Chapter 7

Punishment and Anger

I. Introduction

Anger, it may be thought, is a natural and proper response to wrongdoing. If you fail to become angry when you are wronged, we may think you lack self-respect; and if you fail to become angry when others are wronged, that you lack respect for them.[1] This natural and proper anger, and the desire for revenge that sometimes accompanies it, has been taken by some as a basis for punishing offenders, either to provide justifiably angry victims with what they want or as a fitting expression of the justified anger of society.

In this chapter, I shall argue that, although wrongdoing merits an angry response, merited anger does not by itself justify harming offenders. Anger includes an internal demand for action, but not necessarily a demand for harm to the offender. Because the demand for harm to the offender is separable from simple anger, it requires separate justification. The justifiability of harming offenders – and hence of the demand for such harm – depends upon the truth of retributivism, rather than on the state of mind of the victim. I conclude, therefore, that the appeal to anger has no role in the justification of punishment.

There are three kinds of arguments giving anger a role in the justification of punishment. The first is a utilitarian argument – that punishment is necessary to tame anger that would otherwise break out in private revenge. The second contends that respect for persons requires anger at wrongdoing, and that anger, in turn, requires action in the form of harm to the wrongdoer. If this argument succeeds, then it shows why harming wrongdoers – as opposed to restitution – is good, without reliance on the social contract (see ch. 3). The third kind of argument relies on retribution as the basis for punishment, but suggests that, within the constraints of retribution, there is a role for the consideration of victims’ anger in setting sentence levels.

The first argument can be quickly disposed of. In F.H. Bradley’s often-cited formulation, “the forms in which deliberate anger and righteous disapprobation are expressed [through criminal punishment] stand to the one set of passions in the same relation which marriage stands to [the sexual passions]”;[2] that is, punishment serves to limit and to channel appropriately the potentially destructive forces of anger generated by crime. The focus here is not on the moral desirability of anger, but rather on the moral desirability of limiting its unbridled reign. By preventing individuals from taking revenge, criminal punishment reduces the total cost in human suffering. Margaret Radin has accurately characterized this version of retributivism as “revenge-utilitarianism.” [3] Taken seriously, this model has unacceptable implications. It might, for example, require greater punishment for those whose crimes incite more anger in the community – whether that is because they have committed worse crimes, because they have expressed unpopular views, because of racial antagonism, because the crimes have received more publicity, or because they have victimized persons who are well-liked. As with other utilitarian theories, the summing of harms tends to have unacceptable implications for individual rights. As Radin suggests, one might as readily justify punishment of the revenge-seekers as of the original offenders.

The second argument, however, promises to provide an independent justification for punishment. The strongest version of this argument is given by Walter Berns, arguing in favor of capital punishment.^{^[4]} He suggests that if we are not angry when injustice is done, it means that we care for no one other than ourselves. With others, he argues that to be angry with someone is to respect his capacity to control his actions by holding him accountable for them. Berns thus lionizes justified anger as the foundation of a community that cares about its members and about justice. “A moral community,” he says, “is not possible without anger and the moral indignation that accompanies it.”^{^[5]} He sees the capacity for moral indignation as giving meaning to communal life; without it, he argues, there is nothing to separate humans from animals and no reason for us to live. Because he associates anger with the desire for, and even pleasure in the anticipation of, revenge, he suggests that if we are not willing to act on that desire we are morally bankrupt. Justified anger, then, forms the foundation, not simply for capital punishment, but for all punishment.

I shall argue that anger is a justifiable, but not a morally required, response to wrongdoing, and that it is seldom the morally best response. Anger, I shall argue, is justified where it rests on a correct judgment that an object or value has been undeservedly harmed. The demand for harm to the offender that sometimes springs from anger requires separate justification. Thus, justified anger does not in itself justify punishment. Anger is the morally best response to wrongdoing only where it provides needed courage to take action that is morally preferable on other grounds.

This will provide us with an approach to the third argument as well. Even if, contrary to what I have argued in Chapter 3, retribution provides a legitimate basis for punishment (rather than restitution), the depth of victims’ anger must also be shown to be justified, and does not provide a valid criterion for the severity of punishment independent of other principles.

II. Emotions

I shall begin by discussing the nature of emotion in general. I shall argue that emotions consist of both feelings and cognitive judgments. Our emotions are appropriate or justified when the cognitive judgments they embody are appropriate (in the case of subjective judgments) or true. Some emotions are also necessarily connected to specific kinds of desires, as love is connected to the desire for the well‑being of the loved one; others, such as joy, do not involve desire. Theories of the nature of emotions fall roughly into four categories: feeling theory, physiological theory, behaviorist theory, and cognitive theory.

