Seneca: “To Novatus on Anger.” In Moral and Political Essays. John M. Cooper and J.F. Procopé, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Seneca’s older brother has asked “how anger can be alleviated,” and Seneca agrees that it should be, as anger is “the most hideous and frenzied of all emotions,” indeed “utterly inhuman” (I.i.1). Anger “most resembles those ruins which crash into pieces over what they have crushed” (I.i.2). “No plague has cost the human race more,” having emptied cities of human life.” (I.ii.1). “Look upon gathered throngs put to the sword, on the military sent in to butcher the populace en masse, on whole peoples condemned to death in an indiscriminate devastation” (I.ii.1). Thus, Seneca’s first way of alleviating anger is to remind his brother how ugly and destructive its results can be.
Anger is a distinctively human passion. Human beings become angry because, as Aristotle observes, want to “pay back pain” (I.ii.3). “Wild animals,” Seneca observes, “are angered without being provoked by wrong and without aiming to inflict punishment or pain on others”; they may be frenzied, ferocious, and aggressive, but never angry, strictly speaking (I.iii.3). Only human beings become morally enraged because only human beings reason. “Anger may be the enemy of reason. It cannot, at the same time, come into being except where there is a place for reason.” (I.iii.3). Reason discovers ‘should’ and ‘should not,’ and indeed makes them thinkable. Animals never get that far.
Does anger accord with nature? No: “What is milder than man, when he is in his right mind? But what is crueler than anger?” (I.v.2). “Human life rests upon kindnesses and concord; bound together, not by terror but by love reciprocated, it becomes a bond of mutual assistance”; anger, however, is “greedy for punishment” (I.v.3). True, punishment is “sometimes necessary,” but it should be inflicted “without anger” and aided by reason (I.vi.1). (Centuries later, John Locke would advise fathers to spank their sons, but calmly. In this, Locke followed Seneca.) Even capital punishment need not be done in anger, as “no one should be put to death save he whose death will benefit even himself” (I.vi.3). Punish not because you enjoy punishing; punish to make the miscreant “an example to all” (I.vi.4). “At least by their death they can serve the public good!” (I.vi.4).
Seneca criticizes Aristotle’s treatment of anger in the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle would “moderate anger, not remove it,” on the grounds that moderate anger “rouses and spurs the mind,” inspiring the soul with courage (I.vii.1). Seneca will have none of that. Anger isn’t natural at all, he argues; it is a deformation of reason. Aristotle proposes something that’s dangerously difficult: “It is easier to admit the forces of ruin than to govern them” (I.vii.2). Further, reason rules only “so long as it remains isolated from the affections,” not “mixed and contaminated with them” (I.vii.3). The passions or affections may be controlled when they first arise, but soon “they sweep us on with a force of their own and allow no turning back,” turning reason into their servant—the guide and scout of the passions, as Hobbes puts it (I.vii.4). Better to practice ‘forward defense,’ stopping the enemy at the frontier. If anger grows strong, reason cannot limit it; if, on the contrary, anger is weaker than reason, then “reason can do without it,” being “sufficient by itself for getting things done,” with “no need for a weaker ally” to screw its courage to the sticking post (I.viii.5). “Virtue needs no vice to assist it; it suffices for itself” (I.ix.1). Aristotle is wrong, by definition: If anger “listens to reason and follows where led, it is no longer anger, the hallmark of which is willful disobedience” to reason, a going-beyond of what reason justly prescribes (I.ix.2). Anger is “as useless a subordinate in the soul as a soldier who ignores the signal for retreat” (I.ix.2). Moderate passion “means simply moderate evil” (I.x.4).
What, then, does courage consist of, if not of moderated anger? “The surest courage is to look around long and hard, to govern oneself, to move slowly and deliberately forward” (I.xi.8). Courage is a form of self-rule; in a human being, self-rule is the rule of reason, pure and simple. “The good man will do his duty, undismayed and undaunted, and he will do what is worthy of a good man without doing anything unworthy of a man” (I.xii.2). Anything less signifies “a weak mind, not a devoted one,” and indeed to be too eager to punish means you are unfit to punish—little better, maybe worse, than the one you want to punish (I.xii.5). “Reason itself is enough not merely for foresight but for action” (I.xvii.2).
