Incontinence and anger, today. Who among us hasn't lost their temper and said or done some things they knew they shouldn't? Perhaps some of you; I have definitely given way to temptation on this one. Fortunately:
That incontinence in respect of anger is less disgraceful than that in respect of the appetites is what we will now proceed to see. (1) Anger seems to listen to argument to some extent, but to mishear it, as do hasty servants who run out before they have heard the whole of what one says, and then muddle the order, or as dogs bark if there is but a knock at the door, before looking to see if it is a friend; so anger by reason of the warmth and hastiness of its nature, though it hears, does not hear an order, and springs to take revenge.
For argument or imagination informs us that we have been insulted or slighted, and anger, reasoning as it were that anything like this must be fought against, boils up straightway; while appetite, if argument or perception merely says that an object is pleasant, springs to the enjoyment of it. Therefore anger obeys the argument in a sense, but appetite does not. It is therefore more disgraceful; for the man who is incontinent in respect of anger is in a sense conquered by argument, while the other is conquered by appetite and not by argument.
Hopefully that's straightforward enough. You have a reason for being angry; it's not just that you were exposed to some pleasant stimuli and reacted without thought.
(2) Further, we pardon people more easily for following natural desires, since we pardon them more easily for following such appetites as are common to all men, and in so far as they are common; now anger and bad temper are more natural than the appetites for excess, i.e. for unnecessary objects. Take for instance the man who defended himself on the charge of striking his father by saying 'yes, but he struck his father, and he struck his, and' (pointing to his child) 'this boy will strike me when he is a man; it runs in the family'; or the man who when he was being dragged along by his son bade him stop at the doorway, since he himself had dragged his father only as far as that.
It's probably true that anger is more natural even than the appetites for excessive consumption of beer or fine-tasting food; for anger existed in our pre-history, perhaps for millions of years before the invention of beer or any food finer than what one could pull out of raw nature.
(2) Further, those who are more given to plotting against others are more criminal. Now a passionate man is not given to plotting, nor is anger itself-it is open; but the nature of appetite is illustrated by what the poets call Aphrodite, 'guile-weaving daughter of Cyprus', and by Homer's words about her 'embroidered girdle':
And the whisper of wooing is there,
Whose subtlety stealeth the wits of the wise, how prudent soe'er.
Therefore if this form of incontinence is more criminal and disgraceful than that in respect of anger, it is both incontinence without qualification and in a sense vice.
This is the rare occasion in Aristotle where you are more blameworthy for thinking things through than for not doing so. The plotter took great care to do wrong, and gave it a lot of thought first; the passionate man just reacted to his reason for being angry. It's still somewhat ironic as a line of argument: the fact of having a reason made anger better than ordinary incontinence; yet the fact of having thought through the reaction to that reason for being angry makes it worse. Reason's presence improves the wrong action, but reason's lingering through the careful consideration of the wrong action worsens that action. The hasty servant who rushed off without complete understanding is an excuse; but the careful servant who stayed to help you plot your wrongful revenge heightens your blame.
(4) Further, no one commits wanton outrage with a feeling of pain, but every one who acts in anger acts with pain, while the man who commits outrage acts with pleasure. If, then, those acts at which it is most just to be angry are more criminal than others, the incontinence which is due to appetite is the more criminal; for there is no wanton outrage involved in anger.
The word being translated as "wanton outrage" or, by Irwin, as "wanton aggression" is ὑβρίζω, that is, hubris. "The term hubris originated in Ancient Greek, where it had several different meanings depending on the context. In legal usage, it meant assault or sexual crimes and theft of public property, and in religious usage it meant emulation of divinity or transgression against a god." The angry man is pained by something; the one committing act of hubris is filled with pride, even mistaking themselves in their moment of power for something divine. Such acts are famously punished by the actual divines, especially Nemesis.
The point being that acts of hubris are not acts of anger; and thus the opening lines of the Iliad, "Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles" do not invoke divine punishment but -- as the poem demonstrates -- divine assistance. Achilles' anger is not given in the Greek as hubris but as menis.
Plainly, then, the incontinence concerned with appetite is more disgraceful than that concerned with anger, and continence and incontinence are concerned with bodily appetites and pleasures; but we must grasp the differences among the latter themselves. For, as has been said at the beginning, some are human and natural both in kind and in magnitude, others are brutish, and others are due to organic injuries and diseases.
This part is a reprise from yesterday's reading.
Only with the first of these are temperance and self-indulgence concerned; this is why we call the lower animals neither temperate nor self-indulgent except by a metaphor, and only if some one race of animals exceeds another as a whole in wantonness, destructiveness, and omnivorous greed; these have no power of choice or calculation, but they are departures from the natural norm, as, among men, madmen are. Now brutishness is a less evil than vice, though more alarming; for it is not that the better part has been perverted, as in man,-they have no better part. Thus it is like comparing a lifeless thing with a living in respect of badness; for the badness of that which has no originative source of movement is always less hurtful, and reason is an originative source. Thus it is like comparing injustice in the abstract with an unjust man. Each is in some sense worse; for a bad man will do ten thousand times as much evil as a brute.
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