The Cartesian idea that emotions are “feelings” or subjective passions beyond our control dominated thought on the emotions from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Descartes said that emotions are “feelings ... caused, maintained, and fortified by some movement of the spirits”; in this they differ from other feelings such as appetites and perceptions of physical pain.^{^[6]}

This account requires that emotions be felt in order to exist. But as William Lyon points out, we can have emotions without being subjectively aware of them.^{^[7]} Sometimes we simply fail to attend to our own emotional states, as when we are preoccupied with other matters. I might realize, for example, only when my abrupt manner is pointed out by colleagues, that I am in fact upset about some disturbing incident on the way to work. At other times we repress or deliberately put out of mind threatening or uncomfortable emotions. Yet it would not be accurate to say that we no longer have them. Consider, for example, the uncovering of unacknowledged anger or grief that often results from psychotherapy. Emotions differ from sensations, then, in that they need not be felt in order to exist.

Further, we can have the subjective “feelings” associated with emotions without having the emotion itself: A person whose pulse and respiration are increased by an injection of adrenaline has the “feelings” associated with fear, yet this feeling is not, by itself, an emotion. Nor are the emotions purely passive. We do speak often of being overtaken or overwhelmed by strong emotions such as anger, grief or love; at the same time, we claim a degree of control over our emotions, as when we work up a rage, wallow in self-pity, harden our hearts, or conquer our fears.

William James, writing in the late nineteenth century, thought that emotions consisted simply of physiological changes, a view that accounts for the possibility of our sometimes failing to be aware of them.^{^[8]} He said that “the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and ... our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion.”^{^[9]} He thus reversed the usual way of thinking that “we tremble because we are afraid” to say that “we are afraid because we tremble.”^{^[10]} For James, the perception was directly tied to the physiological changes, with little scope for the intervention of thought. James hoped that scientific advances would eventually distinguish emotions on the basis of differences in the physiological changes associated with them. Scientific research has so far yielded contrary results: early measurements precipitated by James's theory simply showed excitation of the sympathetic nervous system in all kinds of emotional states.^{^[11]} In an often‑cited series of experiments, Shachter and Singer found, on the contrary, that the same externally‑induced physiological changes – in this case the reaction to a dose of adrenaline – could be interpreted by subjects as signaling either anger or euphoria depending on the apparent emotions displayed by another person in their presence.[DG1] It appears, then, that there is more to the emotions than mere physiology.^{^[12]}

Behaviorists have attempted to define emotions as consisting entirely of the behavior they provoke.^{^[13]} But it is evident that the same emotion may produce widely varying forms of behavior. One person might react to a feeling of romantic love by neglecting his work to daydream all day, while another might find renewed energy and work harder than ever. Lyon points out that, indeed, some emotions produce no behavior (for example, sadness over the condition of far‑away victims whom we cannot help) but we would not therefore be inclined to doubt the existence of the emotion.^{^[14]}

It is evident that purely physiological, behavioral, or “feeling” accounts of emotion are inadequate. What is missing from these accounts is a recognition of the role of cognitions – thoughts, beliefs, and judgments – in the emotions. Some have argued that emotions are simply evaluative judgments, with the bodily sensations simply reflecting the strength of the judgment;^{^[15]} some have suggested that emotions are logically related to cognitions;^{^[16]} and others have argued that particular kinds of cognitions are an essential part of emotion.^{^[17]} I shall outline the argument that emotions do consist in part of cognitive judgments; whether this is a logical or a constitutive relationship will not be important for present purposes.

The role of cognition in emotions was recognized by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C., though his theory received little attention until recently. Aristotle saw the emotions as “conditions of the soul connected with the body,”^{^[18]} noting that the presence of a stimulus does not always elicit the expected emotion, and that emotions can be elicited in the absence of the usual stimuli.^{^[19]} He suggested that emotions were malleable in the sense that, by influencing beliefs, one could influence emotions.

Hume thought that some emotions were caused by a combination of beliefs and sensations, while others (which he termed “direct passions”) were caused simply by sensations such as pleasure.^{^[20]} Recent theorists suggest instead that beliefs are part of the emotion, in the sense that to give up the belief associated with an emotion is to give up the emotion itself.^{^[21]} Thus, it would be internally contradictory to say that I hope for warm weather next week even though I do not believe that warm weather would be a good thing, or even though I do not believe there is any possibility of it. In this sense, the belief is definitionally part of the emotion.

Several writers have recently argued that the key sort of cognition involved in emotions is not simply a belief, but rather an evaluative judgment or appraisal.^{^[22]} These are a subspecies of beliefs, involving an assessment that may be more or less subject to correction. Some philosophers – notably Jean‑Paul Sartre and Robert Solomon – have argued for a closer relationship between emotion and evaluative judgment. Sartre portrays emotion as “a transformation of the world” – frustration of our desires leads us to view the world in a different light.^{^[23]} Solomon goes further, claiming that the emotion simply is the evaluative judgment.[24] However, as Oakley notes, in many instances the same cognitions can produce different emotions.^{^[25]} The judgment that a walk over a high wire is dangerous may provoke either excitement or fear, depending on one's affinity for danger. The judgment that one has received a great undeserved benefit may produce glee or guilt, again depending on underlying attitudes of the recipient. It might be argued that these underlying attitudes themselves consist of judgments -- in the former case the judgment that danger is good or bad, and in the latter the judgment that undeserved benefits are good or bad. But it is apparent that these “judgments,” if such they may be called, belong to a different class from the judgment that one is in danger. Because they are deep-seated – relatively permanent features of one’s personality – they are not susceptible to easy change as a result of reasoning or empirical evidence. Of course, the same might be said for one’s beliefs about the validity of certain forms of argument, or about mathematical truths. But a more salient feature of these attitudes is that such reasoning and evidence are not relevant to them in the same way that they are to strongly-held cognitive beliefs. These attitudes are more in the nature of emotional attachments; they are formed as a result of experience, perhaps, but they are not the product of thought.

