The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 1 (Fall, 1998) of the APA Newsletters

On Virginia Held’s view, "a feminist ethic will not just acknowledge emotion, as do Utilitarians, as giving us the objectives toward which moral rationality can direct us; it will embrace emotion as providing at least a partial basis for morality itself" (Held 1993: 52). The emotions she identifies as moral guides for action are caring, sensitivity and respect for others’ feelings (Held 1993: 52). In this paper, I will defend a fuller appreciation of emotion, showing the potential value of the ‘negative’ emotions of rage and resentment as moral illuminators.

There is a long standing tradition in ethical theory of denying that the expression of ‘nasty’ emotions can ever be a sign of moral fibre and strength. Ronald de Sousa for instance argues that emotions like "envy, motiveless malice, certain forms of resentment, despair" are "ethically worthless" or "wholly nasty," "redeemed neither by the motives they might induce, nor by any intrinsic pleasure they bring, nor by any contribution they make to correct ethical evaluations" (De Sousa 1987: 315). De Sousa does, however, concede that perhaps "no case is quite uncontroversial" (De Sousa 1987: 315).

While some philosophers, like Aristotle, see a role for anger in moral living, the kind of anger that is deemed commendable is tempered by calm reason. It is not intense anger in the form of rage. The person who gets angry appropriately will be a patient person, Aristotle maintains, "inasmuch as patience is commendable, because a patient person tends to be unperturbed and not carried away by his feelings, but indignant only in the way and on the grounds and for the length of time that his principle prescribes" (Aristotle 1125b14-43). Philosophers tend to assume that moral endeavour necessarily stems from dispassionate attention, where one puts aside selfish and other ‘nasty’ concerns.

For instance, Martha Nussbaum states:

The comparison of our relations with a person to our relations with a work of art show us a way in which ethical attention might have fine-tuned perception and responsive feeling, while remaining free of the personal resentment, rage, and jealousy that too frequently characterize our personal dealings (Nussbaum 1990: 146).

Iris Murdoch, who also emphasizes dispassionate reflection as essential to moral endeavour, similarly writes:

The love which brings the right answer is an exercise of justice and realism and really looking. The difficulty is to keep the attention fixed upon the real situation and to prevent it from returning surreptitiously to the self with consolations of self-pity, resentment, fantasy and despair" (Murdoch 1980: 91, her emphasis).

It is uncertain, however, whether strong negative emotions like resentment, rage and jealousy, which propel the self’s wants and desires, necessarily jeopardize a loving attitude. It may be possible and sometimes morally desirable to attain the disinterestedness characteristic of aesthetic engagement without quelling the self’s impassioned concerns. As Frye claims, a loving perspective does not require self-denial but a knowledge of the boundaries of the self, of one’s interests and desires (positive and negative), where one knows "what is and is not determined by these" (Frye 1983: 75).

Consider, for instance, the example Murdoch gives of a mother, whom she calls "M," and her daughter-in-law, whom she calls "D" (Murdoch 1980: 17). M initially finds D "pert and familiar, insufficiently ceremonious, brusque, sometimes positively rude, always tiresomely juvenile" (17). Further she does not like "D’s accent or the way D dresses" (17). In other words, M is a snob: she feels "her son has married beneath him" (17). But M, "who is a very ‘correct’ person" (17) hides her real opinion toward the young woman. As time passes M becomes very distressed by what she perceives to be an unfortunate match and determines to look again at D to reassess her merits. After engaging in ‘just and loving’ attention, M discovers D to be "not vulgar but refreshingly simple, not undignified, but spontaneous, not noisy but gay, not tiresomely juvenile but delightfully youthful" (18). M comes to see D in what would appear to be the most objective possible way.

But while it is loving of M to overcome her hostility toward D and value her as a member of her family, it is questionable whether it is loving of her to see D in a way that would seem to romanticize the latter’s lack of education and working-class background. Seeing D from the new perspective may arise less from altruism than from self-interest, since in so doing she escapes several distresses: seeing her son in an unfortunate marriage; feeling inadequate for not loving her son’s choice of life partner; apprehending social inequalities which would challenge her sense of inborn superiority. Needless to say, M’s appreciation of qualities that have their origin in social realities is unlikely to draw attention to these realities. This is not to deny that one can consistently perceive D in a positive light and recognize social injustices, but this is not the kind of case Murdoch presents. M does not reason that D’s traits are a function of her lack of social opportunities and that it would be unfair and ungenerous to harbour ill-feeling toward D over factors for which she is not responsible. Rather, she attributes her initial negative judgment wholly to faults within herself: "I am old-fashioned and conventional. I may be prejudiced and narrow-minded. I may be snobbish. I am certainly jealous" (17).

