here a major gap in Seneca’s analysis. So convinced was he that insult
and degradation are trivial that he did not even think the status of being
a slave was something about which one should be upset. While counsel-
ing nonviolent and respectful treatment of slaves, he lets the status itself
slide, telling the slave that inner freedom is the only thing that counts.15
That’s very likely an inconsistent position anyway: if the status is trivial, why is rude and disrespectful treatment within it a big deal? Inconsistent
or not, however, the position is wrong: certain types of insults are politi-
cally significant and involve unacceptable discrimination.
Another gap in Seneca’s account, and a similar case where the
“Middle” shades into the political, is the area of false accusation. Some
false statements are mere irritants. Others inflict very substantial repu-
tational damage, which cannot be dismissed as a merely trivial matter.
When does a false accusation cross the line, becoming a damage to com-
ponents of one’s well- being that one rightly takes seriously? When it
affects employment or career prospects, surely; when it so affects social
relationships that the person has difficulty carrying on friendships and
work, and even maintaining health, as with much Internet defamation,
and much bullying, both on the Internet and elsewhere, that has no
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truth- value and is thus not exactly defamation. Of course people who
attach inordinate importance to status often get terribly upset, and find
their work and relationships disrupted, by things that Seneca and I agree
to be petty and not worth serious concern. So the challenge is to sepa-
rate such cases from cases where the damage is related to obstruction
of important components of well- being. The law of defamation tries to
draw this line, as does the tort of “intentional infliction of emotional dis-
tress.” One cannot sue if one is made to work in a racially integrated
workplace, even if one is genuinely upset, since law takes the position
that racial integration is an important public good. When should sincere
upset be recognized by law, and when, by contrast, should we just tell the
person to grow up? As societies evolve the line shifts, in both directions.
Sexual harassment, which once was regarded as falling into the “grow
up” category, is now recognized as implicating major elements of equal
citizenship and dignity. These complicated issues will be sorted out, as
best one can, in section VI.
Seneca has too simple a conception of well- being; he also has a
skewed idea of anger’s utility. It is implausible to deny that anger ever
has a useful deterrent or motivational role. Still, he is right to remind us
that it can be slippery and unreliable in that role, and that a carefully controlled performance— or, to supply a concept he doesn’t use, a carefully
monitored Transition- Anger— would be even more efficacious because
more controllable. Even when we consider driving, an area where there is
so often bad behavior without law, anger can sometimes deter, but it can
also provoke, or contribute to a dangerous escalation, whereas a carefully
calibrated expression of outrage may be more effective.
Above all, however, Seneca has the right answer to the perpetual
objection that our self- respect requires us to get angry at serious wrongs.
The shoe, he rightly says, is on the other foot: it is the person who rises
above such wrongs who is a really lofty character. We can recognize that
a lot of behavior is subpar, without thinking that we owe it to ourselves to
descend to the level of the aggressor or insult- giver. As Hamlet says: there are constant opportunities to react to the bad behavior of others, but why
should one do that? Why does the fact that someone has done something
outrageous justify my behaving, myself, in an intemperate or aggressive
way? “Use them after your own honor and dignity” means, “Don’t be the
sort of person they are: don’t descend into the gutter just because they
have done so. Think what sort of person you are, and what your charac-
ter requires of you. Model good behavior.”
But, says our own imaginary interlocutor, angry people often suc-
ceed. To this we should reply, “Usually not for long.” In politics, the
explosive person usually gets into trouble pretty quickly, and sunny
calm types such as FDR, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan wear far
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better. When people given to angry outbursts are found at the top, it is
usually not in a democracy, and even then they often get removed pretty
quickly: Claudius and Nero had brief reigns, while the calm Augustus
and Trajan, not to mention the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, had
longer reigns— and died of natural causes.16 Even in sports, where
athletes are taught to react to insults and slights, deeper inspection
shows that angry types usually have a rough road. People value the
non- anger of a Paul Konerko, a Jim Thome, or a Brian Urlacher, and
they have a hard time with the antics of Ron Artest— who, after under-
going required anger management therapy, reemerged to a successful
and far less tumultuous career under the new name of Metta World
Peace.17 And though people applaud the motivational role of self- anger
(a constant in Serena Williams’s play), they frown on the use of anger
to deter or humiliate others (which sometimes marred the play of
John McEnroe). Obviously these are not exceptionless rules, especially
when you are a tyrant (think of the long- lived Mao), but it is worth
contemplating.
