Nussbaum discusses anger’s fatal flaws in Feb. 9 President’s Lecture

Many people believe anger is a necessary emotion, particularly in response to heinous crimes and social injustice, but world-renowned philosopher Martha Nussbaum told a Rice University audience that a close philosophical examination reveals anger to be a fatally flawed emotional response that does more harm than good.

Martha Nussbaum speaks Feb. 9 as part of the President’s Lecture Series at Rice.

Nussbaum’s Feb. 9 speech, “Anger and Revolutionary Justice,” was delivered to a standing-room-only crowd of more than 225 at the Anderson-Clarke Center’s Hudspeth Auditorium as part of the President’s Lecture Series.

Rice University President David Leebron introduced Nussbaum as “one of the most influential and prolific philosophers of our time.”

Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, said that “with all of its ugliness, [anger] is a very popular emotion.”

“Many people believe that it is impossible to care for justice without anger, and anger should actually be encouraged as part of the transformative process,” she said. “Many also believe that it’s impossible for individuals to stand up for their own self-respect without anger, that someone who reacts to wrongs and insults without anger is spineless and downtrodden.”

A standing-room-only crowd packed Hudspeth Auditorium for Nussbaum’s talk.

She noted that anger is not just confined to the spheres of personal relations, but extends to issues of crime and punishment.

“In criminal justice, retributivism, the view that the law must punish aggressors in a manner that embodies the spirit of justified anger, is still the most popular position,” she said. “It’s also widely believed that successful challenges against great injustice need the spirit of this anger to make progress. Anger is at the heart of revolutionary transformation.”

Nussbaum noted that she herself used to believe most of these claims. However, she said that society might take courage from the fact that three noble and successful freedom movements — those of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela — have recently been conducted in the spirit of non-anger.

“These are people that stood up for their self-respect and that of others and who did not acquiesce in injustice,” she said.

Nussbaum said that a philosophical analysis of the emotion of anger can help to support philosophies of non-anger by showing that anger is fatally flawed, from a normative viewpoint, because it is sometimes incoherent and based on bad values.

“In either case, it’s a dubious value in life and in the law,” she said.

Nussbaum referenced Aristotle’s view of anger, one that is widely accepted in the Western world. Aristotle said that anger is a response to significant damage to something or someone that one cares about — damage that the angry person believes to have been wrongfully inflicted. He said that anger, while painful, contains within itself a pleasant hope for payback or rectification. Nussbaum noted that while modern psychological studies of the emotion validated Aristotle’s view, the problematic part of anger is the issue of payback.

“The payback idea does not make sense,” she said. “Ideas of cosmic balance are extremely widespread and archaic, and we almost all of us have them at some level. When wrong is done, we somehow think the universe will be off-kilter unless there is proportional rectification – an idea that dates back to the earliest philosophers.”

Nussbaum said people often think that proportionality between punishment and offense somehow makes good the original offense, but in truth it does not.

“Inflicting pain on the wrongdoer does not actually help restore the thing that is lost,” she said.

Nussbaum pointed to King’s “I Have A Dream” speech as an example of bringing attention to injustice without embracing anger.

“King reminds the audience that the moment is urgent, and there’s a danger of rage spilling over, but repudiates that reaction in advance,” she said. “Of course, the dream is not one of torment or retributive punishment, but of equality, liberty and brotherhood. King invites African-Americans to imagine brotherhood even with their former tormenters.”

In closing, Nussbaum said that anger is a prominent part of most people’s lives, and while avoiding it is “a difficult goal,” it’s one she recommends for both individuals and institutions.

“I hesitate to conclude with a slogan that surely betrays my age, but it really does seem time to give peace a chance,” she said.

Nussbaum was recognized by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the top 100 global thinkers of 2012. A graduate of New York University and Harvard University, she has authored more than 15 highly acclaimed books that explore a diverse range of subjects, from economic development and social justice to animal rights and religious intolerance.

Each year, the President’s Lecture Series brings to the Rice campus a variety of stimulating speakers on a range of topics. The lecture series is sponsored by the Office of the President and is supported by the J. Newton Rayzor Lecture Fund.