Perhaps a more persuasive point against the pure cognitive theory is that it is possible to have the relevant cognitions and yet experience no emotion at all. People who are emotionally remote (or insensitive) may perceive some level of danger, yet feel neither fear nor excitement. Nor need these emotions necessarily be present, yet repressed, in such cases. To make a convincing case that the person does actually have the emotion, we need to do more than show that they have the necessary cognitions. We may say the person perceived the danger, yet displayed no fear, and felt no fear. If he later develops post-traumatic stress disorder, we might attribute that to repression of fear. But in the absence of such developments, it would be reasonable – and certainly not definitionally false – to conclude that he was in fact not afraid. Emotions, then, do not consist simply of cognitions.

Does the other part of emotion consist of feeling or physiological changes? It cannot be simply that; as noted above, one can “have” emotions without being aware of them (as would be required by feeling), and physiological changes do not differentiate (so far as we know) fear from excitement any more than does the judgment of danger. Justin Oakley uses the concept of “affect” to describe psychic and physiological changes associated with emotion that we may or may not be aware of.^{^[26]} A sudden outburst of weeping may bring to awareness that one is still grieving over a long‑ago loss; our sense is that this is not simply a newly‑arrived emotion, but rather something that has been with us, but unrecognized, for a long period. The same is true of “buried anger” – an anger we have not allowed ourselves to feel – that is often said to account for behavior we ourselves do not understand until the anger is brought to the surface through psychotherapy. The anger then felt cannot be an entirely new reaction to events long past, but now brought to mind, or it would not account for the previous behavior.^{^[27]}

The incorporation of belief into the analysis of emotion enables us to distinguish emotions from drug‑induced physiological changes. Belief appears much more satisfactory than behavior as a differentiator among emotions, because the types of judgments associated with the same emotion will be constant while behavior varies. And, if we can make judgments that we are not aware of making at the time, we will be able to account for the possibility of having emotions that we do not recognize as such.

It is readily apparent that the cognitive/evaluative view has significant advantages over competing theories of the emotions. It accounts for a number of subtleties not accommodated by other theories without (apparently) raising any significant new problems. There are a number of cognitive models that differ as to detail; for present purposes it is not important to choose among them. Instead, in what follows I shall rely primarily on the premise that cognitive judgment is a defining feature of emotions, and that the various emotions can be differentiated by the judgments they embody.

I have suggested above that attachments, as well as beliefs, are necessary for emotions. Kahan and Nussbaum illustrate the idea that emotions involve beliefs with the case of grief, where the relevant belief is that I have lost someone of great importance to me.[28] If I discover that the person has not died after all, I can no longer be said to be experiencing grief. Similarly, they argue, a person who claimed to be experiencing deep grief but denied that the lost person was important to him would appear to be contradicting himself – no sense can be made of his claims. But must the griever judge or believe that the person was important to him, in order to feel grief? I think rather s/he must be attached to the lost person, and that this attachment may exist on a non-cognitive level. To see this, imagine that person A finds herself quite unexpectedly to be deeply saddened by the death of her former spouse, B. A, during her brief and long-ago marriage to B, had discovered such flaws in his character that she had severed all ties with him and, after the passage of years, seldom gave him a conscious thought. In short, she did not believe that B was (any longer) important to her. Nor does she have to change this belief in order to experience grief; rather, what must be true is that B was indeed important to her; in other words, that she was emotionally attached to him. This attachment is not subject to rational evaluation or justification – it simply exists. Thus, there is no talking A out of her grief by arguing that B was not, in fact, important to her. Compare this aspect of grief with the cognitive belief on which it is founded – that the significant person has died. The discovery that this belief is false will eradicate grief as soon as the information can be absorbed.

Attachments (or aversions) are a precondition for having any emotion at all. Without attachments, we would go through life emotionless, regardless of the cognitive judgments we made. The most common attachment is to oneself; thus, most people will react emotionally (at least to some degree) to harm to their own interests. We may also be attached to family members, friends, and others with whom we identify for various reasons. We may be said to be attached to all humans to the extent that we react more strongly to harm to humans than to harm to animals or inanimate objects.