Why would a good man become angry with wrongdoers? They did wrong out of error, and don’t we all? “How much more humane to show a mild, paternal spirit, not harrying those who do wrong, but calling them back” (I.xiv.3). Chastisement, yes; anger, no. It should be remarked that Seneca mixes no tenderness with his justice, given that tenderness, too, is a passion. One may well need to amputate a limb; what one doesn’t need, what would be irrational to feel, is hating the limb as you amputate it. “We put down mad dogs; we kill the wild, untamed ox; we use the knife on sick sheep to stop their inflecting the flock; we destroy abnormal offspring at birth; children, too, if they are born weak or deformed, we drown. Yet this is not the work of anger, but of reason—to separate the sound from the worthless” (I.xv.2). And in fact we should amputate or kill anger in our souls, as it is “a misdemeanor of the soul” (I.xvi.1). “Killing is sometimes the best form of compassion,” if compassion is understood less as a passion, more as rational mercy (I.xvi.4).
Passions waver, waxing and waning. Reason hold steady, so long as it makes no concession to passion. “Having judged that something should be done, it sticks to its judgment” because “it will find nothing better than itself into which it might change” (I.xvii.3). Like all the passions, anger is strong while it lasts, but it lacks “staying-power” (I.xvii.4). Because it can’t hold steady, anger rushes to judgment; because it does hold steady, reason takes its time. Like a wise judge, it takes the time to hear both sides of the case, “then demands a further adjournment to give itself room to tease out the truth” (I.xviii.1). While anger flames up at “irrelevant trifles,” reason “considers nothing save the matter at issue” (I.xviii.2). “Even if the truth is put before its eyes,” anger “fondly defends its error” (I.xviii.2); “it rages at truth itself, if truth appears to conflict with its wishes” (Ixix.1).
“Reason does none of this. Silently and serenely, if the need arises, it obliterates entire households; families that are a plague to the commonwealth it destroys, wives, children, and all; it tears down their roofs and levels them to the ground; the very names of foes to liberty it extirpates”—all “without gnashing its teeth or shaking its head or acting in any way improperly for a judge whose countenance should be at its calmest and most composed as he pronounces on matters of importance” (I.xix.2). Since Rousseau, such calmness in severity has been judged inhuman; since Christianity, it has been judged to be reserved only for God, since Christianity holds the passions always too powerful for reason to master. None of ‘the ancients’ better shows the distance between himself and ‘the moderns’ as Seneca.
Nonetheless, Senecan justice never precludes mercy. The man of reason “often releases a miscreant of proven guilt, if the man’s repentance gives good grounds for hope” (I.xix.5). After all, criminal action stems from error; correct the error and you are no longer criminal. For this reason, the man of reason might punish “a major crime less severely than a minor one, if the one is merely a lapse and not an expression of ingrained cruelty, while the other conceals a secret, hidden and hardened craftiness” (I.xix.6). In this, as Seneca himself remarks, Seneca follows Plato.
Angry persons intend to terrorize. Don’t be impressed. “Their noise is great and threatening, the mind within terror-struck” (I.xx.5). That is, the angry are the ones gripped by fear, which their anger serves to conceal. They use their anger when they should be using their reason to rule their fear. If you respond as they expect, you will only initiate the same cycle of weakness in your own soul. Anger thus does not enhance but prevents magnanimity or greatness of soul.
In sum, “there is nothing about anger, not even in the apparent extravagance of its disdain for gods and men, that is great or noble” (I.xxi.1). Achilles is weak, not strong; Homer is right to compare him to raging rivers and wild boars. One might as well call self-indulgent extravagance ‘magnificence’; avarice the token of “a great mind”; lust wide-ranging as it “castrates whole flocks of boys and braves the husband’s sword in contempt of death”; ambition grand when it demands the highest offices for itself alone (I.xxi.1-3). “Virtue alone is exalted and lofty. Nor is anything great which is not at the same time calm.” (I.xxi.4).
Is Seneca’s critique of Aristotle fair? He overlooks or excludes some features of Aristotle’s treatment of anger. Famously, Aristotle defines each virtue as a mean between two extremes. He, too, considers gentleness a virtue, “a mean with respect to anger” (Nicomachean Ethics 1125b26)—specifically, the mean between irascibility and inirascibility or poor-spiritedness. Mindful of the kind of critique Seneca will advance, centuries later, he also considers the mean difficult to ‘hit,’ to achieve. And of course he lauds the rule of reason in the human soul. “The gentle person wishes to be calm and not led by his passion, but rather as reason may command, and to be harsh regarding the things he ought and for the requisite time” (1126a). He remarks a phenomenon Seneca overlooks, except perhaps when he mentions the calculating criminal: anger doesn’t always flare up and out. There are “bitter” people who sustain their anger for a long time “because they restrain their spirit [thumos],” in effect using reason to maintain a standing reserve of animosity against some real or imagined offense. This abuse of man’s rational capacity accounts for the irascible character.
