Aristotle’s paradigmatic case for emotional appeal is anger (pp. 214-215). He breaks the experience of anger into three essential components: an interpretation of the situation (I have been slighted in a publicly noticeable way); a bodily sense of agitation (those who are already agitated—the sick, thirsty, and poor—are therefore more inclined to feel angry); and a behavioral disposition towards revenge (if I can’t enact revenge, then I will feel something difference, such as humiliation). Is this an accurate description of how 21st-century Americans experience anger, or is it a culturally specific set of possibilities that only held true for ancient Greeks? Put the question another way: Is Aristotle’s treatment of the emotions a cultural investigation into the cognitive/affective/behavioral networks among people in a particular culture, or is it a psychological description of how people think/feel/act?
I believe Aristotle was trying to give an account of how anger works in the general sense, not just for his specific culture. He goes into great detail about pathology of anger. Great effort was put into structuring his argument and breaking his topic down into different categories, as is is wont. Let us accept for the moment that he is correct in his account . We have no reason to believe that he thinks his account would apply specifically to his contemporaries and/or compatriots. His examples are certainly Greek centric, but given Aristotle's penchant for trying to make sense of the world around him in other realms such as biology, it would make sense that he would think his argument was universally applicable.
Though human emotions and manners of expressing them have remained somewhat constant over time, they are in fact reactions and ways of adapting to our environment, which has changed dramatically since the time of Aristotle. At the time of his assessment of anger, there was a more defined disparity between social classes, which contributed to the first two components of anger as defined by Aristotle. With a social hierarchy so integral to everyday life and such clearly defined boundaries between the superior and the inferior, insolence to ones superiors becomes a much more outrageous act and therefore arouses a more severe reaction. As for the second component of Aristotle's anger, a population of slaves with subhuman status as well as the lower classes of society would probably have been more agitated than anyone posting on this discussion. As for the component of the need for revenge, it is based on a social context that has greatly changed. While revenge is considered by many today to be a selfish and usually morally wrong path of action, it was in Aristotle's time considered a moral obligation. If a family member was murdered, it was familial duty to slay the murderer. The need for revenge was considered a just anger.
While I do believe that we still feel these components of anger to some degree, the social circumstances have changed and with them has changed the way these emotions are acted out.
I believe Aristotle's treatment of emotions can be applied to a certain extent to life in the 21st century. Although he was only observing men in ancient Greece, he was in fact observing man. Human emotion has not really changed through the centuries: we still experience anger, happiness, and sadness just as our ancestors did. People living in ancient Greece became angry at the same things at which people in modern day western culture would be angry. For example, if someone in America today has their house broken into, he would be just as angry as if someone in ancient Greece had had his home broken into.
While I do believe that Aristotle's views on anger are universal, I disagree that a man's anger has to be directed at "some particular individual." For example, a man can become angry at the government for raising taxes. His anger is not directed at one particular person, but at the government as a whole. If the man has the desire for revenge, which Aristotle states he will, he really has no one to execute his revenge upon, since the government is not really tangible.
Aristotle’s defintion of anger seems to be a fairly accurate and universal take on how we, as humans, react to “pain” and/or a “conspicuous slight directed [at us or a friend] without justification.” What’s more, his three kinds of slighting (contempt, spite, and insolence) further substantiate his definition. I find it hard to disbelieve his defintion for anger, which leads me to conclude that Aristotle’s view of anger is an accurate depiction of both the 21st century American experience and that of the ancient Greeks. Ultimately, Aristotle’s Book II and his treatment of anger is a psychological description of how people, as a whole, think, feel, and act.
Particularly accurate, I think, is Aristotle’s argument that anger “must always be attended by a certain pleasure—that which arises from the expectation from revenge.” How true. Don’t we often feel that the only way in which to reverse the pain we feel is to seek retribution? In this way, our pleasure comes from avoiding a slight and making the source of our anger just as anguished as we are.
