive in the public sphere, ie to effect change in some way? Rather than private grief?
What I am trying to get my head around is the discussion on page 130, where it is argued that anger must be properly motivated and proportional to the reason for being angry. I felt what is ‘proper’ and ‘proportional’ is potentially open to wide interpretation and therefore could it be argued that what I think is an apt and therefore reasonable response to a situation, based on my own experiences and understanding of the situation, might be regarded by others in the public sphere as completely unreasonable and disproportionate?
Trying to work out how this would work in practice, for instance in the area of parent participation that I am looking at. All thoughts on this appreciated.
Just a quick comment to note that Amia herself opens up the space for suffering "affective injustice by being presented with an occasion for apt but counterproductive sadness, hopelessness, despair" (p13, n44). There certainly seems to be room for understanding grief as a form of affective injustice. I think Juliet Hooker at Brown is doing excellent work on black grief in particular, and I think Amia's work demonstrates that the study of political emotions is most effective when centered on BAME folk and women. It's one of the reasons why I think Amia's argument here for the aptness of anger is so powerful against someone like Martha Nussbaum, because Amia's work speaks to marginalised experiences.
Mod
Agreed! She certainly knocks Nussbaum and the counter-productivity argument out of the water for me
I'm a *huge* fan of Nussbaum, but her argument against anger always felt flat. Specifically there seemed to be something missing in her (Nussbaum's) claim that anger *must* be accompanied by a desire for harm to come to the person you're angry at. Srinivasan really clarified how this is wrong with her point about recognition.It strikes me that at core Srinivasan's argument is an assertion: she pretty much just asserts that aptness has intrinsic value. But this aligns with a lot of intuition, and her motivating examples from the experiences of oppressed persons corroborate this intuition. She also makes it clear that "anger must be instrumentally justified" is also fundamentally an assertion.
Brilliant paper. More thoughts later.
A bit late to this party - An excellent exploration into the aptness of Anger. I think the closing lines resonate most with me:We tell ourselves that we have set anger aside, that we no longer have any need of it. Invoking the spectre of the raging Achilles, we condemn anger. But in so doing we neglect, as we have always neglected, those who were never allowed to be angry, the slaves and women who have the power of neither the state nor the sword.
It seems anger is the one emotion men are allowed to express in our patriarchal systems, so of course its expression by others not part of the power structure seems suspect. When Kavanaugh rages we see it as an expression of the injustice done to him, and never ask if that is appropriate.
This has also made me think about applications to other emotions. It seems patriarchy prefers a certain amount of emotional ignorance. Men are certainly discouraged from the expression of other emotions, being seen as signs of weakness - though perhaps still viewed as more apt?
This has given me a lot to chew on, thanks for introducing me to this work.
The question about grief appears to be more open-ended than anger (at least in my opinion) because its instrumental value is not as negatively perceived as that of anger's (accepting that in certain circumstances grief does not lead to improvement, but at the same time the lack of beneficial effect is taken positively in a psychological perspective). Although you might think it sounds similar to Srinivasan's view on the aptness of anger, there is this intuitive belief that anger and grief are attached with cultural and psychological biases that make the latter seem "less disagreeable". This is where we might be able to begin the inquiry: the exploration of the aptness of emotions based on the "possibility" of these emotions having distinct intrinsic value versus our perception of how these emotions are apt based on cultural immersion and training.From here, I wonder how flexible this idea is if the aptness of anger also involves the consideration of the agent's culture? Talking about the agent itself belonging to a certain cultural bracket is already very problematic, so what mode of thinking could reconcile our thought of aptness? Or is it purposefully irreconcilable in terms of our cultural differentiation in being angry? How is this morally convincing compared to accepting that differentiation in status (poor versus rich) is an acceptable factor in evaluating apt anger?
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First of all, I loved this paper, so my own thoughts are not going to be able to disagreeing it but rather potentially extending it to some areas that I work on.
Srinivasan begins by noting what she called the counter productivity critique of anger to injustice, whereby people argue that an angry response to a particular harm will only make matters worse. As she notes, this is usually a critique put to the anger of women and people of colour. She writes:
‘And so the bigot says: she is only angry because she’s a shrill bitch; he’s only angry because he’s a thug. Thus the bigot obscures the possibility that the woman or black person’s anger is apt. Intentionally or not, the counter productivity critic achieves a similar effect. By focusing on the putatively negative effects of the agent’s anger, the critic again shifts us from the space of intrinsic reason to the space of instrumental reason, thereby obscuring the possibility that the agent’s anger is apt.’
Amia continues the paper by granting the premise that anger can be counterproductive but goes on to consider whether and under what conditions anger can nevertheless be apt. After setting out the conditions under which anger might be counter productive but nonetheless apt, Srinivasan continues to consider the conflict between ‘counterproductive anger’ and ‘apt anger’. That is, when anger is counterproductive to resolving one’s situation but still apt, how should we think about what an individual ought to do? She continues:
'I want to suggest that getting angry is a means of affectively registering or appreciating the injustice of the world, and that our capacity to get aptly angry is best compared with our capacity for aesthetic appreciation. Just as appreciating the beautiful or the sublime has a value distinct from the value of knowing that something is beautiful or sublime, there might well be a value to appreciating the injustice of the world through one’s apt anger—a value that is distinct from that of simply knowing that the world is unjust.'
Apt anger is therefore a way of seeing the world as it is, and these considerations can sometimes trump counter productivity arguments. That is, even when anger will make an individual’s situation worse, her anger may nonetheless help us to view the world as it really is.
A question that I have been thinking about after reading this paper:
How does this relate the aptness of other emotions like grief? I have been recently working through some thoughts of grieving the loss of others and when and whether it is a useful moral and political tool. Often people’s grief is critiqued for not helping to change the situation, but I think a similar argument can be made about grief as a way of recognising the world around us.