That is, to some extent the dispute between Aristotle and Seneca is merely verbal. Aristotle maintains that anger should be governed by reason; Seneca maintains that anger governed by reason is no longer anger. More than that, however, Seneca wants reason to purge the soul of anger altogether, a task Aristotle would likely consider impossible. For his part, Seneca replies that what Aristotle proposes is also impossible or at least extraordinarily difficult because anger so readily overpowers reason. “The downward path to vice is easy” (II.i.1).
What makes Seneca’s rationalist absolutism possible, livable? Given his distinction between anger and bestial ferocity, he (like Aristotle) observes that anger starts with a decision, not an impulse. True, “anger is undoubtedly set in motion by an impression received of a wrong” (II.i.3). But that impression as it were filters through the mind of the one who receives the impression. Anger “undertakes nothing on its own, but only with the mind’s approval” (II.4); “it is a voluntary fault of the mind” (II.ii.2). Our indignation may result immediately from some injury, such as physical pain or the experience of of injustice. But anger “is an emotion, which outleaps reason and drags it along” (II.iii.4). He identifies three movements of the soul, respecting anger. “The first is “involuntary, a preparation…for emotion, a kind of threat”; the second movement is “voluntary but not insistent,” a judgment that the injury inflicted upon me is morally unjustified; anger is the final stage, when the emotion ranges “out of control, wanting retribution not just ‘if it is right’ but at all costs” (II.iv.1). The first movement “is a mental jolt which we cannot escape through reason,” an ‘autonomic’ response, as modern psychologists would say. The second movement requires reasoning, a comparison of the injurious act with a standard of justice. It is the third movement that subordinates reasoning to passion, producing the emotion of anger. Emotions jumble themselves with reason, malignantly. Concurring now with Aristotle, Seneca adds that some men become “habitually ferocious,” “rejoic[ing] in human blood” (II.v.1)—irascible.
By this definition, anger is never righteous but “sordid and narrow-minded” (II.vi.1); “at every moment” the irascible man “will see something to disapprove of” (II.vii.2). This is especially true of the wise man who succumbs to anger; his superior perception will find injustice everywhere, leaving in a perpetual condition of indignation. This is the wrong way to live. “Rejoicing and joy are the natural property of virtue” (II.vi.2) or, as Aristotle maintains, happiness is the telos of human life. “You will do better to hold, instead, that no one should be angry with error” (II.x.1).
After all, “no one is angry with children who are too young to know the difference between things” (II.x.2). Simply “being human is more of an excuse, and a juster excuse, than being a child” since we humans are “animals prone to ailments of the mind no less than of the body, not exactly stupid or slow, but given to misusing our shrewdness, each an example of vice to the others” (II.x.3). One sees this when people gather in crowds, at the forum or the marketplace: “A gathering of wild animals is what you have here, were it not that animals are calm among themselves and refrain from biting their own kind” (III.viii.3). The wise man rids himself of anger by considering “the sheer multitude of wrongdoers” (II.x.4). Whereas the wise Heraclitus wept over humanity, failing to see that “he himself was among those to be lamented,” wise but more virtuous Democritus “was never seen in public without a smile on his face, so utterly unserious did anything that was taken seriously seem to him” (II.x.5). A wise man should recognize the rarity of men who are wise. Otherwise, melancholy and even misanthropy will be his lot. He should rather view mankind “with the kindly gaze of a doctor viewing the sick” (II.x.7).
To those who claim that anger is useful because it “enables you to escape contempt and it frightens the wicked,” Seneca replies that a man who can back up his anger with credible threats will inspire “not only fear but hatred” (II.xi.1). That makes it “more dangerous to be feared than [to be] despised” (II.xi.1). And, of course, if you can’t back up your threats you will be despised even more. What is more, to inspire fear has no moral benefit in itself, since physical disease is also feared and has nothing good about it. Fear “impresses little minds,” men of micropsychia (II.xi.5).
Because there is always a point when reason can either take or lose control of the passions, it must be that none of them “are so fierce and self-willed that they cannot be tamed by training,” by habituation (II.xii.3). “Anything that the mind commands it can do,” especially if the reward is great (II.xii.3). And it is: “the unshaken calm of a happy mind” (II.xii.6).
