Anger and Aristotle

Is Moral Philosophy suited to guiding us on the right path?

A Japanese interpretation of an Ifrit

“Praise him!”. A common sentiment throughout my childhood. I sometimes wonder what good it’d have done if I submitted rather than fought. Was the goal to save my soul, or theirs? Rebellion and my particular brand of chaos had me eventually labeled as an Ifrit. An Ifrit is essentially a winged demon made of smoke in Arab folklore. What sort of lasting impact occurs when one’s called a demon by those whose words mattered most, I wonder. Who knows.

“Praise him!”. How could I? Demons and God weren’t exactly on worshipped/worshipper terms. You wouldn’t make me forsake my demon brethren, would you? Besides, I had already sworn fealty to a different god. His name was Anger, and he answered when I called. His name was Anger, and he protected me. He gave me strength. I didn’t need to question his existence because unlike many, he actually showed up.

Anger is being told that that which soothes me will lead to being tortured for all eternity.

Anger is being told that listening to music results in molten lava spewing from my ears in the afterlife. Told by someone who would play music loudly whenever he got the chance, no less.

Anger is repeated public ridicule over that which I had no control over.

Anger is knowing that neither home nor the outdoor world were places of safety for me.

Anger is … inappropriate?

Anger is repressed

Anger is intense tension, anxiety, an electric shockwave which eviscerates your insides, a screaming radar, repeatedly bashing into your head the message that ‘SOMETHING IS NOT OKAY’.

Anger is crippling resentment

Anger is dying alone, a bitter mess over what could have been.

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It was a shitty moment when I realized anger was so frowned upon. Why? Well, that anger I'd amassed inside myself now had nowhere to go. It’s not going to evaporate because of this new social feedback. It instead gets completely internalized and turned against me in the form of anxiety. Thankfully, as an adult, I have a considerably healthier understanding of anger and its intricacies. Nowadays:

Anger is dwelling on my choice to not respond to a text and wondering if it could have saved them.

Anger is seeing my parents get older and knowing there’s nothing I can do to stop it. How much time had I wasted harboring resentments towards them instead of appreciating any of our time together.

Anger is seeing my Dad be so incredibly sweet to my pets and lamenting that my childhood self never got to experience that version of him.

Anger is verbally and/or physically removing an annoying man from a partner’s vicinity.

Anger is valid. Anger is more than appropriate. Necessary, even.

How does one really quantify the ‘appropriateness’ of such a primordial emotion?

Looks like it’s time to dust off the philosophy degree and consult some ancient wisdom. The question I’m going to pose is whether or not moral philosophy can help us determine the following:

• When is it appropriate to act on anger?

• What amount of anger is appropriate for a ‘man of virtue’ to possess?

• What happens if we act on our anger and cause a mess?

Now, although we’ll be consulting several different schools of moral philosophy, I’ll also be adding my take at the end. The point of being a philosopher, for me, will never be to just recite what some ancient dudes said about x, y, and z. It’s important to learn what they had to say, but that’s mainly because we’re exposing ourselves to several different methods of thinking as well as a breadth of ideas, we can ponder yourself. Soaking in all this knowledge from other people’s books, ideas, and so on, should be done with the ultimate goal of building our own interpretation of the ideas and our own answers to the questions being posed.

Stoicism has been incredibly popular lately. The number of times I’ve been told something like ‘Well, Marcus Aurelius says…’ from a ‘Stoic Bro’ has reached the absurd. I’ve read Meditations at least 16 times in the 13 years I’ve known of it. I’m not interested in hearing what Marcus has to say. I want to know what you think about the topic at hand. Anyway, let’s dive in and stay tuned until the end for my interpretation.

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Why won’t a deontologist tell a lie? They Kant. I’ll give everyone a minute here to gather themselves after that colossal laugh attack you must have experienced. You good? Okay, let’s get into it.

We’ll begin by examining three schools of thought in (Western) Moral Philosophy, starting with Deontology. Perhaps a particularly jarring school of thought, Deontology is known as the ‘never break the rules’ school. If you’re thinking “wow! Deontologists sound like some annoying fuckers!”, then you’re probably right. Moral philosophy mainly focused on either Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics, Deontology, or the school known as Consequentialism. According to Deontology, some rules, no matter the consequences, are too sacred to be broken. Changing your position in lieu of circumstances would be considered unethical.