As discussed in Chapter 5, we are attached on the non-cognitive level not only to persons, but also to values. It is possible to react emotionally to situations in which no person to whom we are attached is affected. One person will be consistently angered by unfairness, another by racism or sexism, a third by anti-patriotism, etc.; this anger may be deep even if the value-flouting behavior is purely symbolic. Further, you might, for example, be angered by a racist remark directed to a specific person, yet be unmoved by a much more cutting remark directed at that person’s moral character (where you don’t perceive that remark as racially motivated). In such cases, it is not the harm to the person, but the flouting of the value, that angers you.

Are emotions subject to moral evaluation? If they are, as some believe, entirely beyond our control, then moral evaluation of anger would be not only pointless but mistaken, like asking for a justification of illness. But, on the view I have outlined, emotions rest on attachments and beliefs, both of which are subject to moral evaluation. Beliefs may be evaluated for their reasonableness, and attachments may be evaluated insofar as they form part of a good moral character. To the extent that emotions are logically dependent on beliefs, the emotions themselves are subject to moral evaluation. If a belief central to an emotion is not justified, then the emotion is not justified either.

To the extent that emotions are occasioned by deep-seated, non-cognitive attachments, their moral evaluation is more complex. Such attachments are not readily formed or broken; if ought implies can, then saying you ought to have an attachment you lack is problematic. Attachments are not completely beyond our control, however. Often, for example, we withdraw from interactions that will lead to friendship, not wishing to form such an attachment. In the case of values, we have some choice of the actions we engage in to foster attachment to specific values. Engaging in volunteer work at a hospital, for example, is likely to increase one’s commitment to improving medical care. There are, of course, limits to our control over our attachments, both to persons and to values. Attachments to one’s family of origin, for example, are largely involuntary. Similarly, we may develop or deepen attachments to specific values through situations we are thrust into, rather than through activities that we choose. Attachments are subject to moral criticism only to the extent that one has control over their acquisition.

III. Anger

I turn now to the structure of anger and its moral justification. Anger is often thought to be associated with the judgment that one has been wronged by its object. I shall argue instead that anger depends on the judgment that some person has been unfairly harmed or that some value has been unjustifiably flouted. To become angry, one must also be attached to this person or value. The desire for vengeance, I shall argue, is only one particular manifestation of anger’s characteristic refusal to accept the harm and its associated demand for action.

Most assume that anger requires an object in the form of a person whom we regard as responsible for the harm done. In cases where we become angry without such an object, it is tempting to conclude that we are absurdly ascribing responsibility to impersonal or inanimate objects.[29] Not all of the cases are so easily accounted for, however. Suppose that, despite the usual precautions, a woman becomes pregnant at a time that is massively inconvenient. Particularly if she does not see abortion as an unproblematic solution, she is likely to be angry that she has become pregnant. A somewhat similar example is the anger that is a recognized stage in the process of reacting to terminal illness. [30] Though under such circumstances one is disposed to look for someone or something to blame, the depth of anger will be fed as much by the perceived unfairness of one’s fate (dying young, despite exercise, etc.) as by the perception that others could have acted to prevent it. This anger seeks an object, but it does not require an ascription of responsibility in order to exist. One is angry that one’s life will be cut short. [31] Similarly, the handicapped child may be angry that he cannot do all the things that other children do.

It may be argued that anger in such cases is founded on a mistaken blaming of a causal agent -- that anger is not possible without blame. The dying person may blame God; the pregnant woman may blame herself, her husband, or her unborn child. But it seems to make perfect sense to say, “Even though I recognize no one is at fault, I am angry that I am dying young; that I will never see my children grow up; that all the efforts I took to preserve my health were in vain.” Once we drop the assumption that the object of anger must be a person (or personified object), it is plain that the existence of anger does not depend on (although it is often accompanied by) an ascription of responsibility. One becomes angry at harms perceived as undeserved and unexpected, even if no one is to blame for them.

Given that one is attached to a person harmed, or to a value flouted, however, one may be afraid or saddened rather than angry. Thus, we must ask what judgments (or other factors) separate anger from these other emotions. Faced with a physically powerful assailant making outrageous demands, you are more likely to be afraid than angry; once removed from his immediate presence, and seeing yourself as again protected by the social group, more likely to be angry at his behavior. (This will also be true if the person threatened is a loved one, rather than oneself.) Fear requires an additional judgment that future harm is likely, but it is not this alone that separates it from anger. Given such a judgment, one might still be angry, both that the past harm has been done and that the future harm is threatened.

The central difference between fear and anger is that fear includes a reaction of avoidance, which in turn is based on the judgment that one lacks power to avert the threatened harm in a more active way. With respect to past harms, fear is not possible. But given the same judgment of harm and the same attachments, one person will become angry, another sad.[32] Sorrow accepts the harm; anger rejects it. A number of factors may go into acceptance or rejection. Anger requires some idea that things might be (or might have been) otherwise; that one expected, or had a right to expect, that they would be otherwise. One may be angry at expected harms, but is more likely to be angry at unexpected ones. The person who loses his family in a wartime bombing is less likely to react with anger if the bombing has been widespread and long maintained. This, I think, is because anticipation often facilitates acceptance. Anger’s refusal to accept harm is closely associated with a (conscious or unconscious) internal agitation, a demand for action in response to the harm. This demand may take the form of an impulse to harm the offender with blows, words, or a pointed withdrawal of interaction; to smash household objects, or to take steps to effect change Sorrow is passive, anger active. The internal demand for action is an often powerful motivating force that can lead the angered person to act in disregard of obstacles and constraints that would otherwise impede action.

