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Added by: John BaldariAbstract:
Synopsis generated from the paper: Sherman asks whether a warrior’s anger can belong to virtue, or whether, as the Stoics hold, it is a runaway emotion that should be eliminated. Drawing on Homers Achilles, Aristotles account of anger as an appraisal that one has been unjustly slighted, and Seneca’s On Anger, she argues that anger has a proper role in military and civic life. Resentment at unjust aggression, and outrage at violations of just conduct in war, can be rational motives, not mere frenzy. Interviews with soldiers, including cases from the Gulf War, Rwanda, and My Lai, show anger tracking real wrongs, and also show how combat rage that cannot be turned off becomes destructive at home. Seneca’s therapies aim to cut anger out of the soul. Sherman argues that this is splitting and dissociation rather than integration. Unrestrained revenge must be restrained, but burying all anger does not vanquish it.
Comment: This text is best used as additional reading in ethics and virtue. This chapter is specifically useful in philosophy of war for discussion of effects of war on combatants.
Sherman, Nancy. Virtue and a Warrior’s Anger
2007, In Rebecca L. Walker & P. J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems. Oxford University Press.
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