TED-Ed｜愤怒在什么时候是合理的？

When is anger justified?

Anger is a complicated emotion. It can feel reasonable and righteous or impulsive and uncontrollable. But is it ever morally right to be angry? And if so, when? One of the most foundational understandings of anger comes from the Greek philosopher Aristotle who proposed an idea called "the doctrine of the mean." In this model, there's a sweet spot for our actions and emotional reactions, and it's up to you to develop practical wisdom about when you should feel what and how strongly to feel it.
愤怒是一种复杂的情绪。它有时合情合理且正义凛然，有时又显得冲动且难以控制。但愤怒在道德上是正确的吗？ 如果是，何时才是正确的呢？对愤怒最基本的理解之一来自于古希腊哲学家亚里士多德(Aristotle)，他提出了一个名为“中庸之道”的观点。在这个系统中，我们的行为和情绪反应有一个最佳点，而你需要培养实践智慧来判断何时应感受什么情绪以及感受的强烈程度。

For example, let's say you're going to sleep early because you have an important meeting tomorrow and your neighbor just started blasting music. If you can't sleep, you might botch your meeting, so feeling angry is definitely understandable. But how much anger should you feel? And what actions, if any, should you take? To answer these questions, Aristotle would need to know more details. Have you previously talked to your neighbor about this issue? Is it a reasonable time to be playing music? Is your neighbor trying to antagonize you, or are they just enjoying their evening?
例如，假设你明天有一个重要的会议，所以你要早点睡觉，而你的邻居正开始大声播放音乐。如果你无法入睡，可能会搞砸会议，所以感到愤怒是完全可以理解的。但你该感到有多么愤怒呢？ 如果要采取行动，你应该怎么做呢？ 要回答这些问题，亚里士多德需要了解更多细节。你已经和邻居谈过这个问题了吗？ 这个时间播放音乐合理吗？ 你的邻居这样做是针对你，还是只是在享受他们的夜晚？

Relying on practical wisdom in Aristotle's case-by-case approach makes a lot of sense for navigating interpersonal conflicts. But what about when there's no one to blame for your anger? Imagine a tornado completely destroys your house while your neighbor's home is untouched. No amount of anger can undo the disaster, and there isn't really a suitable target for your frustration.
在亚里士多德的个案分析方法中，依靠实践智慧来处理人际冲突时很有用。但是当你的愤怒不能归咎于任何人时，又该怎么办呢？ 想象一下，一场龙卷风彻底摧毁了你的房子，而你邻居的家却毫发无损。再多的愤怒也无法挽回灾难，而且也没有合适的目标来发泄你的不满。

Yet for the ancient Stoics, the tornado and the noisy neighbor are basically identical. The Stoics believed life is like an uncontrollable cart we're all tied to, and we can either learn to go with the flow or hurt ourselves fighting its momentum. In their logic, we all live at the whims of fate, and our actions can never actually change things— whether it's a natural disaster or how others act towards us. So Stoics believe anger is always wrong, since it causes pain and is ultimately futile. The 8th century Indian Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva also questioned our free will and the value of anger, arguing that because people often lack rational control over their emotions, we should endeavor not to let their anger and cruelty spread to us.
然而，对于古代斯多葛派(Stoics)来说，龙卷风和吵闹的邻居基本上是一样的。斯多葛派认为，生活就像我们 被绑在一辆失控的手推车上，我们要么学会顺其自然，要么在与愤怒的冲动抗争中伤害自己。在他们的逻辑中，我们都活在命运的摆布之中，我们的行为永远无法真正改变事物—— 无论是自然灾害还是他人对我们的行为。因此，斯多葛派认为愤怒都是错误的，因为它会带来痛苦，最终是徒劳的。
But even if it's hard for us to control our anger, there might be something we can learn from it. Philosopher PF Strawson's theory of reactive attitudes suggests that experiencing anger is a natural part of human psychology that helps us communicate blame and hold each other accountable. In this model, anger can be an important part of letting us know when something immoral is happening, so removing it would impair our social lives and moral communities. But finding the right response to those psychological alarm bells can be tricky. For instance, if you were supervising cruel, disrespectful young children, it might be natural to feel anger, but it would be wrong to treat their moral mistakes like those of fully formed adults.


So when should you act on anger? And can it ever help change things for the better? Let's imagine your community is experiencing serious health issues because a nearby factory is illegally polluting the water supply. A long tradition in political philosophy argues that the righteous anger often invoked by witnessing this kind of injustice can be invaluable for fueling change and motivating community action. In unjust situations like this, it could be a moral mistake to suppress your anger, instead of channeling it into positive action.


But other philosophers argue that anger has an inherent negative element that limits its transformative power. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum pointed out that famous civil rights activists such as Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King Jr warned that giving yourself over to even the most righteous anger can lead one to become bitter, vengeful, or hateful of others. They cautioned that we should carefully calibrate our emotional responses to ensure that we see others not as enemies but as community members with whom we must learn to coexist, regardless of our ever-changing emotions.



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