However, Aristotle’s definition is certainly not perfect, and I take issue with many of the same things that my classmates have questioned. For example, I don’t think that anger must be felt solely towards “some particular individual” (see the computer example below). Yet even then, I do think that Aristotle’s “particular individual” argument holds when applied to those who believe in a supreme enity. Assuming that this entity is omnipotent (again, supreme), could we not trace any action back to said entity? Following this logic, this entity caused the computer to crash (through some sort of divine intervention or so-called plan). We can invest anger in this being. But as we know, not everybody will share a belief in an all-powerful god, leaving no individual to blame for the technical malfunction of the computer, so once again, I find room for disagreement with Aristotle.
I was somewhat disappointed that Aristotle did not address in Book II the situation in which the hearers, those so affected to "giv[e] decisions" (213) regarding the orator's rhetoric, are angry specifically AT the orator. Even more interestingly, an angry and unafraid crowd. Aristotle mentions that "the orator will have to speak so as to bring his hearers into a frame of mind that will dispose them to anger," (216) but what of those who need to be propitiated? He addresses, correctly, the propensity toward quick anger that those who feel their present distress is being slighted display. How would the successful orator handle a situation in which there is a mob seeking the pleasure of revenge against the interests the orator represents? In other words, forfeit the luxury that Philocrates enjoyed of temporization, whereby he was able to wait for the anger of the crowd to be exerted upon someone less fortunate, or at least of a greater strategic disadvantage with that most capricious of judges we generally call fate. Is rhetoric - even when the means of persuasion are understood and the end and object clear - useless in a setting of lawlessness? On page 187, Aristotle wrote that "it is on a country's laws that its whole welfare depends." Does this mean that rhetoric is only practical in practical situations? Rhetoric may be able to manipulate emotion, anger in particular, but if the anger be directed at the rhetorician, regardless of the source and determined to feel the pleasure of vengeance, be there any application of rhetoric? When anger escalates to its natural expression of violence in the direction of the orator, it would be best, I believe, to lay words aside, and either, depending on one's age, convey courage or cowardice in forms other than speech. By leaving out this scenario, when so far it seems that he covers every angle, Aristotle is communicating the limitation of rhetoric when emotions so affect judgement that one's survival becomes more pressing than making one's argument and speech "demonstrative and worthy of belief" (213).
Book II is most certainly a psychological treatment of the subject of emotions. The persons of different cultures may be slighted by different things, but the end result of anger is a universal constant. Contempt, spite, and insolence may arrive at the party in clothes in one country/culture that do not exist in another, but anger is visible on the faces of human beings, not on the ornaments that distinguish one culture from another. The Polynesian fisherman will be just as angry that his fishing canoe was pissed in by a rival as the owner of a new Mercedes in Santa Monica, CA will be when he sees that his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend keyed his door panel. The antebellum South, as a whole, held the opinion that their desires were not considered to be important when compared to the economic superiority of the North. This slight, this interpretation, was felt severely enough to warrant a four-year war that decimated the region whose original interpretation of the slight actually turned out to be correct when judging by the results of the war. The fact that the South was able to hold off the Northern armies for as long as it did attests to the amount of rancor they held in their collective emotions, and the strength of their desire to exact some sort of revenge for the perceived slight. This is a universal example in a particular situation of anger's impulse as a psychological phenomena when prompted by a slight. Wars have been fought under similiar situations in countless countries/cultures for tens of thousands of years. The slights were undoubtedly exploited by the rich in order to protect their economic interests, but the rhetoric of war is a topic for another post, and hopefully a future topic that Aristotle will address.
When the sea was calm
All ships alike
Showed mastership in floating
I found Aristotle's selection on anger surprisingly relevant to my life experiences. The passage on slighting which included contempt, spite and insolence as sources of anger seemed to be rooted in the belief that an individual is entitled to be treated in a certain way. When he is not treated in the manner he expects, he is angered. As tmdesou put it, Aristotle may have already discussed cognitive dissonance long before Festinger set up tests to prove it. With that in mind, however, I feel that much of the evidence is based on anecdotal references to Greek plays and on common knowledge observations. While I do not agree with the methods that he achieved his conclusions, I can't help but see the wisdom in his advice.