Immanuel Kant, a philosopher who lived from who knows to who gives a fuck, believed in a system of ethics that stems from what he called ‘The Categorical Imperative’, also known as the fundamental ethical rule which rules all rules (or, a Moral Compass). The imperative is categorical as in we have to do the thing regardless of how little we want to. He referred to this as a person’s Duty. Kant asserted that human beings are rational beings who are deserving of respect. They are also moral agents who act according to their ethical duty.

Sounds like a blast so far, right? We’ll get into an example soon, but first, let’s break down what exactly all this means and introduce three formulations that are necessary when following the moral compass that is The Categorical Imperative.

Formulation One: The Maxim (moral rule) must be a universal law with no exceptions. (If you are about to do something, consider whether you would be okay with everyone else also doing this thing all the time).

Formulation Two: Human Beings are an end themselves, never a means to an end. (Treat people with respect and not as tools).

Formulation Three: Act out of Duty not personal desires. (Act as if your behavior is setting the tone for a perfect world where everyone is fair to one another).

Let’s kill off Deontology quickly so we can move on to a system that might actually help determine the ‘appropriateness’ of anger. Here’s an easy example:

Lying would never be permissible. Tell a white lie to spare someone’s feelings? No can do. How about an untruth? Does ignorance of a rule rectify the sin? Wouldn’t happen in a perfect world where everyone told the truth all the time.

Consider the following: An absolutely battered, beat down man with a horrified look in his eye comes to your door. ‘Please help me! This lunatic is after me and I’ll die if you don’t hide me!”. You let him in. In a perfect world, people would save other people from murderers. An hour or two goes by and there’s another knock at the door. You can’t believe your eyes! It’s the friendly neighborhood murderer. “Have you seen a strange man around here?”. You, being bound by the truth, follow up with “It’s so funny that you say that he’s actually right upstairs!”. At this point, you’ve violated the first maxim (moral rule) that people should save other people from murderers. You did, however, adhere to the other maxim that thou shall not lie. Your friend upstairs has a knife in his face, but at least you didn’t lie.

It’s not the best system. Kant writes in a later work that one can use their judgement before acting. if absolutely necessary. Thanks for that buddy.

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I led with Deontology because it’s easy to explain Consequentialism as, well, not Kantian. It’s easy to explain it period, really. Act in accordance with what the consequences would be. What behavior/decision brings about the most good in a given situation? Your judgement is employed from the beginning, and you can use people as a means to an end, in stark contrast to Deontology.

You may have heard of Utilitarianism. It’s Consequentialism but with the caveat of ‘What behavior/decision leads to the most good for the greatest number of people’. Let’s use a variation of everyone’s favorite thought experiment: The Trolley Problem.

You’re standing on a bridge above some train tracks. You look down and notice that there are five people tied to the tracks and an out-of-control trolley is speeding by, with no means of stopping. Coincidentally, there is also a giant man in the process of losing his balance with the potential to fall off the bridge. If he falls, his body will stop the trolley before it hits the five people. He’ll die, but the other five people won’t. According to the principles of Utilitarianism, it would be in everyone’s best interest if you just went ahead and pushed the man off the bridge (what a strange day you’re having. Honestly, at this point, just call it a wash and go back to bed).

Consequentialism and Utilitarianism make a lot of sense at first. It’s an easy system to agree with. It, however, becomes wildly inefficient when you begin to quantify what the ‘greater good’ means in every situation, especially the greater good for everyone involved. Have you seen ‘The Good Place’? It’s an awesome show with moral philosophy sprinkled throughout. Anyways, they have a points system that either goes up or down based on the actions you take. Having a machine like that that could predict the goodness of your actions would make Utilitarianism a lot easier to employ! Even then, though, they end up finding out the points system was totally busted.

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Lastly, let’s take a look at Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics. Socrates, Plato, The Stoics, etc., preach that one should act in accordance with their virtues. Aristotle is the one that really laid out a system to determine what makes a virtue. Lucky for us, the appropriateness of anger is perfectly laid out here.

