Traditional and Nussbaum's Transitional Anger

The world is an angry place and it seems this anger is increasing, see for instance why are Americans so angry? Anger is a basic emotion which goes back into our evolutionary past and is one of the five basic emotions everyone seems to recognise according to Paul Ekman’s studies. In the past anger must have served some useful purpose but is anger still useful in today’s culture? Martha Nussbaum defines two types of anger. Traditional anger which,

“involves, conceptually, a wish for things to go badly, somehow, for the offender in a way that is envisaged, somehow, however vaguely, as a payback for the offense” (1)

Nussbaum also defines transitional anger as follows.

“There are many cases in which one gets standardly angry first, thinking about some type of payback, and then, in a cooler moment, heads for the Transition.” (2)

According to Nussbaum traditional anger can transmute into transitional anger,

“quickly puts itself out of business, in that even the residual focus on punishing the offender is soon seen as part of a set of projects for improving both offenders and society.” (3)

The type of anger given to us by evolution appears to be traditional anger but we are no longer hunter gatherers and so perhaps traditional anger no longer serves its original purpose and we should always transmute it into transitional anger. Perhaps if such a transmutation is possible our society might become less angry. In this posting I will argue that whilst in most situations we should transmute our anger into useful action there are some situations in which it is right to maintain anger.

Stoics such as Seneca argued that anger is a dangerous emotion, a type of temporary madness and ought to be eliminated or controlled. Emotions aren’t simply somatic responses. According to Michael Brady emotions act as a kind of mental alarm. They do so by facilitating,

“reassessment through the capture and consumption of attention; emotions enable us to gain a “true and Stable” evaluative judgement.” (3)

Alarms need attending to and this requires action, anger requires attention and action rather than simply control or elimination. Simply controlling anger leads to resentment which is bad both for individuals and society. Traditional and transitional anger lead to different sorts of actions and I will examine the appropriateness of these different actions in our society.

If we accept anger is a kind of warning about some harm then this explains why being angry makes no sense in some situations. However if someone becomes angry when diagnosed with cancer her anger does not act as a warning. But anger isn’t just a general warning about any situation, it’s a warning about social situations. Anger should be a call to action connected to some wrongdoing. Anger as traditionally envisioned has a target and a focus. The target is the person or institution which inflicted the wrongdoing and the focus is the wrongdoing itself. This wrongdoing causes harm and the call for action created by anger seeks to address this harm. Traditional anger and transitional anger seek to address this harm in different ways. Traditional anger seeks to mend the harm done by making the offender suffer, changing the status of the offender. Nussbaum regards this as a kind of magical thinking rooted in our past. Traditional anger, as so conceived, is not only rooted in our past but deals with past harm, however the harm is done and making the offender suffer does not appear to mitigate this harm. Nussbaum argues we should reject such a concept and replace it by the concept of transition anger. Transitional anger doesn’t focus on status instead it focuses on future welfare from the start by trying to mitigate the harm involved. I agree with Nussbaum that our concept of anger sometimes needs updating but will argue that traditional anger still has an important part play.

Traditional anger is concerned with the difference in status between the target and the victim.  Concern for this difference in status can lead to non-productive behaviour. Nussbaum gives an excellent example.

“People in academic life who love to diss scholars who have criticized them and who believe that this does them some good, have to be focusing only on reputation and status, since it’s obvious that injuring someone else’s reputation does not make one’s own work better than it was before, or correct whatever flaws the other person has found in it.” (5)

Nussbaum’s example clearly shows concern with differences in status can lead to rather silly behaviour provided anger is only concerned with the past and present wrongs. If traditional anger is only focussed on past and present harms then perhaps we should always transmute our traditional anger into transitional anger provided of course we are the sort of creatures capable of carrying out such a transmutation. Greg Caruso believes empirical evidence suggests that the strike back emotion plays an important role in our moral responsibility beliefs and practices making such a transmutation difficult, see psychology today . However anger is sometimes focussed on the future, indeed if anger acts as some kind of alarm requiring action then it’s very nature means it must contain a forward looking element.

Let us accept that anger should trigger a forward looking element. However even if we accept the above it doesn’t automatically mean we should always try to transmute traditional anger into transitional anger. Nussbaum herself suggests that transitional anger,

“focuses on future welfare from the start. Saying ‘Something should be done about this” (6)

Let us now accept that transitional anger is forward looking by seeking to alleviate the harm which caused anger.

I now want to argue that the nature of the harm involved should determine whether traditional or transitional anger should be the appropriate response. Nussbaum uses a case of rape as an example.

