Chapter 2, section IV. p. 99
Philosophical definitions of anger standardly involve the
idea of a wrong done, whether to the person angered or to someone or something
to whom that person ascribes importance. Thus, the standard ancient Greek
definitions reported and discussed in Seneca's On Anger are "desire to
avenge a wrong," "Desire to punish one by whom one believes oneself to have been
wronged," and "desire for retaliation against someone by whom one believes
oneself to have been wronged beyond what is appropriate."[73] (Aristotle's
earlier account is very similar.) [74] Notice that the idea of a (believed)
wrong is so important that the last Stoic definition includes it twice-over, by
adding "beyond what is appropriate" to the word "wronged." Most subsequent
definitions of anger and indignation in the Western philosophical tradition
follow these leads, [75] and psychology has taken a similar line.[76]
[73] Seneca, De Ira, 1.3.3, 1.2.3b; the first is
Seneca's version of the Aristotelian view, the second is Posidonius's version;
the third is in Diogenes Laertius and Stobaeus: see Stoicorum Veterum
Fragmenta III. 395-97.
[74] Aristotle,
Rhetoric II.2.1378a31-33. He adds that the desire is accompanied by
pain, and he specifies the wrong as an inappropriate "slighting" toward oneself
or one's own.
[75] Thus Spinoza: "Indignation is
hatred towards one who has injured another": Ethics III, Definition of
the Emotions, 20.
[76] See Richard Lazarus
Emotion and Adaptation (1991, 217-34) defending and developing Aristotle's
account of anger and showing that it is supported by recent experimental work.
See also Ortony, Clore, and Collins, (1988), defining anger as involving
"disapproving of someone else's blameworthy action" (148); and Averill (1982),
stressing the role of socially shaped norms in anger.