One may move between anger, sadness, and fear with respect to the same undeserved maltreatment. Fear that a loved one will behave badly may be combined with sadness over how he has behaved in the past. Fear and sadness may give way to anger if the behavior is repeated over time. Or anger may change to sadness as the possibility of changing the person’s behavior recedes into the realm of the improbable, and the poor behavior comes to be expected. Consider the adult child who, without adequate explanation or excuse, repeatedly fails to make expected gestures such as occasional phone calls, visits, reply to correspondence, etc. One can well imagine that the initial reaction is one of loss and sadness, which however gradually hardens into anger. The central judgment of undeserved maltreatment is unchanged, as is the underlying attachment; the subsidiary judgments about the possibility of controlling the behavior have changed.

The impulse of anger is not merely an especially fervent desire that the harm not have occurred; it incorporates as well a desire to control (in turn requiring that I can conceive of controlling) the course of events. Changes in the weather, for example, are unlikely to anger me, because it is difficult to imagine controlling the weather. Oftentimes my desire to exercise control is unrealistic, as when I am angered by the belittling comments of a stranger in the street; but it is the difference that will determine whether I become angry or merely upset at the comments. Similarly, members of oppressed social groups become angry with the indignities forced on them only when they see some prospect of change. Anger, then, requires a perception of power or potential power, including the possibility of obtaining a measure of control by making changes in existing power relationships.

On Aristotle’s view, the action to which anger impels us is action harmful to the offending party.[33] Anger’s demand for action does not, however, always take the form of a demand that the wrongdoer suffer. As discussed above, anger need not even have a person as object. Even where wrongdoers can be identified, the demand for action may be focused more on other forms of redress. Consider the anger of those who fought against segregation. While in many instances they could identify the perpetrators, their demand was not for harm to those perpetrators, but rather for redress of their grievances – for change in the rules and practices that constituted segregation.

Undeniably, there is some relationship between anger and the desire to harm, at least for some people in some circumstances. I may harm someone in anger; anger can make it possible for me to harm people whom I otherwise would never harm. Anger’s motivating force can cause me to disregard what otherwise would be obstacles to action, making it more likely that I will speak sharply, act coldly, strike out, etc. Anger as such, however, is separable from the desire to engage in these harming behaviors. Anger demands action, but not necessarily in the form of harm to others. At the very least, it is possible for me to be angry with X without desiring to harm him. Anger requires, not a demand for redress as such, but rather an internal refusal to accept harm, a demand for action.

Anger may thus be defined as a judgment that undeserved harm has been incurred, accompanied by an attachment to the person or value harmed, and an internal refusal to accept that harm, including a demand for action.

Anger is often conceived as externally caused, so that the entire responsibility for my anger rests on those who have provoked me. But as we have seen, the subject contributes to anger in a number of ways. The judgments, attitudes, and attachments of the subject are necessary for anger; the object of anger contributes (at most) the ground for the judgment of unjustified harm; even this may be lacking in cases of baseless anger. Anger is, to a greater degree than is normally recognized, within the control of the subject; to a large extent, we can decide whether and when to react with anger.

Anger may be said to be justified whenever I correctly judge that some person has been undeservedly harmed, or that some value of mine has been unjustifiably flouted. The anger itself is distinguished from the corresponding judgment only by a) my attachment to the person or value in question; and b) the strong internal refusal to accept this harm. Assuming that my attachment to the person or value is unobjectionable (as will usually be the case), I am obviously justified in (internally) refusing to accept any undeserved harm, and thus the anger based on this judgment is also justified.

I have remarked above that another judgment is necessary for the refusal to accept harm that characterizes anger: that one is, or could be, in a position to exercise control over the situation. One may of course also be mistaken in this judgment; but this judgment, while necessary for anger (rather than fear or sadness) to occur, does not seem to affect the question of whether anger is justified. Consider, for example, the anger of a slave by heredity in a deeply entrenched system of slavery that is widely accepted by both slaves and masters. His anger may be impotent or unwise; but, because he receives treatment no human being deserves, his anger – his internal rejection of that undeserved harm – is justified.

Anger, then, may be said to be justified whenever I correctly judge that some person has been undeservedly harmed, or that some value of mine has been unjustifiably flouted. Because crimes typically involve undeserved harms and the unjustified flouting of values, the anger of crime victims and of other citizens directed at criminal offenders will usually be justified.