The problem with evaluating his work is that I come with my own biases and perceptions. As a child of Western thought, I find myself internally agreeing with the author's work because I already take for granted much of what he says. If I lived in a society where I was considered a social pariah such as an Untouchable of India, then the concept of insolence as a source of anger might not make much sense to me. I would be required to accept that I deserved this lifestyle in order to justify the living conditions. This example of cognitive dissonance is not so different from the way victims of domestic abuse create reasons for why they deserve the abuse and why the abuser is justified in his or her actions.
In terms of my own personal (and unqualified) opinion, I believe that Aristotle intends his work to be a psychological examination, but I do not consider it categorically true due to his methodologies and because of the obvious differences between time and culture that have occurred since Ancient Greece.
Feel free to agree and disagree!
I too believe that Aristotle is correct in his evaluation of the mechanics of emotion, and so far as the mechanics of emotion are universal and applicable to all humans in all ages, Aristotle is correctly reflecting on the nature of men in our society as well as his own. I did, however, come up with a few (albeit minor) points that would make his analysis slightly more relevant to his society than ours (ours being, for the sake of argument, the liberal west). The first is that our society, being a more individualistic and less collectivist society, would be perhaps less likely to react angrily to a slight perpetuated against others in our community. Secondly, we also live in a society far less hierarchical than the one in which Aristotle lived (and promoted). This may affect our reaction to perceived insolence: we can fail to show respect to a superior without necessarily being labeled as insolent, and the conditions in which insolence may arise are far fewer. (I did say these were minor points). Finally, Aristotle says that "the angry man is aiming at what he can attain." I disagree with this, the obvious example being the government, at which many are angry but about which few can nor intend to do anything. It may be the case that in a much smaller society such as Aristotle, it was much more possible for men to take revenge on the object of their anger, everyone in that society being much closer and accessible to one another (as opposed to ours, where invisible gods sit at the heads of the corporations and bureacracies that control our everyday lives).
I also take issue with Aristotle's definition of anger, and propose my own, which I believe to be far more succint and universal: anger is the emotion experienced as the result of injustice perpetuated against someone.
I believe, therefore, that anger must always be the result of a person (contrary to the previous poster), and not an abstract object, because the action which provokes the anger must necessarily have a perpetuator. It is difficult to imagine a non-human perpetuator of any action that provokes anger (unless we include our pets…). A few actions, it is conceded, have non-human actors—for example, a house may be destroyed by a tornado. In this case, however, the owner is likely to be upset, devasted, or hopeless, but probably not angry.
I think you make a good point about the differences in our societies, and how that affects Aristotle's thoughts on anger. A less-centralized, larger population is going to experience and project anger in slightly different ways than a smaller, close-knit group, even if the motivations are the same. Even though it may be rather futile to enact revenge against the government as an entity in our day and age, there are still cases where people try.
However, I would make a few slight changes to the definition of anger that you propose -- I think it should mention the fact that the "injustice perpetuated" can be either real or perceived, for example: a person gets angry in exactly the same way when they think they've been slighted (due to misunderstanding) as when they've been intentionally harmed. Also, what distinction do you make between "upset" and "angry"? To me, it seems perfectly reasonable that one could be angry after a house fire or flood, even if there is no human interaction involved.
I would agree that Aristotle’s paradigm is an accurate description of how 21st century Americans experience anger, barring special circumstances such as abuse as ssyed brought up. I also found Aristotle’s explanation to be common sense, or perhaps he was just so adept at ethos that it spanned a few millennia. Nevertheless such an obvious recounting of when and why I feel as I do was occasionally enlightening (particularly in the forgetting names example of slight).
But, however well I think Aristotle’s anger paradigm fits our American experience, I have to say that it is more of an investigation and description of his culture, which just happens to be so similar to ours in this regard, rather than a psychological description of how all people behave because his evidence is observational and anecdotal. But then who else was he to observe but the ancient Greeks?
