Srinivasan, A; (2017) The Aptness of Anger. Journal of Political Philosophy 10.1111/jopp.12130. (In press).

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Abstract

ABSTRACT: A long philosophical and political tradition holds that victims of injustice ought not get angry because doing so would be counterproductive. But this tradition neglects the possibility that anger might be counterproductive and yet apt. What ought a victim of injustice do when her anger would worsen her situation but nonetheless be a fitting response to the state of the world? Here reasons of prudence and reasons of aptness come apart, generating, I argue, a substantive normative conflict. Two things, I suggest, follow. First, the counterproductivity critic faces the burden of explaining why, in such conflicts, prudential considerations trump considerations of aptness; until this burden is met, there is no obvious inference to be made from the counterproductivity of one’s anger to an all-things-considered prohibition on one’s getting angry. Second, it’s plausible that such conflicts – where victims of oppression must choose between getting aptly angry or acting prudentially – themselves constitute a form of unrecognised injustice, what I call affective injustice. I conclude by discussing the prospects for alleviating affective injustice in the political sphere, and offering a diagnosis of our reluctance to make room, in our politics, for anger.

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