IV. Anger and punishment

It is thus clear why Berns argues that anger is essential to the preservation of community. Anger recognizes undeserved harm, indicates an appropriate level of attachment to community members and values, and demands that action be taken to rectify the harm. One may rightly claim that the recognition of certain harms as undeserved is central to the moral life of a community; without this perception, we could recognize no duties toward our fellow citizens. But simple recognition of such harm, and an appropriate level of attachment to the well-being of one’s neighbors, might equally well be reflected in a reaction of sorrow. It is natural to argue, however, that because anger impels action, while sorrow does not, anger is a morally superior response. The angry neighbor or community will not merely offer sympathy, but will take action to rectify the wrong. Berns takes the position that anger inevitably demands harm to the wrongdoer, and that acting on this demand is required where anger is justified. I shall argue that, while anger inevitably demands action, it does not inevitably demand harm to wrongdoers, and that the justifiability of taking action is separable from the justifiability of the anger itself.

The angry person demands action (either internally or externally). Does it follow from the fact that his anger is justified that his demand for action is also justified? Because justified anger implies a correct judgment that unjustified harm has occurred, it clearly follows that his demand that the harm be rectified (in the sense of “undone”) is also justified. At the same time, it is evident that his demand for action may also take inappropriate forms. Angry people often make a bad situation worse through ill-considered or destructive actions; that their anger is itself justified does not invariably mean that their angry actions – or demands for others to act – are also justified.

Anger does not invariably demand harm to its object, even where it has a person as object. The specific form of anger that does demand harm to its object is vindictive anger. Other attitudes toward the objects of anger are not only possible but common. One may contemplate present or prospective harm to others, including enemies and wrongdoers, with compassion, pity, or indifference. Anger does not preclude such benign or neutral attitudes toward harm to the offender, as the demand for action may be directed toward forms of redress that do not harm the offender, or that do so only incidentally. Angry strikers may demand higher wages or safety measures; angry tenants may demand repairs; angry governments may demand return of territory. Nor is this a function of the seriousness of the wrongdoing. While restitution and apology will not ease grief over the death of a loved one, they may assuage anger (and indeed may do so much more effectively than punishment of the offender). [34] The bereaved person who recognizes this may direct her anger toward obtaining such relief, rather than toward seeking harm to the offender.

Further, it is clear that justified anger may be accompanied by demands for (or the taking of) unjustified action. For anger in its vindictive form, as distinguished from simple anger, to be justified, there must be a separate justification for the action to which it impels the angry person. Justified anger rests on a correct perception of undeserved harm, and a demand that such harm be rectified is therefore justified. But a separate (retributive) argument will be needed to establish the relationship between harming the wrongdoer and rectifying the harm. The victim’s preference for harm to the wrongdoer cannot fill this gap.

If the demand for harm to the wrongdoer does not spring from vengeful impulses but instead from the sober judgment that retribution is the appropriate response, it is a retributive rather than a vindictive anger.[35] As vindictive anger springs from the belief that one will enjoy seeing one’s enemies suffer, so retributive anger springs from the belief that it is right that wrongdoers suffer. Given this belief, a perception of undeserved harm, and an attachment either to the person harmed or the value flouted, will automatically result in an angry demand for action in the form of (an appropriate degree of) harm to the wrongdoer. The justification of retributive anger, as distinguished from anger simpliciter, is, however, the same as that for vindictive anger: it is justified if and only if it is right that wrongdoers suffer. If this central tenet of retributivism is true, then retributive anger is justified in any instance where unjustified harm is inflicted by a culpable party; if it is false, then anger in its retributive (or vindictive) form is never justified. Both vindictive and retributive anger require separate justification for the harm that they seek. It is plain that the existence of justified anger, whether of victims or citizens, adds nothing to the retributive justification for harming wrongdoers, although it will, as Murphy points out,[36] serve as a motivation for seeking retribution that might otherwise be lacking.

Berns’s argument for the importance to the moral community of acting to harm wrongdoers therefore depends on an independent showing that this is the best response to wrongdoing. Anger is one way, although not the only way, in which a community can demonstrate its concern about undeserved harm and the attachment of its members to each other. That anger, however, need not be directed toward harming wrongdoers in order to serve these functions, and is not justifiably so directed unless such harm can be justified on other grounds.

This brings us to the third argument giving anger a role in punishment: the argument that the anger of victims should be considered in sentencing. I have argued in chapter 3 that retributive justifications for punishment fail. The claim that the anger of victims should be considered in sentencing, however, requires the prior assumption that these arguments can be made to work; if no punishment is justified, then the question of appropriate influences on sentencing cannot arise. Supposing retribution to be justified, then, would the anger actually felt by crime victims be an appropriate factor in setting sentences? Murphy argues that the simple fact that the victim desires severe punishment is an appropriate factor in setting sentences, as long as the punishment imposed does not exceed that deserved.[37] He argues that judges routinely take into account non-desert factors such as prison crowding, the offender’s family circumstances, etc., and that the anger of victims might be another such factor. If victims want retribution to the limit of the offender’s desert, why not give it to them?