And such self-habituation isn’t even as difficult as it seems. “The way to blessedness is easy,” he tells his brother; “just embark on it with good auspices and with the good offices of the gods themselves” (II.xiii.2). It is instead “doing what you do,” seething with anger, that “is much more difficult”; “nothing is more toilsome than anger” and “nothing more occupied than cruelty” (II.xiii.2). “Every virtue…is easy to guard, whereas vice costs a lot to cultivate”—specifically, an endless cycle of turmoil and crime whereby the wicked are never reformed (II.xiv.3). Admittedly, “sometimes it is necessary to strike into those on whom reason has no effect,” but to do so angrily only repeats the fear-anger-fear-anger dynamic (II.xiv.1). We see this in “all those nations that are free because ferocious,” like “lions and wolves”; “they cannot obey, but neither can they command,” as “no one can govern if he cannot be governed (II.xv.4). Our exemplars shouldn’t be the supposedly ‘noble’ animal species, but the “divine cosmos, which man alone of all animals”—because he “has reason in place of impulse”—can “understand in order alone to imitate it” (II.xvi.1-2).
And here Seneca himself imitates not only the cosmos, in good Stoic fashion, but Aristotle. “The wise an ought to strike a mean, approaching whatever calls for firm action, not with anger, but strength” (II.xviii.2).
The remedies for anger fall into two categories. One should avoid falling into it in the first place or, failing that, refraining from doing wrong when in a state of anger. The first defense against anger is education, “to give children from the start a sound upbringing” (II.xxi.1). In early childhood, illness, physical injury, or fatigue can initiate an angry disposition, but “the most powerful factor is habit,” which “feeds the failing” (II.xx.2). Seneca recognizes that “it is hard to change a person’s nature,” since “once the elements have been mixed at birth, to alter them is out of the question” (II.xx.2). Nonetheless, a naturally hot-tempered, choleric child can be given exercise to burn off the steam (“without actually tiring themselves,” which would make them cranky); “games, too, will help,” as “pleasure in moderation relaxes and balances the mind” (II.xx.3). A phlegmatic child, who will tend not to anger but to fear (“nervousness, intractability, hopelessness, suspicion”) doesn’t need anger to rouse him but joyous activities that lift his spirits (II.xx.4). In each case, parents should take care not to tyrannize their children: “The spirit grows through freedom to act, subjection crushes it” (II.xxi.3). And they should avoid too much praise, which “generate[s] arrogance and irascibility” of spirit (II.xxi.3). “Our pupil has to be guided between the two extremes, sometimes reined in, sometimes spurred on,” never made to “undergo anything demeaning or servile” (II.xxi.4). Humility doesn’t develop through humiliation. Reward him, but only “for merit, for past achievement or future promise” (II.xxi.4). And in those games he plays, encourage him to make friends with the opponents he usually faces, “so as to give him the habit, in a contest, of wanting not to hurt, but to win” (II.xxi.5).
Another means of preventing the development of habitual anger in your son is to “keep him far from any contact with luxury” (II.xxi.6). “Nothing does more to make people bad-tempered than a soft, comfortable education,” which disarms the soul when confronted with “the shocks of life” (II.xxi.6). “They should have their parents’ wealth before their eyes, but not at their disposal” (II.xxi.8). This goes for psychic as well as physical luxury. “If he has never been denied anything, if he always had an anxious other to wipe his tears away, if he has always been backed up against his tutor,” he will expect more from life than he deserves and, upon failing to get what he expects, will rage at the violation of his mistaken opinion of justice (II.xxi.6). He is on the way to tyranny or servility. A genuinely civil social education is indispensable. “Above all, the boy’s diet should be simple, his clothing inexpensive, his style of life like that of his peers. He will not be angry to have someone compared with him, if from the start you have put him on the same level as a lot of people.” (II.xxi.10). Such a child will be on his way to citizenship, to ruling and being ruled in turn rather than to play the master to a world of slaves.
After childhood, habituation against anger is more difficult. Seneca recurs to his fundamental point: “The cause of bad temper is the opinion that we have been wronged”; that being so, this opinion “should not readily be trusted” by an adult (II.xxii.2). “The greatest harm comes from readiness to believe things” (II.xxiv.1)—malicious gossip or the latest conspiracy theory. Train your soul not to be “irritated by vulgar trivialities”; re-mind yourself by holding your soul above them (II.xxv.1). Since “nothing fosters bad temper more than immoderate, impatient self-indulgence,” avoid the luxury your parents should have shielded you against (II.xxv.4). Don’t become angry at inanimate things, animals, or the gods; things and animals are amoral and, as to the gods, they “neither wish to cause trouble, nor can they,” as “their nature is gentle and kindly, as averse to wronging others as to wronging themselves” (II.xxvii.1). Don’t be foolish: “We are not the world’s reason for bringing back winter and summer” (II.xxvii.2). Natural events “follow laws of their own” and they “govern things divine” (II.xxvii.2).
