Angela might be like that dog— but as I’ve imagined here she is not quite as
smart, since she goes part of the way down the second path before turning back.
45. On the cultural construction of the idea of closure, and its subsequent psychic reality, see Bandes (forthcoming).
46. I borrow this characterization from Harsanyi (1982).
47. I am not claiming that retributivism is all about status. As will be clear in chapter 6, I believe that retributivism suffers from the second, not the first, problem. But the correct alternative, here too, is a focus on future welfare.
48. Butler insists that anger “ought never to be made use of, but only in order to produce some greater good.”
49. By which I mean rational and constructive.
50. See the longer analysis of it in Nussbaum (2013). The text of the speech can be found online at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream
.htm.
51. Throughout the speech King keeps on returning to the injustices that African-Americans have suffered, but he does not indulge in payback thinking. He keeps looking forward.
52. In the larger plot of the series, McCord really is a welfarist, enduring personal ignominy to prevent revelations that he thinks will ignite a war between the
United States and the Apaches.
53. Butler (1827, Sermon VIII).
54. See Bloom (2013).
55. See Hampton and Murphy (1988, 58).
56. I owe these examples to Charles Larmore and Paul Guyer.
57. See Seneca, De Ira, particularly I.12.
58. Bishop Butler sees anger’s role as in large part motivational: see Butler (1827, Sermon VIII). He argues that compassion by itself would render the “execution of justice exceedingly difficult and uneasy.”
59. See Smith (1982, 35).
60. I owe this point to Saul Levmore.
61. See Butler (1827, Sermon VIII): “Since perfect goodness in the Deity is the principle, from whence the universe was brought into being, and by which it is
preserved; and since general benevolence is the great law of the whole moral
creation; it is a question which immediately occurs, ‘Why had man implanted in him a principle, which appears the direct contrary to benevolence?’ ”
62. See Santideva (1995).
63. I.48– 49 = II.650– 51.
64. See Harriss (2001, 31, ch. 16).
65. Lactantius, De Ira Dei, chs. 4 through 8. As we’ll see, Lactantius has some more interesting things to say later in the treatise.
66. See also Harriss (2001, ch. 16) on struggles to reconcile biblical texts with Greco- Roman norms.
67. See the excellent discussion in Halbertal and Margalit (1992, ch. 1).
68. Lactantius, De Ira Dei, ch. 16.
69. See Harriss (2001, 393 and notes). Harriss also shows that Paul’s statements on anger are not wholly consistent: sometimes he blames all anger, sometimes he
permits some anger but urges that it be brief.
70. Briggs (1970). See my detailed discussion in Nussbaum (2001, ch. 3).
71. Briggs (1970, 330– 31).
72. October 13, 1988; the question was asked by Bernard Shaw.
Notes to Pages 44–55
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73. See Kindlon and Thompson (1999).
74. See Condry and Condry (1976). There are a lot of other interesting contrasts. In the experiment, the baby was the same baby, but was just differently labeled.
75. See Levmore and Nussbaum (2014).
76. See Harriss (2001, ch. 11).
77. Typical is Cicero, Ad Quintum Fratrem I.1.37– 40, discussed in Harriss (2001, 204–
5): Cicero tells his brother Quintus, then governor of a province in Asia, that his reputation for effective leadership is undermined by his evident propensity to anger, and Cicero urges him to work on himself, concluding that angry outbursts are “not only inconsistent with literary culture and humanitas, they are also inimi-cal to the dignity of imperial office.”
78. See Kindlon and Thompson (1999).
79. Again: by the bare term “anger” I mean garden- variety anger, not the special case of Transition- Anger.
80. I owe the question to Katerina Linos.
81. See my lengthy analysis of disgust in Nussbaum (2004a, ch. 2), with references to the psychological and philosophical literature; see also the update in Nussbaum (2010b).
82. Hence the long- standing confusion, in the law of sexual orientation, between discrimination on the basis of an act and discrimination on the basis of orientation.
83. Thus Dante’s distinction between Hell and Purgatory seems somewhat arbitrary: if people are located in the former by a single act, in the latter by an enduring trait, the single act somehow becomes definitive of the person, once it becomes the basis for their eternal punishment.
84. The best treatment of contempt in the recent philosophical literature is Mason (2003).
85. Mason (2003, 241).
86. This is the central issue in Mason’s fine article. Mason argues that it is justified, when contempt is properly focused on a legitimate ideal and gets things right about the person’s blameworthy failure to exhibit the ideal trait.
87. For a longer discussion of envy, see Nussbaum (2013, ch. 11). A very fine analysis is in Rawls (1971, 530– 34).
88. See Lazarus (1991, 254).
89. Miceli and Castelfranchi (2007).
90. Proust’s novel is one classic development of that idea.
91. He analyzes anger and “being calmed down” in the Rhetoric II.2– 3, and discusses the virtuous disposition in this area in the Nicomachean Ethics IV.5. The two accounts are never connected by him, but they are consistent.