I'd like to say that anger can indeed be felt towards things other than individuals. Though, we still direct the anger as if it was aimed at an individual. For example, my computer crashes while I'm typing my well reasoned and lengthy report. Suddenly, I am filled with vehement anger and throw the computer out the window. During that event I was angry at the computer as if it were a person who had slighted me, but the computer is still just an inanimate object.
This is more of a current situation though as the Greeks did not have computers or the kind of technical infrastructure we do in this day and age.
Concerning insolence – I believe that people being insolent to their superiors is still a fairly common occurrence, and still likely to cause the person so disrespected some anger (though s/he may not kill the offender and, being blinded by rage, drag the corpse around until shot through the heel).
If I am the greatest unicyclist the world has ever seen, and some kids who just purchased their unicycles a week ago are telling me that I suck and to enjoy my moment in the sun because they’ll have far outstripped my limited abilities in no time flat – they are being insolent.
It is true that we can fail to show respect to a superior without necessarily being labeled as insolent, but if we show disrespect to a superior (who we are disrespecting in the relevant sense), we are necessarily being insolent, whether or not we are so labeled – because that’s what ‘insolent’ means.
The examination of Aristotle’s treatment of anger presents the majority of modern readers with two distinct problems. The first is the lengthy duration separating the reader from the source, while the second is the necessity to study the work within a logos separate and distinct from that of the author. The combination of these barriers necessitate the analysis of the work beginning with an already distorted lens – that of the translation.
Translation presents the need to balance the preservation of the original statement on one hand, while still clearly conveying what the author was intending to say on the other. However, this can be a precarious balance and accurate translation requires the translator to not only have the ethical desire and ability to provide an accurate translation of the language itself, but also the ability to understand and function within the logoi they intend to work with. For example, the translator may have the linguistic know-how to provide a literal translation of an idiom, but in most cases the resulting translation would make no sense. Buying the farm and “buying the farm” are construed quite differently in English, but attempting to use the latter in Greek would most likely result in a nonsensical statement. Certainly there more and better examples than idioms; however, the point is that accurate translation is no simple task and certainly moreso when the culture of the translated language may no longer be actively referenced.
Taking the sticky wicket of translation into consideration I don’t believe that there is much to be gained from mincing words in the translation of Aristotle. "Aristotle" characterized anger as, “an impulse, accompanied by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight” that is “always felt towards some particular individual”. The translator then subsequently used wrath as the descriptive word for this feeling (p. 214). Myself, I am inclined to use the term wrath rather than anger to describe this particular emotion, especially factoring in the revenge component of the Aristotelian definition as translated. You may disagree, but the feeling described is ultimately quite real. Whatever the assigned name it was obviously present in ancient Athens just as it is present in contemporary America. “Crimes of passion” provide an excellent example, and an examination of legal records reveals that they were as present and real then and there just as they are here and now.
While the mindsets, triggers, and points of emphasis of different cultures and individuals vary from one another, I feel that Aristotle is correct in his evaluation of the mechanics of emotion. Aristotle states that three things determine how people feel emotion: 1) frame of mind, 2) with what person, 3) and in what situation. While I believe that this is a good characterization, I also believe that most anything (person, thing, idea) could be the subject of the second assertion. My opinion is that anything which causes a sense of affirmation of or cognitive dissonance between the individual’s perceptions and the world’s actualities will result in some sort of emotion. Further, I think that the degree of the given emotion is strongly correlated with the level of discrepancy or affirmation of perceptions and realities. However, this is largely illustrated on pages 215-217 and in a much better fashion than I have provided here.
I think Aristotle is right in describing the experience of anger. I think society has moved beyond that primitive state of "an eye for an eye." Although many people may wish for revenge I don't think as many people now days would execute acts of vengeance for slights. Our judicial system accommodates not only the first wrong doer, but the one seeking vengeance as well. Hence, two wrongs don't make a right.