As for our fellow humans, “good magistrates, parents, teachers and judges” have “no wish to harm us” (II.xxvii.3). If they punish us, or even if we encounter bad persons who exercise authority over us, “we should think not only of what we are suffering, but of what we have done, taking our whole life into consideration” (II.xxviii.4). If we do so, we will soon understand “that no one of us is faultless” (II.xxviii.1), a thought that “should make us more reasonable towards wrongdoers, ready to accept reproach, free of anger, at any rate, towards good men” and “above all towards the gods” (II.xxviii.4). The cosmos is not against you. You are the real problem, not it.
To avoid anger, “the greatest enemy is delay” (II.xxix.29), the proverbial counting to ten. If someone tells you an injury has been done to you by a good man, don’t believe it; if by a bad man, don’t be surprised. “Reckon on everything, expect every thing!” (II.xxxi.4). Even good natures have their rough edges, and “there will always be something to annoy you” (II.xxxi.5). “Each of us has within himself the mentality of a monarch; he would like carte blanche for himself, but not for any opposition” (II.xxxi.3). Work on turning the monarch within into a person truly royal. “The mark of a great mind is to look down on injuries received,” exhibiting megalopsychia not micropsychia. “A great and noble person, like a great beast of the wild, calmly hears out the yapping of tiny dogs” (II.xxxii.3). And if the powerful abuse you, those you cannot dismiss, “it is better to dissimulate than to seek retribution,” putting on “a cheerful look,” not expecting them to reform themselves and knowing you are powerless to do so (II.xxxiii.1). Such men “hate those whom they have harmed”; provoke them no further (II.xxxiii.1). A man who had “achieved that rarest of distinctions at [the royal] court, old age,” explained this anomaly by saying he had adopted a policy of saying ‘Thank you’ to those who wronged him (II.xxxiii.2).
If, despite your best efforts, you succumb to anger, what can a man do to alleviate it? First, recognize its power. Anger doesn’t creep up on you; “it begins at full strength” (III.i.3). Other passions draw you away from reason but anger rips you away from sanity itself. “Not even failure can weary it,” and “if the adversary has the luck to escape, it turns its teeth on itself” (III.i.5). As suggested earlier, other passions confine themselves to individuals but “anger is the one emotion that is sometimes caught by a whole community” (III.ii.2), which is why “barbarians rush haphazardly into war” (III.ii.6). Seneca repeats his criticism of Aristotle for giving anger a degree of ethical ‘standing,’ again because Aristotle underestimates its power, perhaps especially in politics.
This is why Seneca recurs to urging Novatus to avoid anger in the first place. Consider its consequences, all of them bad, and bad because unnatural. “Nature exhorts us to love, anger to hatred; nature tells us to help anger to harm” (III.v.7). “While its indignation comes from undue self-regard, which gives it a look of spiritedness, anger is petty and mean, since no one can help being inferior to the man who he feels has despised him.,” whereas the magnanimous soul, “with its true self-awareness will not avenge, since it has not noticed the wrong done to it” (III.v.7). “There is no surer proof of greatness than to be unprovoked by anything that can possibly happen,” as tranquil as “the higher and better ordered part of the world, the part nearer the stars” (III.vi.1).
Still, what should you do if angered? Stop it when it first appears; make a joke of the situation; postpone any action while in its grip; exert your mind to suppress it. “If you wish to avoid bad temper, mind your own business” (III.xi.1). Tell yourself, truly, that “reason forbids it, and I have entrusted my life to reason’s governance” (III.xxv.4). It is “more satisfactory to heal a wrong than to exact retribution for it” (III.xxvii.1), as “gentleness is the only treatment for the ungentle” (III.xxvii.3).
The recognition of anger’s malignancy should prompt our reason to oppose rational habit to irrational habit. “All our senses in fact, must be trained to endure” frustration; “they are naturally capable of endurance, once the mind stops corrupting them” (III.xxxvi.1). The mind ceases to corrupt the senses when the rational part of the mind summons the mind “each day to give account of itself” (III.xxxvi.1); “your anger will cease or moderate itself, if it knows that each day it must come before a judge” in a case at your “own court” (III.xxxvi.2). In the end, however, “nothing will help more than a meditation on our mortality” (III.xl.2). Life is too short for bringing “turbulent confusion” upon ourselves (III.xl.4). “Fate looms above our heads, chalking up the days as they go to waste, approaching nearer and nearer” (III.xl.4). “Death is on its way, to make you all equal” (III.xliii.1).
It’s worth knowing that Seneca’s advice may have had a salutary effect. Later on, as a provincial governor, Novatus successfully negotiated a dispute between the rabbis of Corinth and the Apostle Paul.
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