92. Smith (1982, 34).
93. The Oxford translation uses “good- tempered” for the adjective and “good temper” for the noun, which is not terrible, but it seems too general, since it does not suggest a particular relation to anger.
94. The Oxford translation says “tends to forgive” for suggnōmonikos. But in fact there is no warrant for this: the word literally means “thinking with” and designates sympathetic understanding. See chapter 1, notes 15 and 29.
95. Konstan (2010) emphasizes that this is often the case with suggnōmē.
96. Of course I think all anger is inappropriate, but Aristotle does not.
97. See Marcus Aurelius, whose first lesson in avoiding anger is not to be “a fan of the Greens or Blues at the races or the light- armed or heavy- armed gladiators at the circus.”
98. See Winnicott (2005).
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Notes to Pages 57–60
Chapter 3
1. Griswold (2007, 149– 50). This is not the entirety of Griswold’s account, since he has a lot to say about what the forgiver should do. Konstan’s account (2010) is basically the same.
2. Indeed, it is often suggested that forgiveness is incomplete without these transactional elements: thus Konstan (2010, 21 and passim); similarly Bash (2007), who summarizes his argument by saying that “the idea of unconditional forgiveness is difficult to defend from a pragmatic, practical, and philosophical point of view”
(78), and who takes pains to show that the early Christian tradition contains the full- fledged transactional account. It will become clear that on this point I agree with Bash, and disagree with Konstan: the early tradition surely does contain this concept; however (here disagreeing with Bash), it also prominently contains ideas of unconditional forgiveness and unconditional love, and I disagree with Bash about the normative evaluation of these alternatives.
3. I shall, however, aim at greater historical detail and precision, which I think Nietzsche’s general goals require.
4. I import this image of unreflective conformity from Mahler, to be discussed later in this chapter. He saw conventional Christian behavior as like the aimless and unalert swooping of the fish to whom St. Anthony preaches, appropriately represented by swooping phrases on the E- flat clar
inet, whose entrance is marked “mit Humor.” (The St. Anthony song in Des Knaben Wunderhorn was composed around the same time as the St. Anthony material in the third movement of the Second Symphony, to which I allude here: and see the detailed analysis in Nussbaum
[2001, ch. 14].
5. Foucault (1975).
6. Foucault has a European audience. He is not talking about the degrading physical cruelty of actual imprisonment in the United States; he is talking about the intrusiveness and manipulativeness characteristic of programs of prison supervision and reform, with Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon prison/ workhouse a leading
case study.
7. God’s anger often needs to be allayed by penitence, or sacrifice. In Isaiah 43:25–
26, sins are apparently remitted because of an apology and an attitude of mindfulness. Similarly in Hosea 12, the prophet calls on Israel to repent, and in chapter 14, he urges a specific form of atonement, which, he imagines, will be followed by forgiveness. There are many such examples.
8. An excellent discussion of both biblical and Talmudic sources is Morgan (2011).
9. Although obviously enough Reform and Conservative Jews do not accept
many aspects of this codified account— at least not its complete list of the commandments for violation of which teshuvah is required— there is continuous adherence, on the whole, to the overall conception of the teshuvah process as mapped out in the tradition. Thus Peli (2004) notes in his introduction that
leading Reform rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf praises the centrality and importance
of the thought of Soloveitchik on this topic (p. 7). Soloveitchik (1903– 1993), a highly influential Orthodox rabbi and professor, follows faithfully the accounts of Maimonides (twelfth century) and Yonah of Gerona (thirteenth century).
(Soloveitchik’s oral discourses were originally given in Yiddish but later written down in Hebrew by Peli; the English translation was done by Peli and a
large group of advisors.)
10. 1138– 204, often referred to as the Rambam.
Notes to Pages 60–67
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11. Yonah, d. 1263, was an influential Catalonian rabbi, a first cousin of the more famous Nachmanides. The story goes that Yonah was initially a bitter opponent of Maimonides and instigated the public burning of his work by Christian authorities in Paris in 1233. He later admitted error and undertook a pilgrimage to Maimonides’s grave in Palestine. However, he never got further than Toledo, where he taught for the rest of his life. However, his teachings were consistently reverential toward Maimonides. For Maimonides, I have consulted two English
translations available online, one by Immanuel O’Levy (1993), and one by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman (2010). For Yonah, I use the bilingual text with translation by Shraga Silverstein (1967).
12. Soloveitchik, cited above; Deborah E. Lipstadt, contribution to Wiesenthal (1997, 193– 96). Lipstadt was the defendant in a famous Holocaust denial libel trial; sued by David Irving, she won on grounds of justification.
