Turn Anger into Passionate Disagreement

A Pragmatic Proposal

Bibliographic Data

ID13001969
AuthorsMara‐Daria Cojocaru (0000-0001-6084-6380, Munich School of Philosophy, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume12
Issue2
Publication date2020-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2036-4091 • E-ISSN: 2036-4091
PublisherAssociazione Pragma (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.4000/ejpap.2147
OpenAlexW3110914627
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited31

People can be outraged over, say, mismanagement or fraud and motivated to address such problems; they can, however, also be angry and lash out against the innocent. In addition to such unpredictability, angry people can seem literally out of their mind. My aim is to render anger intelligible and productive from a social epistemological perspective: epistemological because I assume that anger involves value recognition and arouses reflection; social because I assume that the related values and inquiries involve questions of justice and/or morality. I believe that value disagreements are set up at cross purposes if we disqualify the emotional reactions of those whom we judge too unpleasant to understand. However, I also believe that we should not take anger at face value. My proposal is pragmatic for two reasons. First, and in line with classical pragmatist tenets about the role of doubt and other emotions in reasoning, it is pragmatic because I think that anger results from moral and political uncertainty and leads to a failure to understand one another and, hence, to a failure to act together. Second, my proposal is more concerned with what could be made of anger rather than focussing on what anger essentially is. In sum, I suggest that communities can regulate and use the variety of angry experiences in situations of uncertainty and conflict about moral and political values; that would be “passionate disagreement.” I explain four pragmatic considerations that go along with it and address three problems one might raise in response

Anger · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept · Morality · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Politics · Pragmatism · Set (abstract data type · Social science · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social Psychology

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