Murdoch’s example suggests, contrary to its intent, that dispassionate reflection is not necessarily sufficient for proper ethical response since it may be that the general world-view governing one’s perception of individual realities needs to be challenged. A question like "Should I devote myself entirely to my husband, children and home or pursue a professional career?" cannot be addressed impartially simply by putting aside considerations that would be considered selfish since in a sexist society, which relegates domestic tasks to women, the first option naturally commands more support.

M’s general world-view may be seen as involving a conception of human character as made up of conventional beliefs, prejudices, inborn traits like good-heartedness, and traits specific to social class, such as dignity, a trait, it could be argued, she initially sees as not belonging to members of the working-class. Her perspective attributes no significant constitutive function to deeply oppressive social institutions. One might think that M does in fact challenge this vision when she changes her belief that D is undignified. But this change is not far-reaching, and only self-reflective, based on a belief that aspects of her own personality, some of which she regards as products of her higher social class and upbringing, are causing her to attribute to D negative traits.

Since M is able to revise her view of D without examining closely social inequalities which have contributed to some of D’s traits, traits M initially found undesirable, she feels no anger regarding these inequalities. And since she has no sense of the unfairness of things, no feeling of outrage that D was denied opportunities unjustly, she cannot embrace D whole-heartedly, with full acceptance and without illusions. She simply substitutes a different picture of D, one that romanticizes D’s traits. Seeing D as a kind of noble peasant serves to gloss over the ugliness associated with economic oppression, from which D has suffered. Thus while M’s change of attitude toward D reflects, admittedly, a degree of moral progression, M does not, contrary to what Murdoch claims, see D as she really is; she does not display a deep, penetrating love that grasps D within horizons of social meanings.

It is not insignificant that Murdoch in emphasizing dispassionate reflection in her account of moral endeavour presents examples of dilemmas where one can engage in such reflection. She writes:

Should a retarded child be kept at home or sent to an institution? Should an elderly relation who is a trouble-maker be cared for or asked to go away? Should an unhappy marriage be continued for the sake of the children? Should I neglect them in order to practice my art? (Murdoch 1980:91).

All of these cases call for the exercise of calm reason and are not such that they require on-the-spot solutions. Now consider the following dilemma: "Should a woman harm her husband to stop him from violently beating their daughter or call the police and wait for them to come?" In a situation like this there is no time for "really looking" (Murdoch 1980:91, her emphasis); one’s look must be like a bolt of lightening, penetrating the situation in a flash so that one acts immediately. Dispassionate reflection is simply not the suitable response here, but concentrated rage—intense, ‘blind’ fixation, which excludes all else. This heightens one’s awareness and sharpens one’s powers, one’s ability to think synthetically and analytically, enabling the mother to grasp immediately that a serious injustice is being committed against her daughter. The previous example involving M shows, on my reading of it, that dispassionate attention is not always sufficient for correct moral response, (if one assumes that M does in fact express a loving attitude toward D and her change of perspective is motivated by altruism instead of self-interest). This example, by contrast, demonstrates that dispassionate attention is not always necessary for moral goodness and is in some cases inimical to this goodness. Precisely by being dominated by her anger, feeling as though she were about to explode, the mother will be able to put aside her love and loyalty to her husband and use force to stop him from hurting their child. A systematic, reflective consideration of the situation, e.g., whether aggressive action would impair their marriage or her husband’s body, would be hazardous for the child.

The case for anger as often an appropriate and positive response has been made by several feminist philosophers (Frye 1983, Jaggar 1992, Spelman 1992) and is somewhat easier to defend than other ‘nasty’ emotions such as resentment. For the rest of this paper I will argue for the moral value of some instances and expressions of resentment through a discussion of the film A Girl’s Town.

