A short and not very careful response to http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/748412.html.
Seneca’s analysis of anger is interesting and multifaceted. On the one hand Seneca seems to want to liken anger with an ‘inhuman’, animal-like, uncontrolled and vengeful rage that “desires[s] to inflict pain in combat and shed blood in punishment” 1(1). On the other, he wants to differentiate anger from anything animals undergo. This seemed to me at first blush a little strange, since I think we associate vengefulness and retribution with some base instinct that is less than human – perhaps because there is something undignified about vengefulness and retribution, and we, or at least Kant, think of dignity as having some close relation with being human (and not animal-like).
Seneca says that “though anger is reason’s enemy, it comes into being only where reason resides” 3, (4). What to make of this? One suggestion: though Seneca thinks anger makes a human outwardly resemble an animal, anger also partially consists in certain mental states with propositional content that animals are incapable of having. What sort of propositional content? Seneca clearly thinks that anger at least partially consists in a desire for payback 3(2), 3(3), 5(3). So candidate propositional content may include content like “This person harmed and disrespected me, he deserves my harming him back,” which, when undergoing an episode of anger, would go hand in hand with the associated phenomenal feels. Is there a prima facie tension here? For Seneca at 6(4) and 6(5) states that human nature does not seek payback after all, associating this tendency with an “inhuman beastiality” (italics added).
A second suggestion: perhaps Seneca thinks that dwelling or festering on bad feelings toward another is necessary in the build up toward anger. This dwelling or festering would require thoughts directed at the other party, which are paradigmatic mental states with propositional content (which, again, animals cannot have). Perhaps this is why Seneca says “only the human being has been allotted practical wisdom, foresight, scrupulousness, deliberation” 3, (7). Anger requires or partially consists in some sort of build-up, which in turn consists in foresight and some planning as to how to pay the other party back for the wrong we take them to have done. My question, then, is does Seneca take this build-up, this planning and dwelling on vengeful thoughts, to be part of anger - and so anger would then be a sort of prolonged emotion that includes ‘thoughtful’ build-up which climaxes in destructive deeds? Or is this planning and mulling over of vengeful thoughts to be separated from anger qua the actions and feelings during one’s exacting revenge – and so anger would be a less prolonged emotion after all, not including the build-up?
A related question: another way in which Seneca thinks anger is different from what animals undergo as they act on impulses is that anger is a more stable state. Animals enact the outward motions of anger one moment; the next they are “graz[ing] quietly” or “asleep” 3, (7). Seneca seems, then, to think anger lasts longer. Does he think the period of resentment and ill-will towards another following the outward acts of anger is itself still part of an episode of anger? If so, this would begin to explain why Seneca thinks a reason animals can’t be angry is because they are incapable of resentment and ‘forgiveness’ in the first place (3, 5). They cannot resent nor forgive, and so their anger could neither begin nor end.
-me
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