Victorian scriptural hermeneutics : history, intention, and evolution -- Intertext 1 : Victorian legal interpretation -- Carlyle : between biblical exegesis and romantic hermeneutics -- Intertext 2 : Victorian science and hermeneutics : the interpretation of nature -- George Eliot's hermeneutics of sympathy -- Intertext 3 : Victorian literary criticism -- Subjectivism, intersubjectivity, and intention : Oscar Wilde and literary hermeneutics.

The moral status of emotions has recently become the focus of various philosophical investigations. Certain emotions that have traditionally been considered as negative, such as envy, jealousy, pleasure-in-others'-misfortune, and pride, have been defended. Some traditionally "negative" emotions have even been declared to be moral emotions. In this brief paper, I suggest two basic criteria according to which an emotion might be considered moral, and I then examine whether envy, anger, and resentment are moral emotions.

Analyzing the ancient Greek point of view concerning anger, shame and justice and a very modern one, one can see, that anger has a regulative function, but shame does as well. Anger puts the other in his place, thereby regulating hierarchies. Shame regulates the social relations of recognition. And both emotions also have an evaluative function, because anger evaluates a situation with regard to a humiliation; shame, with regard to a misdemeanor. In addition, attention has to be paid to the (...) correct molding of these emotions and the correct ways of using them in rearing to be good or just (i.e., in personality formation. (shrink)

In this study, we assessed the influence of trait anger on decisions in risky situations evaluating how it might interact with some contextual factors. One hundred and fifty-eight participants completed the Trait Anger scale of STAXI-2 (T-Ang) and an inventory consisting of a battery of hypothetical everyday decision-making scenarios, representative of three specific domains: financial, social and health. Participants were also asked to evaluate familiarity and salience for each scenario. This study provides evidence for a relationship between individual differences in (...) the tendency to feel anger and risky decisions in different domains and for mediation effects of familiarity and salience perception. The evaluation of the mechanisms with which dispositional anger is linked to risky decision-making could further contribute to an understanding of the role of personality traits in decision-making processes. (shrink)

Ecologically valid procedures for eliciting and measuring children's anger are needed to enhance researchers' theories of children's emotional competence and to guide intervention efforts aimed at reactive aggression. The purpose of this article is to describe a laboratory-based game-playing procedure that has been used successfully to elicit and measure children's anger across observational, physiological, and self-report channels. Steps taken to ensure that participants are treated ethically and fairly are discussed. The article highlights recently published data that emphasize the importance of (...) provoking and assessing children's anger across multiple channels using laboratory-based procedures. Finally, it presents preliminary data that suggest that the safeguards taken to protect children were successful in making both children and their parents feel well treated and comfortable. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which foster children and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) intersect as social and medical categories. Through the method of interpretive biography based on the official case file, this paper shows how the experiences of violence and ADHD become linked in the child's life through the emotion of anger. In this way, it is possible to see how the power dynamics of the medical, educational and welfare systems lock the diagnosis with its embedded meanings into (...) the child's life. It is also possible to see how counter forces like a caring foster family can challenge medical and welfare authorities. (shrink)

This paper considers an allegation by M. Stocker and E. Hegeman that Aristotle’s account of anger yields a narcissistic passion bedevilled by illusions of self-sufficiency. The paper argues on behalf of Aristotle’s valuing of anger within a virtuous and flourishing life, showing that and why Aristotle’s account is neither narcissistic nor involves illusions of self-sufficiency. In so arguing a deeper appreciation of Aristotle’s understanding of a self-sufficient life is reached, as are some interesting contrasts between Aristotle's understanding of anger, its (...) connections to value and our own understanding of these matters. (shrink)

(to table of contents of archives) This talk was delivered at the Auburn Philosophical Society’s Roundtable on Hate, 5 October 2001, convened in response to the September 11 attacks a month earlier. The events of September 11th have occasioned a wide variety of responses, ranging from calls to turn the other cheek, to calls to nuke half the Middle East—and every imaginable shade of opinion in between. At a time when emotions run high, how should we go about deciding on (...) a morally appropriate response? Should we allow ourselves to be guided by our anger, or should we put our anger aside and make an unemotional decision? (shrink)

In the aftermath of the racial disturbances that rocked the United States during the summer of 1967, the official government commission formed to investigate its causes noted: “…certain fundamental matters are clear. Of these, the most fundamental is the racial attitude and behavior of white Americans toward black Americans. Race prejudice has shaped our history decisively; it now threatens to affect our future” (U.S. Riot Commission, 1968, 203; emphasis added). Given the indisputable influence of racism and the ideology of white (...) supremacy upon our national character, Carmichael Peters has done the theological guild a great service in bringing the insights of Karl Rahner to bear upon one of the manifestations of this tragic legacy: the existence of “black rage.” In doing so, Peters seeks to demonstrate the relevance of Rahner’s thought—specifically, what he calls “the emancipatory potential of Rahner’s transcendental realism”—to one of the most neuralgic issues of U.S. public life. This response to Peter’s paper will further this discussion by examining four questions: What is “black rage?” What does Rahner add to our understanding and/or assessment of black rage? What does black rage offer to our understanding of Rahner? What does the phenomenon of black rage tell us regarding the adequacy of the Rahnerian project? (shrink)

This paper strengthens the theoretical ground of feminist analyses of anger by explaining how the angers of the oppressed are ways of knowing. Relying on insights created through the juxtaposition of Latina feminism and Zen Buddhism, I argue that these angers are special kinds of embodied perceptions that surface when there is a profound lack of fit between a particular bodily orientation and its framing world of sense. As openings to alternative sensibilities, these angers are transformative, liberatory, and deeply epistemological.