In this film the character "Emma," with her friends, vandalizes the car of a man who raped her in protest against his sexual abuse. Emma spray paints the word "rapist" on the front of the car and throws a brick through one of the windows. It is as if the view of the rapist’s expensive, immaculate car intensifies her resentment to the point where she achieves the insight that men who commit rape should not be allowed to continue their lives without distress (perhaps only to rape more women) while women are left to shoulder completely the burden of suffering that they create—suffering which may be too heavy for some women to bear, such as that of her friend "Nikki," who commits suicide out of severe depression as a result of being raped.

One might argue that Emma’s resentment is irrational, or extreme, because of the violent course it takes and that she should take the route of the law and press formal charges against her assailant. But certainly there is nothing irrational about the belief that those who commit brutal crimes should be made to suffer for them. One may, of course, regard her resentment as appropriate without finding her expression of it rational. Obviously, when she throws the brick through the window she is not experiencing reflective calm, but intense, ‘blinding’ rage. But, I would argue, this does not mean that her behaviour is irrational, foolhardy, or ‘crazy’. Given that rapists are often not found guilty in a court of law and if they are, their punishment is mild compared to the punishment of other severe crimes (eg., attempted murder), pursuing the avenue of the law may not result in the victim’s empowerment. A woman who charges a man with rape might have to face a lot of hostility from others who may trivialize the crime or refuse to believe that the man indeed committed it, especially if the criminal is a well-respected member of society. Such hostility will make it difficult for the woman to recover from the trauma and go on with her life, return to school, work, etc. (Herman 1992: 165). Also, legal proceedings take time, and it may be that just as she is starting to feel better the court date arrives and she is flooded with intrusive, traumatic symptoms (Herman 1992: 165). Thus Emma’s destructive behaviour may be judged rational just as one would judge rational Emma’s attempt to stop a man from raping her with the use of physical violence. Fighting to stop one’s rape and getting small revenge against one’s rapist are both equally non-excessive acts in the unconditional interest of one’s self-integration.

In another scene Emma decides to confront the man who raped Nikki, thinking "he would look guilty, like he was paying for it." Contrary to her expectations, he smiles arrogantly and confesses nothing. Later on, Emma and her two friends meet him outside as he is leaving his workplace, denouncing him for the rape. He answers condescendingly and confidently that there must be some misunderstanding, which causes the women to attack him. Emma knees him in the groin and they leave him lying on the ground in pain. In this case a punitive expression of resentment is morally good because the perpetrator takes no responsibility for his act; he shows no remorse for his wrongdoing; and there is small or no likelihood of the wrong being ‘righted’ in the scales of justice. Here, as in the instance involving the destruction of the rapist’s car, the young women experience a sense of joy in their expression of strong ‘negative’ emotions, laughing and congratulating each other afterwards, which testifies to the sense of empowerment their ‘evil’ behaviour affords.

According to a survey conducted in the early 1980s by Diana Russell, a well-known sociologist and human rights activist, out of a random sample of over 900 women, one woman in four had been raped and one woman in three had been sexually abused as a child (Herman 1992:30). Given such pervasive sexual exploitation and the debilitating emotional effects for victims, such as profoundly negative self-esteem, many expressions of resentment similar to the ones the characters in Girl’s Town display will be morally good.

It should be emphasized, however, that my argument does not imply that, for instance, because it is morally good for Emma and her friends to engage in resentful behaviour toward particular rapists, i.e. the man who raped their friend Nikki and the man who raped Emma, it is morally good for them to forcefully protest against all sexual abusers. Nor does it mean that the mother should harm all the violent people in her neighbourhood because they are potential abusers of her daughter. To see this, compare and contrast Nel Noddings’ care ethicist position regarding an abusive partner. She claims that the abused woman, rather than withdraw from the relationship (unless her life is seriously endangered), should stop accepting the abuse and with the help of "loving models" who will reject any abuse in their presence, teach the abuser to be a more caring person (Noddings 1990: 124). Note, Noddings’ view is not that the abused woman has a responsibility to improve all abusive partners but only her own abusive partner, found in her own specific context.

Thus, this is not to deny that many expressions of resentment and of rage are irredeemably nasty but only to indicate that the possible forms of moral behaviour and of moral emotions are much more varied than has traditionally been supposed.