This book is very eye-opening & broadening. The author is able to write about philosophy and make it accessible to the lay person. I liked it a lot. ( )

Woede en vergeving is, niet verbazingwekkend voor een filosofisch werk, een conceptuele analyse van de woede. Nussbaum is niet echt geïnteresseerd in de emotie, in de tomeloze kracht ervan, of in de theatrale enscenering. Ze onderzoekt niet hoe ze beleefd wordt of gecultiveerd. Ze geeft geen richtlijnen voor de beheersing van de woede. Ze onderzoekt het begrip en de rationaliteit ervan. Ze doet dat grondig en zorgvuldig.

Haar analyse van de idee ‘woede’ vertrekt vanuit de definitie die Aristoteles opstelde. Ze onderscheidt drie aspecten: pijn of een negatief gevoel, als gevolg van een laakbare daad, gekoppeld aan een wens tot vergelding. Eigenlijk draait het hele boek rond dat laatste aspect: de vergelding. Die kan twee vormen aannemen: die van het ‘oog om oog, tand om tand’ en die van de vernedering. Die eerste vorm is onaanvaardbaar. De executie van een moordenaar brengt het slachtoffer niet opnieuw tot leven. Vergelding kan de laakbare daad nooit ongedaan maken. Wie wraak zoekt, blijft hangen in het verleden. Statusverlaging is een complexer verhaal. De dader heeft het slachtoffer vernederd, maar door zijn status omlaag te halen, wordt in zekere zin het evenwicht hersteld, ook al wordt het kwaad niet ongedaan gemaakt. Alleen is Nussbaum geen grote fan van een samenleving die gebaseerd is op status.

Voor haar draait het om de toekomst. Zodra we ons afvragen hoe we gelijkaardig kwaad in de toekomst kunnen voorkomen, wijkt de woede voor iets anders, voor een toekomstgericht project. Woede kan een tussenstadium zijn. Transitiewoede noemt zij de reactie op de pijn die de laakbare daad veroorzaakt, maar die zich al snel op de toekomst richt. Ze heeft haar nut, want het onrecht moet erkend worden. In het laatste hoofdstuk gaat ze in op de maatschappelijke projecten van Mahatma Ghandhi, Martin Luther King en Nelson Mandela. Zeker King en Mandela geven woede een plaats in hun project, maar beperkt. De nieuwe samenleving waarvan zij dromen, is niet gebaseerd op vergelding, maar op ruimhartigheid. Ze maakt alleen kans als een gezamenlijk project van voormalige tegenstanders. Erkenning van het aangedane leed, is daarbij belangrijk, maar vergelding en ook vergeving, zijn dat niet. Nussbaum wijdt een heel hoofdstuk aan de christelijke en joodse tradities van vergeving. Ze is geen fan van het hele proces van schuldbekentenis en vergeving. Het heeft iets gewelddadigs en creëert ongelijkheid door het slachtoffer in een machtspositie te plaatsen.

Het is een heldere analyse, die staat of valt met de definitie. Het is een beetje vreemd dat zij die vrij snel aanvaardt, terwijl ze in haar betoog soms worstelt met een goede afbakening van het begrip. Zo kan volgens haar woede zich richten op objecten. Denk aan de drankautomaat die wil je geld inslikt, maar het vertikt om een drankje in ruil te geven. Daar kan je kwaad van worden, maar zoek je dan ook vergelding? Is een term als ‘frustratie’ hier niet meer op zijn plaats dan ‘woede’? Ook met het verhaal van Jezus in de tempel heeft ze het moeilijk. Jezus was duidelijk boos toen hij de geldwisselaars uit de tempel verdreef, maar vergelding zocht hij niet meteen. Nussbaum categoriseert zijn woede wat snel als transitiewoede, maar wat is dan het toekomstproject hier? Zou het niet nuttig zijn om een onderscheid te maken, zoals het Nederlands doet, tussen boosheid en woede? Boosheid is dan eerder wat ouders voelen als een kind iets mispeutert. Zij willen dat fout gedrag stopt en meestal verdwijnt de boosheid ook als dat gedrag ophoudt. Als ouders vergelding zoeken tegenover hun kinderen, is er iets grondig mis met de ouder-kind relatie. Soms zien we gedrag dat we ongepast vinden – geldwisselaars in een tempel, een auto geparkeerd op het fietspad, een kind dat tekent op een muur – en is boosheid de manier om een einde te maken aan dat gedrag. Soms is het alleen maar dat.

In het hoofdstuk over Gandhi, King en Mandela, gaat Nussbaum niet in op de religieuze inspiratie van de eerste twee. Nochtans ware het interessant om te onderzoeken in hoeverre de hele idee van ruimhartigheid verbonden is met godsdienst. Dat zou passen in een ruimere analyse van de woede, die niet alleen de idee onderzoekt, maar ook de werking ervan. Woede heeft immers een emotionele component – ze kan je met geweld overvallen – maar ook een culturele – denk maar aan de duelcultuur in Europa, een vorm van geritualiseerde woede. Woede en vergeving is een onmisbaar werk, maar niet het definitieve. ( )

Page numbers are from the Oxford University Press hardcover edition, 2016.

In the words of blurber C. Daniel Batson, Nussbaum calls upon us “to become strange sorts of people, part Stoic and part creatures of love.” Strange indeed, and I am not sure even possible. The Stoics advised against forming attachments, and therefore being able to take losses without distress. Can one form strong attachments, as Nussbaum wants us to do, and not take their loss with anger? I have had a number of people make similar arguments to me, but I have never seen anyone actually live by their own advice. I have tried to train myself not to get angry over small things, and I find it worthwhile. Nevertheless, I believe that anger can be very useful, if carefully controlled, and, like other social skills, exercised with an eye on the consequences. Even Nussbaum is forced to back off a bit with her discussion of Transition-anger, well-grounded anger, and anger as motivation,

There are two major problems with Nussbaum's arguments. She asserts that all problems fall into either the category of things so trivial that they can be ignored, or so serious that the authorities will deal with them with no further input from the victim. False on both counts.

