Anger, rage, fury: it seems like everywhere we look right now, we see rising temperatures, smoldering resentment, blood boiling, floods of emotion. From Trump to Brexit, Hindu Nationalism to Black Lives Matter, from Hollywood me too to Pandemic Protestors, ISIS to white nationalists, Ukraine to Fox News, to my ongoing conflict with my unreasonably slow computer, it seems, as the historian Pankaj Mishra has argued, like we’re living in an age of anger.

I look at the history and philosophy of anger. What is it? What triggers it? Is it ever good? I look at the Stoics – including Epictetus and Seneca – Aristotle, Christianity, Enlightenment figures like Rousseau, Hume, and Adam Smith, through to modern day anger management psychology. I make some surprising findings about the usefulness of a misunderstood emotion.

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Sources:

Faith Harper, Unfuck Your Brain, Using Science To Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-Outs, and Triggers

Barabara Rosenwein, Anger: The Conflicted History of an Emotion

Ryan Martin, Why We Get Mad: How to Use Your Anger for Positive Change

Ost D. Politics as the Mobilization of Anger: Emotions in Movements and in Power. European Journal of Social Theory.

Pankaj Mishra, The Age of Anger: A History of the Present

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...

Martha Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice

Seneca, On Anger

Aristotle, Rhetoric

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/op...

David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks

William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

John Sellars, Stoicism

Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy

Stoicism: A Very Short Introduction

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Epictitus, Handbook & Discourses

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