“Offender O has raped Angela’s close friend Rebecca on the campus where both Angela and Rebecca are students. Angela has true beliefs about what has occurred, about how seriously damaging it is, and about the wrongful intentions involved: O, she knows, is mentally competent, understood the wrongfulness of his act.” (7)

Angela is justifiably angry but Nussbaum suggest nonetheless that she should try to transmute her raw traditional anger into transitional anger.

“Angela is likely to take a mental turn toward a different set of future-directed attitudes. Insofar as she really wants to help Rebecca and women in Rebecca’s position …..  helping Rebecca get on with her life, but also setting up help groups, trying to publicize the problem of campus rape and to urge the authorities to deal with it better.” (8)

Let us assume O was Rebecca’s boyfriend, sees he acted wrongfully, is remorseful and is no more likely to rape someone in the future than anyone else. With these caveats in place then punishing O will not lessen the harm done to Rebecca and I am inclined to agree with Nussbaum that Angela would be right to transmute her traditional anger into transitional anger. Such a transmutation might prove difficult due to angers usefulness in our evolutionary past and even if such a transmutation could be achieved such a case should still involve justice. In these circumstances I would suggest the justice should be restorative justice.

Some harms are not physical, some involve intimidation and others involve recognition. In what follows I will argue that maintaining our anger, rather than transmuting it, is a more appropriate response to both of these harms. In some sports a bad tackle by player A might injure player B, the physical injury inflicted by A cannot be undone by B causing A to suffer, but if A’s purpose was to intimidate B then B’s retaliation causing A to suffer might well target A’s intimidation. Maintaining traditional anger would be more appropriate in this situation than transitional anger. A wife’s abuse by her husband in order to intimidate her might also be better adressed by maintaining traditional anger, provided of course this is possible. Intimidation whilst a serious problem is not a widespread problem. A failure to recognise the rights of others is a more widespread problem. This failure might be due to inconsideration, a lack of attention, or even intentional. Let us reconsider Nussbaum’s example. Let us assume O doesn’t recognise the wrongfulness of his actions and also doesn’t recognise women merit the same status as men. In this scenario it seems to me that maintaining traditional anger would be a more appropriate response than transitional anger. I accept that the harm done to Rebecca cannot be undone by making O suffer, nonetheless O’s continuing failure to recognise women as having the same rights as men might be targeted by making O suffer, might be addressed by traditional anger. It appears in cases in which anger is generated by a lack of recognition that raw traditional anger ought to be the appropriate response. Anger in this situation must still be transmuted into action appropriate to gaining this recognition and this action might justifiably include inflicting harm on the offender in order to achieve this recognition. I believe the above appearance needs to be qualified. At the beginning of this post I remarked people appear to be getting angrier, perhaps this anger is because our society is not very good at recognising individuals. Useful anger must be effective anger. I would suggest targeting society using traditional anger is not useful and it would be better to employ transitional anger. The boundary between offenders who should be targeted by traditional anger or transitional anger is hard to define. Clearly society as a whole should be targeted by transitional anger and some individuals by traditional anger but what about corporations and other organisations?

What conclusions can be drawn from the above? Dylan Thomas asks us “not go gently into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.” If anger is an alarm then rage, anger, at those things we can do nothing about is inappropriate. Anger if it is to be a useful emotion must be capable of being transmuted into something else. It follows in situations in which a transmutation of any sort is impossible anger that is not a useful emotion and should be avoided provided this is possible. Secondly there are some situations in which the focus of anger is not ongoing and transitional anger seems the right sort of anger to employ, once again provided this is possible. In such situation the infliction of harm on the wrongdoer seems to be pointless. Retributive justice might require some harm but I am considering anger in isolation from justice. I have suggested above that in such situations restorative rather than retributive justice would be more appropriate. According to Nussbaum in such situations anger should be transmuted into actions aimed at a set of projects for improving both offenders and society. Lastly there are situations in which the focus of anger is intimidation or a failure of recognition, in these situations traditional anger ought to be employed and the infliction of harm on the wrongdoer might be appropriate. In this situation the aim of anger mustn’t be payback but recognition and the anger employed should be transmuted into actions appropriate to achieving this recognition. 

1. MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM, 2015, Transitional Anger. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, page 46.
2. Nussbaum, page 53.
3. Nussbaum, page 51.
4. Michael Brady, 2013, Emotional Insight; The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience, Oxford University Press, page147.
5. Nussbaum, page 49.
6. Nussbaum, page 54.
7. Nussbaum, page 46.
8. Nussbaum, page 49