In her section on the Middle Realm, “realm of the multitude of daily transactions we have with people and social groups who are not our close friends and are also not our political institutions or their official agents” (p. 7) she counsels us to ignore slights and other trivia. She recommends turning to the law for “well-being damage.” (p. 164) Alas, the law does not cover all such cases. It is within my own lifetime that protection has been extended to cases involving race, ethnicity, sex, and sexual orientation. It does not cover bullying bosses such as I had at one point. He lied, he publicly attacked people, he tried to arrange to take all the credit while pushing the blame off on other people. One member of our office did file an EEO complaint, but it was denied on the grounds that while he definitely treated her badly, he treated everyone badly, and therefore could not be said to be discriminating. The people above him in the chain of command either explicitly said that they didn't care, or it wasn't their responsibility. Our reputations, our resources, and our jobs were on the line. When I am angry, I think faster, I am bolder, and more focused. I don't think we could have dealt with him without controlled anger, and a unity in sharing ways to outmaneuver him. A man who was hired by the agency to teach us to take our boss more stoically. The teacher told us that he didn't care if we listened or not, he didn't take things personally and he would be paid either way. He threw a temper-tantrum partway through the class.

If it does go to the law, Nussbaum talks as if all trouble and responsibility have been taken off the victim. In fact, the victim is generally just beginning an ordeal; they have to gather information; show up as a witness; show up repeatedly as a witness if the court happens not to get to them in a timely fashion. As a parole officer I know said, no-one cares about the victims. If they have a choice between showing up (again) after another delay, and losing their job, that's their problem. An excellent temporary co-worker, who was trying to get a restraining order against an abusive spouse, and was required to make court appearances on short notice, was almost fired until we persuaded our boss (a different boss from above) that she really, really needed to be granted some slack. The victims / witnesses may face a very long delay until the authorities get around to the case. They may have to discuss deep hurts in public. The defense lawyer may attack them, the perpetrator may taunt them. A television debate was arranged with the mother of a man who had been shot dead by a stranger in front of his family. Although he had been tried and convicted three times, the family was facing a possible fourth trial on mental and technical grounds. How, she asked, was the family to get over his death when the state required them to keep reliving it? At this point, the family wasn't just angry with the murderer.

Martha Nussbaum ends her book with: “I hesitate to end with a slogan that surely betrays my age: but, after so many centuries of folly orchestrated by the retributive spirits, it finally does seem time to 'give peace a chance.' ” I had her dated in the early parts of her book. Her ideas remind me of Karl Menninger and Hugo Bedau and others of that ilk. I think that these kind of ideas and the high crime rate in the 1960s explains the subsequent rise in the popularity of the death sentence, and the institution of victim impact statements, although that was certainly not the intention.

Implicit and sometimes explicit in many of their ideas was the assumption that the victim was a privileged person with every resource at hand for dealing with the impact of crimes, whereas the perpetrator was assumed to be a disadvantaged person unable to control his or her behavior. Nussbaum seems to share in this attitude, demanding that the victim abandon their “narcissistic anger” and focusing heavily on the need to maintain the dignity of the criminal. How then to explain middle- and upper-class white men behaving badly?

I certainly support Nussbaum in fighting crime by social welfare measures; I believe that we owe it to all our children to get them to adulthood in the best health and with the best education that we can manage. Talking about rehabilitation in dealing with the remaining crime is a nice slogan, but I have not seen evidence that we are able to rehabilitate someone without their cooperation. People sometimes accomplish amazing acts of self-reformation, but even that can be very hard.

I find Nussbaum's writing somewhat “stiff”; I had the mental image of trying to walk through a field of mature corn without a machete. I was particularly taken by the phrase “linguistically formulable proposition.” (p.253) Furthermore, her contempt and lack of compassion for the victims of crime thoroughly alienated me. I am also not taking relationship advice from someone who thinks that love is never having to say you're sorry. (Talk about dating one's self.) She also attempted the “we” trick, i.e., she switches from the first person to the second as if this will make the reader think that she has convinced us: “'we' have rejected payback” (p.192), or “'our' ideas of the 'transition'.” She can speak for herself.

Believe it or not, this is only part of what I would have liked to have said, but I'll cut it off here without getting to the subjects of forgiveness or payback. I was going to read Nussbaum's Political Emotions in connection with this book, as recommended by another reviewer, but I have lost interest. ( )

Anger and Forgiveness is Martha Nussbaum's exploration of anger, which she has addressed in previous work. In this volume she addresses forgiveness as a way to somewhat counter anger (though that is an extremely oversimplified statement).

While Nussbaum uses classical texts as part of her foundation don't get confused into thinking she is offering a complete and thorough interpretation of any of those texts. She uses what needs for her argument, and her use s are quite legitimate and valid. Don't get confused by reviewers who criticize her for not doing what she never set out to do, namely give a full explication of specific classical texts. She chooses and explains the portions of texts she uses then goes on to develop her own views on anger and forgiveness. To get bogged down in minutiae rather than assess her thesis in the book is a freshman mistake.

This is not, for me, her strongest work, partly because I view her ideas on and uses of forgiveness as problematic. That said I found much of the argument persuasive with only a few sticking points with which I am unsure I agree. As is usually a sign of a good book, her ideas warrant further thought and reading on my part. If you enjoy being challenged about concepts we often take for granted, I believe you will find much to appreciate in this book.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )