Despite orthodoxy, a distinct conative component has at times been proposed of anger: a desire for recognition of harms done. Srinivasan (2018) takes anger to often aim to get a perpetrator to recognize the pain she has caused another, the wrong she has done another, rather than to make the target of anger suffer. Similarly, Cogley (2014) writes that, in anger, an agent ‘confronts the target of her anger in an attempt to bring the target’s attention to her cause for anger. She then asks after or demands an explanation or justification’ (211).
The view that anger is more concerned with issuing demands for respect and recognition, than punishing its targets, can be found also in Adam Smith who writes that anger’s aim is not so much to cause its target to ‘feel pain in his turn... as to make him sensible, that the person whom he injured did not deserve to be treated in that manner’ (Smith 1976: 95–6). Similarly, Darwall (2013) takes the objects of anger to be ‘also their addressees’, anger comes ‘with an implicit RSVP’ on whether the object of anger acknowledges that a harm has been done (89). Angry attitudes, therefore, do ‘not seek to diminish, humiliate, insult, or damage their objects. The acknowledgment they seek is of a reciprocal standing’ (89). Cherry and Flanagan (2017) have listed ‘recognition respect anger’ as one of seven forms anger often takes and characterize it as aiming not for payback, but for recognition of self-worth. There is, therefore, a trend to see one of anger’s main aims as recognitional, rather than punitive.
What exactly is the desire for recognition? I will take the desire for recognition to be a desire for epistemic changes in the targets of anger, such that they come to evaluate their actions or omissions as wrongful in some way, and additionally that this epistemic change be communicated to the harmed party. I take genuine apologies to be common cases where anger’s recognitional aims are met. Genuine apologies give one reason to revise one’s anger, not because the wrongs that triggered it have been excused or erased, but because one’s desire for the wrong to be recognized as a wrong has been satisfied.Footnote 7 Note that it is a common view that apology is among the set of things that can cause anger to terminate (Hieronymi 2001; Callard 2018; Na’aman 2019). My claim is that this is so because apology satisfies recognitional aims in anger. This claim is only incompatible with accounts of apology that take apology to involve the lowering of the status of the apologizer, as such ‘status-lowering’ could be construed as a form of retribution (Bovens 2008). These are quite unpopular accounts of apology however (see Helmreich 2015). On most accounts, apology serves to communicate the acknowledgement of having committed a wrong (Hieronymi 2001) and commitment to treating the offended party better (Martin 2010; Hieronymi 2001), and is often explicitly contrasted to retribution (Hieronymi 2001; Callard 2018; Na’aman 2019). In any case it is clear that the conception of recognition invoked by those who think that it is a central desire in anger is a non-punitive conception. As seen in the citations above, recognition is often invoked in explicit contrast to inflicted suffering and payback.Footnote 8 It is a move open to orthodox theorists to try to argue that all cases where anger seems to have purely recognitional aims actually involve desires for psychological, subtle or symbolic forms of punition. Such a move risks extending the boundaries of what counts as retributive far beyond the term’s normal usage however, and indeed beyond the term’s explanatory utility (cases where anger at a friend motivates you to seek their company to talk things out would count as cases where retribution is sought, as would all cases of peaceful communicative forms anger-motivated political activism).Footnote 9 I will move forward with the assumption that recognitional aims are non-punitive aims, as this most faithfully reflects the intended meaning of the term in the work of those who have invoked it.
The appealing idea that anger sometimes has purely recognitional aims has not dislodged orthodox thinking on anger as distinctively retributive however. Those that take the desire for recognition to be characteristic of anger have not launched sustained attacks on the orthodox view in light of this, and rarely make clear how prevalent they take recognitional aims in anger to be. The view that anger is a hostile and punitive emotion remains dominant, and the intuition that anger involves genuine aims for recognition remains unaccounted for or outright denied by many contemporary philosophical accounts of the emotion (Nussbaum 2016; Callard 2020). For Callard recognitional anger is a ‘fiction’. For Nussbaum (2015, 2016), there seems to be room for something called ‘transition-anger’ that is non-punitive. Nussbaum characterizes transition-anger as anger that is not retributive, and which focuses on ‘brotherhood’, ‘justice’, ‘reconciliation and shared effort’ instead, typically motivating constructive actions (Nussbaum 2015: 53–54). Nussbaum takes such anger to be a ‘borderline case’ that is ‘rare and exceptional’ and only present in individuals with superior ‘self-discipline’ (54). In other work, I have argued that far from being ‘exceptional’, non-punitive recognitional desires are common and robust in anger. Anger often aims for its targets to recognize that a harm has been committed rather than aiming for the suffering of wrongdoers. This is in-keeping with an attractive pluralist view where anger sometimes has retributive aims and other times recognitional aims (both aims may also be at play simultaneously) (see Silva 2021a). In this article I will argue for something stronger than a pluralist view, I will argue that we should take seriously the proposal that the orthodox view gets things exactly in reverse. That is, I will argue that there are good reasons to think that anger definitionally involves desires for recognition, and only exceptionally or instrumentally involves desires for retribution. I will rely on empirical and conceptual considerations to inform my argument. First, I will argue that phenomenological and empirical work supports a robust desire for recognition in anger. That this be the case doesn’t itself challenge the construal of anger as a hostile emotion, for we can seek recognition in aggressive and destructive manners. We will see however, that empirical work suggests that hostile actions are typically pursued only when recognitional aims are either blocked or have been exhausted.Footnote 10 This gives us reason to think that non-punitive means of seeking recognition are primary in anger. We will see that empirical work suggests, further, that when retributive or hostile actions are pursued, they only satisfy the angry agent when punition is accompanied by important epistemic changes. Taken together, these considerations suggest that the desire central to anger is recognition as opposed to retribution.
Anger Robustly Aims for Recognition
Often, in anger, we wish the target would acknowledge the gravity of what they have done. In the first instance we might wish for a justification of the harm we have suffered, such as to potentially excuse it (I missed our dinner plans because I was ill, not because I don’t care), but if none can be given, we wish for accountability, where the offender judges their own act, or omission, as wrong. We don’t aim to harm the offender, in a literal or symbolic way, we want them to share our evaluation of the harm as unacceptable.
Imagine that you are angry at your best friend for not being there for you throughout your divorce. When you needed their support the most, your friend decided to go on a spontaneous three-month long holiday abroad. Your anger at your friend would be justified, but it is unlikely that you would wish to make them suffer. You would not want to make your friend suffer physically, or hope for things to go badly for them in the future. Nor would you seek to ensure their social exclusion, or defame their character. Your anger’s goal does not seem to be that your friend suffer, but rather, that they understand what they have done. In so far as retributive actions might be taken against your friend, they seem to have the aim of making your friend understand that they have committed a wrong rather than having the final aim of making them suffer as payback. Any aim for retribution would therefore seem instrumental in relation to the desire for recognition. My point is not that one never feels vindictive anger towards loved ones, but rather that we should be cautious to attribute such vindictiveness to anger’s nature.
I think desires for recognition extend beyond cases where one has an underlying interest in the wellbeing of the target of one’s anger, as is the case in the friendship example above. Indeed, most everyday cases of anger can be seen as aimed at recognition. When you get angry at someone for cutting in front of you in line at the bank, you arguably want them to acknowledge that what they have done is not ok, rather than make them suffer for it. Similarly, if you are angry at a group or company for an unethical action, your central desire is plausibly for them to acknowledge what they have done, in a manner that indicates that they will change their ways. Empirical work stands in line with a robust desire for recognition in anger. First, self-reports on everyday anger show the emotion to motivate a far greater proportion of non-punitive actions than punitive ones (Averill 1983). Interpersonal harms often motivated angry agents to approach offenders for a discussion, and the targets of anger often offer apologies and social support that solidify relationships (Yoo et al. 2011). In a number of studies on collective action, anger was observed to significantly motivate communicative actions (such as petition writing and peaceful-protesting), as opposed to punitive actions (ranging from destructive actions such as property damage to merely inconvenient ones such as blocking roads or buildings) (Tausch et al. 2011; van Zomeren et al. 2004, 2012).Footnote 11 In other studies, anger has been observed to motivate both punitive and non-punitive communicative actions (Halperin 2008), giving us at least reason to think recognition might be amongst anger’s aims.
It is important to note that these experimental studies fit into a broader shift in how the psychological literature has construed anger and its effects. There has been a a gradual yet radical change that philosophers working on anger should heed. The early influential frustration-aggression hypothesis posited ‘that the occurrence of aggressive behavior always presupposes the existence of frustration and, contrariwise, that the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression’ (Dollard et al. 1939). The theory then posited a necessary and sufficient relation between goal frustration (a paradigmatic cause of anger) and aggression (Dennen 2005). Over the years the theory was modified to weaken and restrict this strong claim. Goal frustration was soon posited to motivate both aggressive and non-aggressive behaviour. By the late 70s, research provided mounting evidence against the initial tenant of the frustration-aggression hypothesis, such that Zillmann (1979) held that goal frustration would likely lead to the expression of a negative emotion such as anger, but would not, in and of itself, generally produce interpersonal aggression or hostility. The blockage of a goal would, instead, likely invoke behaviour aimed at terminating or redressing this blockage, and would only tend to be aggressive if the instrumental value of aggressive action exceeded that of non-aggressive alternatives (Zillmann 1979).
In line with this, views on the very value of aggression have shifted, from originally being seen as destructive, typically dysfunctional and not instrumentally valuable, aggressive actions are now understood through a functionalist lens, whereby they are means to tackle goal obstructions, offences and injustices and can often be very effective, as well as constructive, in addressing them (see Silva 2021b). In interpersonal negations for example, angry communications from a disadvantaged party prompts dominant subjects to compensate angry agents (van Kleef and Côté 2007), while communications of anger from oppressed groups have been observed to provoke empathy and support, as opposed to retaliation, from dominant groups (de Vos et al. 2013, 2016; Tagar et al. 2011). There is therefore evidence that anger, plausibly even when communicated aggressively, can have constructive instrumental effects in confronting goal frustrations such as offences and injustices.Footnote 12 A parallel shift has occurred in work on crowd behaviour. Initially thought of as inherently violent (Le Bon 1895), researchers now take violent crowd action in response to injustices to be far more contingent on specific background and circumstantial conditions (Drury et al. 2020). This highlights the importance of context in determining how anger unfolds. Indeed psychological research has long moved beyond categorical claims regarding anger, and is more interested in uncovering those contextual features that favour or disfavor aggressive vs non-aggressive action in the first place, as well as those contextual features that might lead to making even aggression instrumentally valuable. I have argued elsewhere that this fits well with a pluralist view of anger, where orthodox claims are abandoned, and the focus is on theorizing distinct desires in anger and the relevance of those conditions that favour each (Silva 2021a). I take this to be a long overdue shift in philosophical thinking that will adequately mirror the shift that psychological work has undergone. In what follows I will be concerned with a stronger thesis than that endorsed by a pluralist view of anger however. The pluralist takes anger to often involve a desire for retribution or punition, while holding that the emotion also often involves desires for non-punitive recognition of harms done. Here I will argue that we have good reason to go even further, and consider the prospects of a view of anger whereby retribution is excluded from the emotion’s non-instrumental aims.Footnote 13
For now, I take myself to have outlined that there is much psychological evidence that fits well with a view that takes, as we saw many philosophers to, desires for recognition to be central to anger. The robust correlation between anger and the pursual of communicative actions fits well with such a view, as does the general shift in psychological thinking from claims that anger is inherently tied to aggression, to views where non-punitive behaviours are significantly correlated with the emotion, and where contextual features determine how anger unfolds. Similarly, evidence that anger communications invoke empathy and support in their targets is at least in keeping with a view where anger aims for epistemic changes in, as opposed to the suffering of, its targets.
Aggression in Nothing-to-Lose Scenarios
In the contemporary psychological literature then, acceptance of anger’s behavioural pluripotency, i.e. that anger is significantly related to different types of actions, is widespread (Spring et al. 2018). The question becomes not whether anger triggers punitive or non-punitive actions but, rather, when and why anger displays its different motivational effects. Experimental work suggests that key factors moderate the effects of anger. Moderators are crucial to determining when certain effects hold. They are typically contextual variables that influence which effects are observed. Contextual moderators are likely crucial to determining whether anger will motivate punitive actions or not. A key moderator over anger’s behavioural effects seems to be the perceived changeability of the target of anger, that is, how likely one’s actions are to bring about a change in their attitudes and actions. Many studies have observed that aggressive actions take place in what have been called ‘nothing-to-lose’ scenarios (Bandura 2000; Scheepers et al. 2006; Tausch et al. 2011). These are scenarios where agents judge themselves to have low ability to change the unfair situation. In collective action studies, destructive actions were predicted not by levels of anger but, in line with the nothing-to-lose hypothesis, when agents judged that other measures were unlikely to be effective at bringing about any change (Tausch et al. 2011).Footnote 14 These studies suggest that anger at groups and institutions robustly motivates constructive collective action and that it is only when communicative actions have systematically failed, or are blocked, that groups seem to pursue punitive actions. Perceptions of the targets of anger as unchangeable are characteristic of nothing-to-lose scenarios. Similar results have been observed in studies on interpersonal psychology, where anger is felt by one individual for another. Desires for vengeance were observed to be highest when agents believed that the targets of their anger (such as bullies) have an unchangeable character, again suggesting that retribution is pursued under conditions where change is perceived as improbable (Yeager et al. 2011). It may be only in cases where such recognition is impossible, or unlikely to be achieved by non-punitive means, that anger motivates hostile or retributive actions. We saw above that even modifications to the early frustration-aggression hypothesis highlighted that aggressive actions were typically only pursued when the value of alternative non-aggressive actions was perceived to be low (Zillmann 1979). Further evidence suggests that aggression is far more typical of anger that occurs in otherwise malevolent relationships, than ones that have cooperation as a background condition (Zeineddine et al. 2015; Parkinson et al. 2005; Tiedens and Leach 2004).
Section 3 and 3.1 gave us reason to think that desires for recognition are robust desires in anger. This is compatible with a pluralist view that takes desires for retribution and recognition to both be central in anger (see Silva 2021a). Such a pluralist view would still challenge the orthodox view by making a desire other than retribution central to anger. Here we have seen reason to take seriously a stronger proposal, that is, the proposal that desires for recognition and retribution in anger do not stand on equal footing. Recognition might be the emotion’s primary desire, where retribution is sought when recognition is blocked or hard to attain, such as in nothing-to-lose scenarios, or ones where similar contextual features (the unchangeability of anger’s targets for example) are present. At this point then, we should take seriously the possibility that recognition is anger’s most central desire. Genuine desires for retribution are still permitted on this view, primarily when recognition has been blocked or denied. Indeed, having been systematically denied recognition of a harm seems like arguably rational grounds for desiring vengeance.Footnote 15 Retribution still seems to be a robust desire in anger then, albeit an arguably secondary one. We will see however, that once we scrutinize what vengeance amounts to, recognition will emerge as potentially the only genuine desire in anger.
When Is Retribution Satisfied?
What counts as retribution differs depending on the orthodox view in question. On Aristotle’s view, for revenge to be enacted the offender must know by whose hand, as well as for what reason, he suffers (1380b22–25). For Nussbaum (2015: 46), on the other hand, anger involves the desire ‘for things to go badly somehow’ for the offender, and she takes this to include cases where one is not at all causally related to the suffering of the offender. There is a desire, on Nussbaum’s account, for a form of fateful harm to fall on one’s offender. This could involve a desire for the offender to suffer an offense of the same type as the one they have caused the angry party – an eye for an eye, but it need not. At its most permissive, the claim is that in anger we wish for the offender to suffer, even if in the distant future, and even if in a form that might be unrelated, causally or conceptually, to the wrong committed against the offended party.
Psychological work on revenge has investigated what sorts of conditions satisfy justifiably angry agents. In social psychology, there are competing views on whether the goal of revenge is suffering, such that comparative amounts of pain are equaled between offended and offender (Frijda 1994), or understanding, such that the offender come to understand the wrong they have committed. These have been called the ‘comparative suffering’ and the ‘understanding’ hypotheses of revenge, respectively (Gollwitzer and Denzler 2009). The understanding hypothesis has received most empirical support (Gollwitzer et al. 2011). Studies have shown that seeing the offender suffer from ‘fateful harm’, i.e. harm conceptually and causally unrelated to the harm they caused, did not lead to a reduction in anger, or to an increase in satisfaction on behalf of the offended party. Satisfaction was only observed when the offender expressed understanding of why retribution was being sought against him (Gollwitzer and Denzler 2009; Gollwitzer et al. 2011). This empirical work suggests that revenge is only satisfying when accompanied by epistemic elements.
Even when revenge is sought then, it seems to be the epistemic changes in the culpable agent that drive satisfaction, as opposed to suffering itself. This suggests that punition, on its own, might not be amongst the satisfaction conditions of a desire central to anger. If this is the case, then it seems that punishment is unlikely to be a sufficient satisfaction condition for a desire central to anger. If we think there are also non-punitive desires central to anger, as those who claim anger often aims for recognition hold, then punishment is not a necessary satisfaction condition for a desire central to anger either. We therefore have reason to take seriously the proposal that recognition is the only necessary and sufficient satisfaction condition for a desire central to anger.
Now we have reason not only to think recognition is a robust desire in anger, and that recognition is the primary desire in anger (as retribution is sought under conditions where recognition is hard to attain), but further, we have reason to think that retributive aims might be instrumental towards attaining recognitional aims.Footnote 16 If punishment is neither necessary nor sufficient for the satisfaction of a desire in anger, then it is at least worth considering a view on which retribution may only ever be instrumentally desired in anger, as a way of enforcing recognition on the emotion’s targets. Indeed, this fits not only with evidence regarding what makes revenge satisfying just canvassed, but also with evidence surveyed in the previous section (3.2) regarding when revenge is sought in the first place. Recall that retribution was typically sought in nothing-to-lose scenarios, where recognition had been denied. This evidence is consistent with angry agents shifting from an intrinsic or non-instrumental desire for recognition to an intrinsic or non-instrumental desire for retribution in nothing-to-lose scenarios, as I suggested above, but it is also consistent with a view that takes nothing-to-lose scenarios to motivate instrumental desires for retribution that are aimed at enforcing recognition on the emotion’s targets. In nothing-to-lose scenarios then, perhaps what angry agents intrinsically desire is still recognition, but they just seek it through retributive means given that non-punitive means have failed or been blocked. This suggests that recognition might be the single desire that should be taken to be constitutive of anger, and that the orthodox view got things not only a bit wrong, by failing to grant robust recognitional aims, but drastically wrong, by making constitutive of anger retributive desires that on a plausible account may only be instrumental towards attaining intrinsic recognitional goals.
Summing up
I have argued that empirical and conceptual considerations give us reason to give serious consideration to the proposal that the desire central to anger is recognition as opposed to retribution. This can be cashed out in a stronger constitutive claim or a weaker causal claim that mirror the constitutive and causal versions of the orthodox view I highlighted above. My argument for the centrality of desires for recognition is consistent with both a constitutive account, whereby anger necessarily involves only a desire for recognition and any other desires, including desires for retribution, play merely instrumental roles towards the attainment of recognitional goals. Alternatively, a causal recognitional view of anger would hold that desires for recognition are anger’s most prototypical causal effect, making desires for retribution secondary, albeit allowing them to be sought for their own sake, that is, non-instrumentally. On both the causal and constitutive readings, desires for recognition are arguably definitional of anger (prototypical causal effects are typically relevant to providing definitions of psychological phenomena). On both the stronger and weaker readings, the orthodox view is abandoned, and the status of anger as a ‘hostile’ emotion comes into question. Developing a systematic account of anger as tied to recognition, of the constitutive or causal variety, is a topic for future work. Here I have endeavored to argue that an account of this sort deserves our attention. This is an important outcome as views of anger that privilege recognitional aims have, so far, been lacking. I have not argued that there are no rebuttals open to the orthodox view,Footnote 17 instead of devoting the rest of this paper to considering the form such rebuttals might take and assessing their force,Footnote 18 I want to do something different in the remainder of this piece. I think there are important considerations pertaining to why the retributive view of anger became, and has remained, orthodoxy, that are worth bringing to light. The remainder of this piece will be diagnostic in this sense. Uncovering reasons for the prevalence of the orthodox view will act as further, indirect, reason to take the proposed view seriously, as the reasons for which the retributive view remains the orthodoxy will be revealed to be bad reasons to maintain adherence to it.