Rethinking Anger as a Desire for Payback

A Modified Thomistic View

Bibliographic Data

ID3579411
AuthorsJan Rippentrop Schnell (University of Iowa, corresponding author), Diana Fritz Cates (0000-0003-3641-9383, University of Iowa)
Year2019
Volume10
Issue11
Pages618
Publication date2019-11-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel10110618
OpenAlexW2987106696
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited31

This essay takes a fresh approach to a traditional Western philosophical account of anger, according to which anger is best defined as a desire for payback, namely, a desire to make an offender pay a price, in the currency of unwanted pain, for the pain he caused someone else. The essay focuses more specifically on the work of Thomas Aquinas, whose account of anger is often thought to center on a desire for 'just vengeance.' It analyzes and extends aspects of Aquinas's account that have previously been treated too narrowly. It distinguishes three forms of anger, each of which has important features in common, which justify characterizing it as anger. Only one of these forms involves a desire to make an offender suffer for what he did. Even as this essay argues for articulating different forms of anger, it emphasizes the fluidity of anger's forms, features, and relationships to other emotions. It briefly engages philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspectives while working principally in the domain of religious ethics and moral psychology

Anger · Epistemology · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social Psychology

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