According to Aristotle, one must discover virtue through the use of The Golden Mean. Let’s put two extremes of a behavior on a line. On the left side, there is mildness. On the right side, we have MOLTEN RAGE. What exists in between is The Golden Mean and the virtue we should employ. For example:

Imagine I’m walking down the street with my imaginary girlfriend, Zoey. There we are, holding hands, sauntering down the street in our love drunk haze. Suddenly, Johnny Womanhater walks by and very obviously pushes Zoey intentionally. He turns around with a smirk on his face and says ‘sorry!’. Let’s say I choose to respond with “No problem! Happens all the time =D”. Aristotle would drop out of the sky and slap me back to Ancient Greece. I acted too mildly. Okay, let’s try another approach. This time, I choose instead to grab Johnny by the throat, push him into a wall and bash his head in until he ceases to exist. Look who’s falling out of the sky again! No slap back to Ancient Greece this time. Just a really disappointed, Dad level disappointed, look of disapproval on his face. Ouch. I acted way too brazenly.

In reality, the best course of action would likely be to check on Zoey and make sure she’s okay, and then yell at Johnny to go fuck himself. Depending on the strength behind the push, an ass beating may also be necessary. Oh, Johnny Womanhater, how you turned up like this I will never know but I suspect your last name didn’t do you any favors there. Point being, according to Aristotle, there’s a middle ground in between two extreme vices that defines Virtue.

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Now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, it’s time to turn to my favorite school of thought. It’s the N to the U to the R, Nurology! Nah, I’m not quite narcissistic enough to name a school of morality after myself. I don’t think I have all the answers, but I’ll share with you what I do know.

My mentor really imprinted this idea on me. If I was to turn in this essay to him that looked like the above section I wrote on Kant, he would say ‘it’s a goddamn biography’ and probably throw it in the trash for dramatic effect. The idea is that everything we learn enters and compounds within the compendium from which we draw our Interpretation. Our capital I Interpretation is how we view things based on every life experience we’ve had, every book we’ve read, every friend we’ve known, every job we’ve had, and so on and so forth. This totality is what forms our Interpretation. It’s what makes every one of us unique. It’s why I don’t think creatives should fear generative AI. Our Interpretation forms our ‘Voice’ and AI can never consist of every individual’s unique experiences. Maybe in the future when we all live in goo and our brains are connected to some AI overlord, but not now.

My interpretation of the ‘appropriateness’ of anger in any given situation is as follows. We’re all adults. Our feelings are valid, and we can handle the consequences of our actions. If we feel overwhelming anger, we don’t have to act on it. If we do and ultimately end up making a mess of things, there’s steps we can take to rectify the situation by apologizing and making amends where necessary.

We have to find a way to release our anger, as well. My personal favorite methods are boxing and howling in the woods when necessary. Screaming into pillows seems like a popular move, too. It’s all energy and if we don’t let it out in a healthy productive way, it’s going to turn into resentment. It just is.

I focused on Western moral philosophy in this piece and while I don’t know as much as I would like to about Eastern philosophy, I do know that there’s a belief that holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting it to kill the person you’re mad at. Resentment is a monster that’s capable of eating at us until we wither away. It’s not worth letting our anger get to that stage. If it does get there, we can once again take action and work through it with either a professional, a free support group, journaling, meditating, or yoga.

It’s challenging to sum up my take on anger. It’s taken a lifetime to formulate it and I’m just a winged smoke demon trying to find his way in the world. If I had to, though, I would put it like this:

• Take responsibility for your actions.

• Don’t take anything personally. It truly never is.

• You can handle the consequences of your actions. You’ll be fine regardless of whether you fret over it or not.

• Your angry energy has to go somewhere, or it will be stored internally as resentment.

• If you end up regretting how you acted in a state of anger, there’s plenty you can do to work through that regret. The same goes for guilt.

Anger is a great energy that we can use in healthy ways. A lot of us lost our ability to utilize that emotion when we were taught to be ‘polite’ little boys and girls. We’re adults now and it’s time to reintroduce ourselves to the flame.