Thinking Our Anger :: Philosophy Religion Papers

Thinking Our AngerThe events of folk 11th have occasioned a wide variety of results, ranging from calls to turn the otherwise cheek, to calls to nuke half the Middle East and every imaginable overshadow of opinion in between. At a time when emotions run high, how should we go slightly deciding on a morally appropriate response? Should we allow ourselves to be guided by our pettishness, or should we put our anger aside and cast off an un excited decision? D. H. Lawrence once wroteMy great theology is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our sound judgments. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is merely a bit and a bridle. What do I care about knowledge? All I want is to answer to my blood, direct, without fribbling handling of mind or moral, or what not.At the other extreme, the Roman philosopher Seneca argued that we should never throw a decision on the tail of anger or any(pr enominal) other emotion, for that matter. In his treatise On Anger, Seneca maintained that if anger leads us to make the decision we would have made anyway on the basis of calm down reason, then anger is superfluous and if anger leads us to make a different decision from the one we would have made on the basis of cool reason, then anger is pernicious.This dis concord between Lawrence and Seneca conceals an underlying agreement both writers are assuming an opposition between reason and emotion. The topic of such a bifurcation is challenged by Aristotle. For Aristotle, emotions are part of reason the judicious part of the soul is further divided into the intellectual or autocratic part, and the emotional or responsive part. Both parts are perspicacious and both parts are needed to give us a proper sensitivity to the moral nuances of the situations that confront us. Hence the wise individual will be both intellectually rational and emotionally rational. excited people whose inte llectual side is weak tend to be indisposed(p) to accept reasonable constraints on their behaviour they are too bellicose and self-assertive for civilized society too Celtic, Aristotle thinks. They answer directly to their blood, without fribbling intervention of mind or moral, and much hewing and smiting ensues. But intellectual people whose emotional side is weak are often too willing