If the anger of victims is to be a factor in sentencing, then it would follow that offenders whose victims are not angry (at all) would receive, overall, sentences nearer the lower end of the permissible range, and that offenders whose victims had lesser degrees of anger would tend to receive sentences closer to the middle of the range. That is, victim anger can be a factor in sentencing only if different degrees of anger result in different sentences. To determine whether victim anger is an appropriate factor in sentencing, then, we will have to give careful attention to the sources of different degrees of anger among victims of similar crimes.

Because anger is founded on a perception of undeserved harm, its depth will in part be dependent on the degree of perceived harm. Given two victims of similar crimes, each may experience the harm done differently. If both are left with similar physical disabilities, one may shrink into a diminished life while the other finds unsuspected inner resources that enable him to overcome its worst effects. Other things being equal, the first will be angrier because the harm as perceived by him is greater, even though from an objective point of view it is the same. Similarly, the anger of victims may vary as a result of the degree of felt attachment to the harmed object. Damage to an irreplaceable possession may affect victims differently for this reason, as may the murder of a family member. There does not seem to be any objection to considering the subjective degree of harm on a retributive model; the only question is whether victim anger is the best way to identify the degree of that harm.

One victim may be angrier than another, given the same perceived harm, because of varying perceptions of the degree to which harm is deserved. Battered spouses, for example, often come to believe that they deserve the abusive treatment; thus of two women struck by their husbands, one may be much angrier than the other because she correctly perceives that she does not deserve such treatment. One may also have an inflated perception of one’s own deserts. A traveling American, for example, might believe that he deserves deference and special treatment from the citizens of the host country, and thus become exceptionally angry when he finds himself robbed instead. Or the degree of anger may be based on a false judgment concerning the relative worth of offender and victim, as where a rape victim is especially outraged that she was raped by a member of a despised ethnic group. All of the victims are justifiably angry, but insofar as depth of their anger is based on false perceptions, it is to that degree unjustified, and should not form the basis of enhanced punishment.

It is also possible that one victim will be angry, while another is not, because the second victim lacks any sense of her potential to control the situation. This may well be the case, for example, where the victim is a child. Obviously, the first victim’s greater anger would not be an argument for punishing that offender more than the second one, if the reason for her greater anger is simply her recognition that she could have some control over outcomes.

So far I have suggested that the depth of victims’ anger may be an appropriate factor in sentencing to the extent that it reflects the degree of subjective harm, but not to the extent that it reflects false judgments about the victim’s worth. Things can easily become more complicated when multiple factors pulling in different directions are involved. It will in practice be very difficult to differentiate between a victim deeply attached to a harmed object but lacking a robust sense of his own worth and an unduly prideful victim less attached to a similar object. Even the victim himself may have difficulty knowing exactly why he is so angry. If he is aware of illegitimate factors in his anger, the intemperateness of anger in seeking harm to its object may lead him to deny them. The danger of allowing illegitimate factors to influence sentencing may well outweigh the value of the additional information about harm that can be gained by assessing the depth of the victim’s emotion.[38]

I have argued that the two kinds of arguments giving anger a role in the justification of punishment fail. The utilitarian argument for punishing to restrict private revenge has unacceptable implications for the proper bases of punishment. We have seen that while anger is often a justified response to wrongdoing, it does not necessarily include a demand for harm to the offender, and where it does, that demand must find separate justification. In addition, I have argued that the anger of victims can play only a limited role in sentencing, even if we assume the truth of retributivism. I now turn to the question of what our response to justifiably angry victims can be, if we rule out the possibility of appeasing that anger by harming the offender.

It may seem empty to characterize anger as justified if we also say that acting to harm its object is not permissible. But to preclude harm to the wrongdoer is not to preclude action of any kind. To say that the anger is justified is to say that the harm in question should not have occurred; to agree with that underlying judgment and the visceral refusal of the harm. Acting to seek constructive change or redress of our injuries would therefore be fully justified. Anger that seeks harm to the wrongdoer can and should be redirected to constructive action, much like the anger that seeks to vent itself in the destruction of property.

Where constructive action is not possible – as for injuries that cannot be redressed -- anger can be recognized in other ways. Here we can draw upon our typical response to anger that has no person as object, such as the anger of an earthquake victim who loses the use of his legs. Clearly, it is possible to provide meaningful recognition of such anger and the underlying judgment that the harm is undeserved. We can provide emotional support and practical help. We can seek to prevent similar losses by others. We can provide symbolic recognition and acknowledgment that the anger is justified. In short, we can recognize, understand, and attempt to alleviate anger.

In Western society, punishment of the offender serves as our mode of recognizing justified anger arising from wrongdoing. Against this background, failure to punish is inevitably seen as a failure to recognize the justified anger of the victim. But it is important for us to recognize that, insofar as punishment simply serves to provide such recognition, it could profitably be replaced with other symbols, including purely symbolic condemnation of offenders. This is not to suggest that such replacement would be easy. The tradition of punishment is ingrained in our culture; the culturally-derived sense that it is the appropriate response to wrongdoing is likely to be resistant to change. But feelings equally deep, and equally rooted in history, have eventually yielded to social change, from broad social changes such as the replacement of aristocracy with democracy to narrower ones such as the trend toward acceptance of gay marriage.