Does apology make a difference? Certainly it does going forward, by
leading us to expect good things from the apologizer, other things equal.
Apology may remove the need for protest, or a performance of anger.
So far, notice, we have been focusing on wrongdoing that does not
seriously threaten well- being: thus Seneca’s advice is all too easy, since
I have constructed the list of cases so as to exclude the grave wrongs that
strangers can do to us. My view about these will become clear in section
VI, where I shall urge that instead of getting involved in retributive anger
we should turn these issues over to the law.
IV. The Middle of the Middle: Colleagues and Associates
We are not finished with non- grave wrongdoing, however. So far I have
focused on strangers and on people whom we see only casually and
rarely. Life, unfortunately, is much more complicated than that. We work
and associate with many people whom we know pretty well. They are
not intimates, and we are not in any relationship of deep personal trust
with them, but we have other sorts of interdependence and even trust,
and we have institutional relations that define norms and expectations.
These norms are frequently violated. Sometimes our associates are irri-
tating in chronic ways, and we don’t have the option of not associating
with them. Indeed, since good comedy is usually based on character,
there’s more good comedy to be made in what we can call “the middle of
the middle”— that is, neither deep intimacy nor casual interactions with
strangers— than in the more casual domain, something that good sitcoms
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have known since the hilarious anger of Gale Gordon as high school prin-
cipal Osgood Conklin on Our Miss Brooks.
The workplace is not very intimate, but in it we pursue some of the
most important projects of our lives.18 So it’s an odd place: you don’t
really have any reason to trust your colleagues with your life, and yet, in
a real sense, you have to. That oddness adds to the comedy (and at times
the tragedy, but we’ll turn to that later).
The comedy of the workplace is an old story. And indeed, although
in his serious philosophical works Seneca focuses on the casual— one gets
the impression of a very lonely individual with no colleagues around
him— his one comic work, a satire written after the death of the emperor
Claudius, focuses on characters he knew all too well— the emperor, his
freedmen, his lawyers, and other personae of the imperial court. And it
shows Seneca as a man who was irritated by many things: by Claudius’s
boring loquacity, his limp and stammer, his flatulence, and so forth—
before we get to the serious damages to public well- being that occupy
most of the work.19
Colleagues are different from casual associates because we have
fewer options of not dealing with them. They are different from intimates
in that we don’t exactly choose to deal with them, and we may actually
not like them. So we need to figure out what to make of our relationship
with them in the light of the many occasions of anger that are sure to
arise, in a context in which we almost certainly will need to deal with
them again. Seneca is right to urge us to avoid the presence of irritating
people, and that can be a legitimate factor in the choice of a workplace.
(And it is certainly a reason to avoid spending time in that larger work-
place the Internet, which is sure to give ample occasions for anger.) But
only up to a point, since one can’t really police a workplace around one’s
own taste, or move every time one feels excessively irritated (though
some people try this).
I leave for later treatment the really grave damages colleagues inflict
on one another: for example, plagiarism, sexual harassment, discrimina-
tion, and wrongful termination of employment. These are, rightly, the
focus of law. Our focus here is on chronic patterns of behavior that often
occasion an angry response, but are not grave well- being damages. What
I said before about mistakes concerning insult goes here too: when one
works daily with people, not being too thin- skinned is essential, and it’s
even better to make a habit of construing dubious remarks in a generous
light. But there are many things colleagues do that are genuinely prob-
lematic: they talk too much, they talk rudely, they try to dominate a joint
project, they don’t do their share of the work in a joint project, they renege on important commitments, they try to get special treatment that nobody
else is getting. These things happen all the time, and as Seneca says: if
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one did get angry at such things, one would go nuts. Even if one has
oneself succeeded in not treating insults to honor and status as serious
things (and few have won this battle stably or completely), other people
haven’t, and one has to deal with their misplaced values and consequent
behavior. You have to figure out how to live with such people, so you
can’t just walk away as in the casual cases. So: is anger a fitting response?
Is forgiveness useful? We shall see that here apology, at least, is signifi-
cant and potentially productive going forward, but it can also be a trap.
