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Chapter 12 - Anger Reinstated

Stoics and Kant on Anger

from Part III - Human Feeling and Ethical Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2025

Melissa Merritt
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
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Summary

The question explored in this chapter is this: Is there a foothold, or even a toehold, in Stoic and Kantian texts that gives us purchase for developing an account of moral anger? I answer “yes,” although the positive argument in both Stoic and Kantian texts is not obvious. In the Stoic tradition, the overall normative demand is modeled on the character and conduct of a good and wise person, that is, the sage. Can the Stoic sage feel moral anger as part of how full virtue is expressed? The Stoic sage is typically modeled on concrete historical examples that display a fuller gamut of emotions than is often acknowledged. Moral anger and vicarious distress are, I argue, Stoic “good emotions” compatible with the rational desires and emotions characteristic of full virtue. Despite Kant’s Stoicizing tendencies at various junctures, he leaves room for moral anger as a way we express our duties of sympathy and become aware of the constraints of the moral law.

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