Whose Anger Matters?

Anger-eliminativism, the view that we should, as much as possible, reduce the role anger plays in our moral lives and theories, fails in ways predictable of anti-intersectional methodologies. In failing to adopt intersectionality as a maxim of inquiry, anger-eliminativism ignores, dismisses, and misrepresents the angers of those who have clear and pressing moral reason to be angry—namely, those who face oppression. It is also problematically a priori at various levels of inquiry, insensitive to counterexamples, and begs the question of anger’s moral justification. An adequate intersectional methodology, which begins from centering anti-oppression anger, reveals significant first-order lessons about the nature and normativity of anger. One is that we can make good sense of the normative relation of “basic desert,” even though anti-oppression anger is not retributive. Centering anti-oppression anger reveals further insights about our responses to anger, including important roles for agency and moral character in the ways we face and take up anger. There is, moreover, an ethics to being wrong that must be factored into our theories of emotions like anger.