The Morality of Achilles: Anger as A Moral Emotion

• Author: Adam Wallwork
• Position: The University of Chicago Law School
• Pages: 333-365

e Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law

ISSN: 2338-7602; E-ISSN: 2338-770X

http://www.ijil.org

© 2014 e Institute for Migrant Rights Press

rst published online 06 December 2013

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THE MORALITY OF ACHILLES

ANGER AS A MORAL EMOTION

ADAM WALLWORK

The University of Chicago Law School

E-mail: awallwo1@gmail.com

“I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry

with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.”1

Anger is central to moral and legal decision-making. Angry individuals reason

dierently than people in a temperate state. Aristotle and the ancient Greeks

understood anger’s practical role in forensic argument and moral judgment—an

intuition modern psychologists have largely conrmed. Psychological experiments

show that people primed to anger will draw dierent inferences than people in a

tranquil state of mind from the same factual circumstances. As Aristotle understood,

our ability to reach conclusions about a set of facts is inuenced by emotional processes

such as anger. is article analyzes competing views of anger in contemporary moral

philosophy. It uses cross-cutting psychological, biological, sociological, anthropological,

historical and philosophical arguments about the experience and expression of anger

to critically assess leading philosophical accounts of the role of anger in moral and

judicial decision making.

Keywords: Legal Reasoning, Law and Psychology, Legal eories, Law and Moral eory,

Legal Philosophy, Jurisprudence, Legal Judgment eory, Crime and Punishment.

1. William Blake, A Poison Tree (1794), available at http://www.online-literature.

com/poe/622/ (last visited Mar 26, 2013).

The Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law Volume I Issue 2 (2014) at. 333–365

Adam Wallwork

334

I. INTRODUCTION

Anger is central to moral and legal decision-making. Angry individuals

reason dierently than people in a temperate state. Aristotle and the

ancient Greeks understood anger’s practical role in forensic argument and

moral judgment. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle advised prosecutors to make

speeches that aroused moral indignation (orge) in the minds of the judicial

decision-maker. Aristotle recognized that successful legal arguments

dispose judges and jurors toward particular attitudes. Prosecutors and

plaintis are most likely to win a verdict if their description of the case

rouses the judge’s sense of moral indignation.

Modern psychologists have conrmed Aristotle’s intuition about the

role of anger in decision making. Psychological experiments show that

people primed to anger will draw dierent inferences than people in a

tranquil state of mind from the same factual circumstances. As Aristotle

understood, our ability to reach conclusions about a set of facts is

inuenced by emotional processes such as anger.

Although anger is commonly viewed as an impediment to good

decision making, as, for example, when excessive anger leads to injustices,

like attacks on innocent parties, anger is also valuable to the process of

moral reasoning. Anger can reveal truths or values that would otherwise

remain obscure.

For example, I may believe that Judaism is no longer an important

part of my identity. Because I do not identify with Judaism, I do not

believe that impersonal verbal attacks on Judaism will anger me. If I

later become extremely angry at my friend for anti-Semitic slurs, this

emotional reaction could force me to revise my previously held beliefs.

Before my friend’s anti-Semitism aroused me to anger, I believed I no

longer identied with Judaism or cared about insults directed at Jews. If I

had been nonplussed by my friend’s anti-Semitism I could have continued

to hold both beliefs.

However, my surprisingly intense anger at my friend for his anti-

Semitism requires me to revise my belief that I am ambivalent toward

impersonal attacks on Jews or Judaism. My reaction also provides strong

evidence that I do care about my Jewish heritage because I took my friend’s

anti-Semitism as a personal attack. While it is possible my anger was

directed at my friend’s general disrespect for a historically marginalized

Adam Wallwork

The Morality of Achilles: Anger as a Moral Emotion

335

group, my acute anger at my friend’s attack implies a stronger identication

with Judaism than I had acknowledged. My intense experience of anger

at my friend for his anti-Semitism implies that I do continue to identify

as a Jew. In this sense, my angry reaction to my friend’s anti-Semitism

requires me to reconsider my beliefs about the nature and quality of my

Jewish identity.

e emotion of anger is epistemologically valuable to moral and

legal judgment in two signicant ways. First, it focuses the moral actor’s

attention on particular aspects or features of the data relevant to decision

making—for example, anger at an infringement of someone’s rights may

lead me to appreciate aspects of an interaction and its consequences that

I may otherwise not have noticed, such as the perpetrator’s disdain and

the various psychological and material harms inicted on the victim.

Second, the moral actor’s anger can provide circumstantial evidence for

the truth or falsity of particular beliefs. My reaction to a friend’s anti-

Semitism appears to conict with my belief that I had dis-identied with

Judaism and its corollary that anti-Semitic attitudes are less oensive than

I actually believe them to be.

is article analyzes competing views of anger in contemporary moral

philosophy. It uses cross-cutting psychological, biological, sociological,

anthropological, historical and philosophical arguments about the

experience and expression of anger to critically assess leading philosophical

accounts of the role of anger in moral and judicial decision making.

II. COGNITIVE AND NON-COGNITIVE

THEORIES OF ANGER AS A MORAL

EMOTION

To say that “anger” or “orge” is a moral emotion does not say much

about the way anger interacts with cognition to produce moral and

legal judgments. Cognitive and non-cognitive theories of the emotions

provide alternative views of anger’s relationship to evaluative judgments

or appraisals.