Guest Author - J.L. Wells
When one is infuriated one does and says things that one doesn’t mean. This is true of all people. Anger has been viewed by many people as being many different things. The Irish hero Cuchulainn accomplished his daring deeds only after going through a transformation into his battle frenzy. Yet many scenes of domestic violence are also the result of such a frenzied state. Is anger a strength, a weakness, a little of both, or neither? This is a very old question.
Aristotle viewed anger as something that was necessary. It was a support to virtue because one would become angry at those who were wicked and thus be driven to virtue to not be like those with whom one was infuriated. Beyond this anger was said to be an advantage during warfare. It was posited that no soldier could withstand the charge of an enemy without the fire of fury to steel him.
However the Roman thinker Seneca points out in his work De Ira (about anger) that a soldier is only good if he listens to the commands of his general. Anger doesn’t listen to its general, rationality, but instead tramples it underfoot. The unrestrainable passion of an infuriated man was simply not allowed by the Stoic to be seen as a virtue. The argument runs like this; all virtues are part of reason, but reason is the brain and the other virtues the body. This means that the other virtues were able to be both controlled and experienced by a rational person. Anger quickly takes control of a person and causes them to both lose the ability to reason and to say and do things that are simply not virtuous. For these reasons the Roman orator disbarred anger from being the prop of virtue.
So, on a practical level what is to be done about anger? Well Seneca tries to give us an answer. First he describes the way in which anger begins. He attributes this to a cause or antecedent in the world around us. Someone tells us of someone doing something that makes us angry or we see something horrible. Whatever the antecedent may be it is an initial spark. Seneca classes this initial spark with other reflexes, such as blinking when something is close to the eye. It is not the initial spark that we must eliminate, for that is impossible, but the resultant fury that will develop if unchecked.
The way in which one stops this progression from spark to fury is to rationally use a virtue to intercede. Seneca suggests that the virtue of magnanimity and its qualities of forgiveness is capable of stopping anger in its tracks. Reflecting on what made us angry with greatness of soul allows us to see that we were at one time guilty of the same exact thing that we are angry about. If not this it at least allows us to understand the reasons that the other person may have had for seeking to injure us. If they had an unjust reason then we are able to proceed in a way that is just and seek our defense. If we do not reflect in this way but respond with fury then we will simply add to the injustice of the world.
With our knowledge of modern psychology we might ask if this reflection isn’t simply repressing the anger that we feel. This would be very negative if it were the case because it would leave the person attempting to practice this in the state of building tension. Eventually the camel’s back will break and it is likely to be over some small thing and the poor small thing will feel the brunt of all that stored aggression. Yet the process of reflection suggested by Seneca coupled with his suggestion of meditating on how one grew or one failed during the previous day each night before sleeping isn’t repression. It is a method of talking oneself out of becoming furious by understanding and disciplining the mind.
Unlike many things in the world of philosophy today this was a practical theory. Its truth was meant to be tested by its application to daily living. So in a way Seneca seems to be challenging us through two thousand years of the past to have the courage to face ourselves. He speaks of the ability of a mirror to stop a person from being angry, because by seeing how it changes our appearance we would be frightened. So it is a literal challenge, least we not be able to face our mirror’s image.