13. See Maimonides, ch. 1.1.
14. There is an interesting dispute in the tradition about whether one ought to confess and repent for sins that one has already confessed the previous year. Yonah’s view is that one should not, both because it could distract from a focus on this year’s sins and because to confess again shows a lack of trust in God’s forgiveness: see Yonah (1967, 379– 83). The sinner should nonetheless offer a general confession of sin that in principle covers former as well as current transgressions. But Maimonides holds that one should confess former as well as current sins, to keep them before one’s eyes (2.8). There is also discussion of how many times one must confess on Yom Kippur. Maimonides mentions that one ought to confess before
eating the large pre- fast meal, even though one is about to spend an entire day confessing repeatedly— because one might choke on the meal and die, and thus
never get to the main confession (Maimonides, 2.6).
15. Maimonides, 1.4.
16. Soloveitchik emphasizes a traditional distinction between kapparah (acquittal) and taharah (purification): for the former, remorse is sufficient; for the latter, a revolutionary change of life and thinking is required. See Peli (2004, 49– 66).
17. Maimonides, 1.5. By contrast, if the offense is only against God, one should not publicize one’s repentance.
18. Ch. 2.2. (I’ve replaced the translator’s “to never do” by “never to do.”) 19. Ch. 2.4. Cf. Yonah (1967, 31).
20. Ch. 3.4: he connects the shofar particularly with charitable deeds and asserts that Jews are more charitable in the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
than at other times.
21. Maimonides, 2.1.
22. Maimonides, 2.1.
23. Yonah (1967, 92).
24. Yonah (1967, 39).
25. Yonah (1967, 59).
26. Maimonides, 2.10. See Yonah (1967, 377).
27. For the dead, the transgressor brings ten men to the grave and makes a confession; if money is owed he pays the inheritors. But if he doesn’t know them, he leaves the money with the court and makes confession there.
28. Compare John 7:53– 8.11, where the woman taken in adultery is apparently
offered a conditional forgiveness: “Go, and sin no more.”
29. See the detailed philological discussion of the Greek text in Bash (2007, 80– 87).
As a Christian theologian, however, he may be imputing too much unity and
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Notes to Pages 67–71
consistency to these early texts: John practiced baptism before Jesus died, and may have had no clear idea that a further necessary condition remained to be
supplied.
30. John does not require sacrifices or offerings, presumably thinking that the ritual of repentance takes the place of this Jewish ritual of atonement: see Bash (2007, 81– 82), emphasizing again that repentance, while necessary for forgiveness, is not sufficient.
31. Thus, the Book of Common Prayer asks the parents and godparents (or any
old enough to speak for themselves): “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?” Answer: “I renounce them.”
Question: “Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and
destroy the creatures of God?” Answer: “I renounce them.” Question: “Do you
renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?” Answer: “I
renounce them.” And the ritual continues with much about accepting Jesus as
one’s savior and trusting and obeying him.
32. See appendix to this chapter for the full text of the hymn. It remains in the Tridentine Mass today, and is still a respected text, although, with other depictions of suffering in Hell, it has been de- emphasized.
33. This work predates Tertullian’s split from mainstream Christianity and his espousal of the Montanist heresy (around 207).
34. See Hanna (1911).
35. Hanna (1911).
36. See also Konstan (2010, ch. 4).
37. Naturally, as with any generalization about Jewish norms, this one has putative exceptions. The prohibition lo tachmod, “Thou shalt not covet” appears to focus on attitudes, not acts, although there is much debate about this.
38. Strictly speaking one should not say “quasi,” since, following the Greek and Roman Stoics, this tradition thinks of inner movements as fully acts. The Stoic rationale is that they involve “assent” to an “appearance” to which, in principle if not in fact, one might always refuse assent. Cicero even called the external action a mere “afterbirth,” the core of the act being this inner performance of assent.
39. See Tertullian, On Penitence, section 3, in William Le Saint’s translation, Tertullian: Treatises on Penance (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1959). For the Latin text, see the edition by Pierre de Labriolle (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1906).
Tertullian lived from around 160 to 225 CE; De Paenitentia i
s probably a relatively early work, from a period prior to Tertullian’s break with the established Church (in the direction of greater Puritanism, as a Montanist heretic).
40. Brion and Harcourt (2012); an English version by Bernard Harcourt will soon be published.
41. But see Brion and Harcourt (2012, 104– 8).
42. Brion and Harcourt (2012, 124– 60).
43. Thus, unabsolved sexual sin, when heterosexual, puts one in the circle of Hell in which we find Paulo and Francesca, and when homosexual, in the much
lower circle of the “violent against nature”; characteristic but absolved lustful-ness, whether same- sex or opposite- sex, puts one in a relatively cheerful circle of Purgatory in which one encounters all the famous poets, learning chastity
through long penance.
44. And the occasion is all too often turned into a type of prurient control over young
“transgressors.”
Notes to Pages 72–81
275
45. For some very different studies coming to this conclusion, see Boyarin (1995); Kugel (1999); Schofer (2010).
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