Let me study the issue using four real- life examples. Since we’re no
longer dealing with strangers whom nobody knows, I introduce here a
fictional alter ego named Louise, to provide an additional layer of fiction-
ality and a fig leaf of protection for the other people who are represented
as fictional characters here.
Case A. Louise is teaching a course with a colleague, of rank and
achievement similar to hers— and students have to apply to be admitted.
After a while of jointly reviewing the applications, her colleague writes,
“I’m happy to leave the decisions to you. I’m too busy at the moment to
attend to them.”
Case B. Louise is organizing a major conference. A colleague from
another department, whom she knows rather well, agrees to give a
paper— definitely, unequivocally, in writing (she has just reread it!). Nine
months later, with the conference date rapidly approaching, he writes a
breezy message saying that he is unable to be there because he will be at a
conference in Australia. He gives no sign of seeing any problem with his
conduct, and it is too late for Louise to replace his contribution.
Case C. Louise has a colleague who is marvelous in many respects,
brilliant, generous, full of good will to others, but also a big baby, who
simply talks all the time. He won’t stop talking unless he is interrupted.
In group discussions he frequently ends up silencing younger faculty,
not with the slightest ill will, but just through lack of sensitivity to the
effects of his behavior, combined with an obstreperous intemperance of
self- expression.
All of these incidents are annoying, and with good reason. We might
say, then, that anger would be well- grounded. In the first case, Louise’s
colleague probably does not intend to be insulting, but by suggesting that
his time is worth more than hers, he does insult, and also expresses a kind
of grandiosity that is out of place in the academic workplace (ubiquitous
though it is there). In the second case, more serious, Louise’s other col-
league jeopardizes the success of the conference and thus the well- being
of all who have been devoting time and energy to it, and he also violates
established norms. Either he accepted a later invitation and reneged on a
prior commitment because he wanted to go to Australia, or he had a prior
commitment in Australia when he accepted hers, and didn’t realize it.
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His casual treatment of the entire episode, without contrition or apology,
indicates that he has no idea of the burden he has inflicted on others, nor
of the norms he has violated— although he has surely been around long
enough to know them. In the third case, potentially the most serious, a
non- malicious person threatens to disrupt an entire community through
lack of self- control.
Notice here what apology can offer. In A and B, if the colleague had
apologized, the insult would remain, but Louise could have had much
more confidence, going forward, that the two men had realized the prob-
lem in their conduct and it would not be repeated. (In Case C, she could
have no such confidence, because lack of self- control is the problem.) So
apology can provide evidence that norms are recognized going forward,
and thus a basis for continuing to deal with the person in normal collegial
interactions.20 But, what to do? The cases unfolded in an interesting way.
In the first case, Louise let her colleague know by email that his
remark seemed out of place, since she was just as busy as he, and his
remark conveyed the suggestion that she was comparatively idle and
unproductive; nonetheless, she would be happy to review the applica-
tions (which she was, since it took less time than sending them to him
and waiting several days for his reply). He did not reply, which was not
auspicious. However, having understood for many years that this person,
who has many wonderful human as well as intellectual characteristics, is
a person of slender self- knowledge who absolutely hates to admit that he
is wrong, Louise just decided to let it go. Notice that the decision to let the colleague know about the insult was carefully taken, in order not to have
festering irritation affecting future interactions, and in order not to baby
him as others at times do, but also as a cue to him that apology would be
appropriate, if he wanted to give her a return gesture indicating that he
would not say such heedless things again. But when he didn’t take the
hint, the landscape changed: Louise would have to up the ante, extract-
ing an apology by asking for one, and maybe she would succeed and
maybe not. But she would risk poisoning future interactions and creating
a climate of tension in the class, which after all was going to take place
one way or another. So, Louise just had to consider whether she wanted
to continue the close working relationship with that colleague, with all
his flaws. If the answer was yes, not extracting an apology seems like the
most productive course. People usually don’t change in response to a
request for apology, so you just have to decide what you are going to do
about and with them. But you should remember that you only have to
teach with such a person, not live with him.
The second case is actually similar, since both involve people who
hate to say that they are wrong. Here Louise did try, twice in fact, to explain why the casual blowing off of the conference that she and others
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had planned struck her as inappropriate, but all she got was a gruff (on
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