Although emotion may subserve social function, as with anger-maintaining dominance, emotions are more than variant cognitions. Anger promotes risk-taking, attention-narrowing, and cognitive impairment. The proposition that appraised “blameworthiness” is necessary for anger excludes young children's anger as well as adults' pain-induced anger. To be complete, any systems model of anger must account for its temporal characteristics, including escalation and persistence.

This article focuses primarily on the emotion of guilt as providing a justification for retributive legal punishment. In particular, I challenge the claim according to which guilt can function as part of our epistemic justification of positive retributivism, that is, the view that wrongdoing is both necessary and sufficient to justify punishment. I show that the argument to this conclusion rests on two premises: (1) to feel guilty typically involves the judgment that one deserves punishment; and (2) those who feel (...) guilty after wrongdoing are more virtuous (or less vicious) than those who do not. I shall argue that premise (1) is false on both empirical and conceptual grounds and that there are no particularly good grounds supporting this premise (2). Finally, I consider and reject the claim that anger, as opposed to guilt, can afford the type of epistemic justification needed by positive retributivism. (shrink)

Is anger at another person ever a morally excellent thing? Two competing answers to this question can be found in the Christian intellectual tradition. JohnCassian held that anger at another person is never morally virtuous. Aquinas, taking an Aristotelian line, maintained that anger at another person is sometimes morally virtuous. In this paper I explore the positions of Cassian and Aquinas on this issue. The core of my paper consists in a close examination of two arguments given by Aquinas in (...) support of his view. The first involves the usefulness of anger in the moral life; the second focuses on the nature of the human being as a composite of soul and body. (shrink)

We argue that there are three coherent, nontrivial notions of basic-ness: conceptual basic-ness, biological basic-ness, and psychological basic-ness. There is considerable evidence for conceptually basic emotion categories (e.g., “anger,” “fear”). These categories do not designate biologically basic emotions, but some forms of anger, fear, and so on that are biologically basic in a sense we will specify. Finally, two notions of psychological basic-ness are distinguished, and the evidence for them is evaluated. The framework we offer acknowledges the force of some (...) of the objections to basic emotion theory whilst demonstrating that the notion of a basic emotion, once properly reformulated, is still of scientific value. (shrink)

Starting from the assumption that one can literally perceive someone's anger in their face, I argue that this would not be possible if what is perceived is a static facial signature of their anger. There is a product–process distinction in talk of facial expression, and I argue that one can see anger in someone's facial expression only if this is understood to be a process rather than a product.

To understand how children manage anger and engage in various forms of aggression, it is important to observe children responding to peer provocation. Observing children's anger and aggression poses serious ethical and practical challenges, especially with samples of older children and adolescents. This article describes 2 laboratory methods for observing children's responses to peer provocation: 1 involves participants playing a game with a provoking child actor, and the other involves a pair of close friends responding to an actor posing as (...) a difficult play partner. Both methods are described in detail, ethical safeguards are discussed, and evidence is presented to show that children understand their research rights in these types of investigations. (shrink)

: Most of us tend to be Aristotelians when it comes to anger. While admitting that uncontrolled anger is harmful and ought to be avoided, we reject as undesirable a state of being that would not allow us to express legitimate outrage. Hence, we seem to find a compelling moral attitude in Aristotle’s belief that we should get angry at the right time and for the right reasons and in the right way. Buddhism and Stoicism, however, carve out a position (...) on the issue of anger that stands in marked contrast to the Aristotelian conception. This article considers the similarities between these two views of anger, contrasts the Buddhist with the much more common (at least in the West) Aristotelian one, and, finally, considers the objections of a prominent Western scholar to this shared Buddhist/Stoic conception. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have disagreed about whether "the folk" are intuitively incompatibilists or compatibilists, and they have disagreed about the role of abstraction in generating such intuitions. New experimental evidence using Construal Level Theory is presented. The experiments support the views that the folk are intuitively both incompatibilists and compatibilists, and that abstract mental representations do shift intuitions, but not in a univocal way.

Right after our tragedy, my idea of forgiveness was to be free of this thing, – the anger, the pain, the absorption. It was totally personal. It was a survival tactic to leave this experience behind. It had nothing to do with the offender. The second level was realizing how the word forgiveness applies to the relationship between the victim and the offender. How it means accepting and working on that relationship after a murder. The latter is more complicated. Now (...) I think I see that forgiveness is more of integrating the experience into my life in a controlled way, rather than letting it go or escaping it. (shrink)