Thinking Our Anger :: Philosophy Religion Papers

Thinking Our AngerThe events of September 11th have occasioned a wide variety of responses, ranging from calls to turn the other cheek, to calls to bombard 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 retiring decision? D. H. Lawrence once wroteMy great religion is a belief in the stemma, 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 solution 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 serene 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 undisturbed 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 antiphonary part. Both parts are rational and both parts are needed to give us a proper sensitivity to the moral nuances of the situations that demonstrate us. Hence the wise person will be both intellectually rational and emotionally rational. Emotional people whose intellectual side is weak incline to be reluctan t to accept reasonable constraints on their behaviour they are too aggressive and self-assertive for civilized society too Celtic, Aristotle thinks. They answer at once 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