Anger has, in other times and places, commonly been directed toward ends other than harm to the wrongdoer. As we saw in Chapter 1, restitution, rather than harm to the wrongdoer, was a common response to wrongdoing in many ancient and medieval societies. In the South Pacific atoll of the Ifaluk, justified anger is acknowledged through a stylized speech that a designated person will give to the angry person, recognizing the angry person's desire to fight, but appealing to his compassion, his desire for the respect of the community, and the bad consequences of violence to urge him to exercise self‑control.^{^[39]} A decision to exercise self‑control is the expected, and almost universally attained, outcome.

U.S. culture tends to glorify anger and to regard it as an inevitable feature of social interaction. The claim to be angry is often made with some pride; the person who strikes, or even kills, another out of uncontrollable anger is one kind of folk hero. The stifling of anger is seen as unhealthy and dangerous, and the failure to become angry in an appropriate situation is easily interpreted as weakness. Reginald Denny, a man who was severely beaten during the Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King verdict, faced widespread ridicule for his open goodwill toward the two men accused of beating him. Anger fits in well with our rather egalitarian, yet competitive and atomistic view of social life: one has the right to be angry with almost anyone, and there is no particular reason to think they have considered your interests, or that you should consider theirs. This culture of anger plays itself out in an ongoing tragedy in which violence becomes the most self-affirming response to injury or insult; violence is then met with responsive anger and violent punishment. We can, and should, choose otherwise.

Do we have the ability to control our angry responses? Anger, contrary to what our culture tends to convey, is not the inevitable concomitant of self‑respect, nor is violence its necessary outcome. A lack of self-respect is one reason why a person would not become angry, seeing any harm inflicted as deserved, or regarding himself as entirely powerless. But anger will also be averted by the mature recognition that there are things one cannot change, undeserved harms that will have to be accepted. Such a perception converts anger to grief, sorrow, or resignation. Anger is appropriate when there are steps that can be taken to rectify the harm, and may be necessary when taking those steps requires a degree of courage or disregard of obstacles. Anger toward criminal offenders is thus an emotion to be encouraged only insofar as it motivates us to do what is (on other grounds) morally best. If punishment is not the optimal response to crime either in terms of social welfare or in terms of moral appropriateness, there is every reason to seek to mute (or at least to redirect) our angry responses on both an individual and on a social level.

As we have seen, the subject has more control over his own anger than is usually supposed. As anger is not the only possible response to undeserved harm, we must ask when it is a desirable response, and how one goes about changing it. Consider how one responds to a spouse who has failed to perform an agreed‑on task, resulting in inconvenience to the other. One can dwell on his inconsiderateness, magnify one's own contributions to the household, dredge up past examples of conflict, and become quite angry over a minor matter. Or one can do the opposite: minimize the importance of the transgression, criticize oneself, and decide to forgive him. To the extent that the sources of anger are evident, the degree of anger we choose to feel is often within our control. In the domestic context, it is quite likely that we will consciously decide what degree of anger, if any, will be useful in resolving the conflict, and what degree will be destructive.

Within our immediate circle, it is obvious that mutual communication of expectations and abilities and the establishment of fair arrangements will reduce the overall incidence of anger, and that this is a result toward which we should strive. We could instead take pride in our capacity for anger, claim the right to it in response to every undeserved harm, and demand the satisfaction of our anger through harm to those who had wronged us. It is plain, however, that a move in that direction would be destructive, and that we should seek to control and dissipate our anger except where anger is necessary to achieve important goals that are otherwise unobtainable – as when it supplies needed courage to demand a more equitable distribution of duties where gentler persuasion has failed. Rather than encouraging pride in anger regardless of consequences, the larger society would also do well to seek similar limitations.

V. Conclusion

I have argued that anger rests on a judgment that one has been undeservedly harmed, and a concomitant demand for change. The judgment of undeserved harm, without the demand for change, results in fear or sadness. This demand need not necessarily take the form of a demand for the suffering of the wrongdoer; whether it does depends on whether the angry person is also vindictive.

I have argued that the emotional responses of anger and vindictiveness are not inevitable responses to wrongdoing, and that where they exist, they do not provide an argument for the infliction or augmentation of criminal punishment. These responses are culturally variable. Western society, particularly American society, encourages the response of anger. This is not always a constructive response. Where anger is the response to wrongdoing, it may be mitigated or satisfied in various ways, only one of which is actually to inflict suffering on the wrongdoer. In large part, the demand for the suffering of wrongdoers is simply a demand for the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of one's anger ‑‑ an acknowledgement that can be more constructively be made in other ways. The anger of victims, then, does not provide a special moral justification for punishment beyond those provided by retributive and/or utilitarian theories.

ENDNOTES