On Anger

Overview

On Anger (De Ira) is Seneca's three-book study of the passion of anger, written around 41 CE, early in his career as the most prominent Stoic of the Roman world. It is the fullest surviving treatment of a single passion in the ancient literature, and it is the masterwork of the Stoic therapy of the emotions: a diagnosis of anger's causes, an anatomy of its effects, and a program for its cure. The work belongs to Seneca's project of making Stoicism a practical medicine for the soul, and it is written with the rhetorical brilliance that made him the most read Roman philosopher: the portraits of anger's victims, the famous example of Caligula's rage, and the great advice to the emperor Nero's tutor — the work is addressed to Seneca's brother Novatus — all serve the single end of curing the reader of the most destructive of the passions.

Author

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman statesman, tragedian, and philosopher, the most important Stoic author of the imperial age. Born in Corduba (Cordoba) in Spain, he rose to become the tutor and adviser of the emperor Nero, and he wrote the Letters to Lucilius, the On the Shortness of Life, the On Anger, and the other moral essays that made him the most read philosopher of the Roman world and one of the most influential moralists of the West.

Historical Background

Seneca wrote On Anger in the Rome of the early empire, at a time when the anger of the powerful was a daily threat to the lives of everyone around them. The work reflects this context: its most famous passages are the portraits of angry emperors — Caligula, who tortured and killed at whim, and the tyrants of the Greek past — and its most urgent purpose is practical: to teach the reader, and above all the powerful reader, how to govern the passion that destroys both the one who feels it and the ones who suffer it. The work also belongs to the philosophical debate of the age: the Peripatetics argued that anger has a legitimate use (indignation at injustice), and the Stoics replied that the wise person never needs anger, because they act from reason, not passion. Seneca's treatise is the fullest statement of the Stoic position.

Key Ideas

The first book of On Anger asks what anger is. Seneca defines it, following the Stoic theory of the passions, as a judgment: the judgment that one has been wronged and that retaliation is appropriate, carried to excess. He distinguishes anger from the initial impulse of irritation that precedes it — "the first movement" is not yet anger, because anger requires assent, and the assent is in our power. The definition grounds the whole therapy: if anger is a judgment, it can be examined, and if it can be examined, it can be prevented.

The second book develops the Stoic argument that anger is never justified. The wise person, Seneca argues, does not need anger: justice, which is the correction of wrong, can be administered without the passion that clouds judgment. Anger is not a spur to virtue but a sickness of the soul, and its cures are the disciplines of attention and judgment: the delay of action until the passion cools, the examination of the impression before the assent, and the daily practice of self-observation.

The third book is the therapy proper: the remedies for anger. Seneca recommends the study of the causes of anger — the disappointed expectations, the offended pride, the false judgments of value — and the practices by which it is prevented: the cultivation of patience, the acceptance of the inevitable, the recognition of the humanity of those who offend us, and the constant remembrance of death. The famous advice to the angry man is to "delay" — to put off the response until the passion has passed, because "the best remedy for anger is to wait."

Important Passages

The most famous passage of On Anger is the portrait of Caligula, who "would torture men of all ranks" and who "became angry at the sea" — the image of the tyrant whose anger, unchecked by reason, became a universal catastrophe. Equally famous is Seneca's account of the origins of anger in false judgment: "Anger is the result of a false judgment about what is good and evil." And the work's most practical teaching is the counsel of delay: "The best remedy for anger is to wait; the first impulse, if we do not feed it, dies of itself."

Influence

On Anger has been the most influential treatment of its subject in the Western tradition. The Church Fathers, especially Lactantius and Augustine, engaged its arguments; the medieval tradition transmitted its account of anger as one of the capital sins; and the modern psychology of emotion has rediscovered it as an anticipation of the cognitive theory of the emotions — the view that emotions are judgments, and that the cure of destructive emotion lies in the correction of judgment. For the Stoic tradition, the work is the model of the therapy of the passions: the fullest demonstration that philosophy is, as Cicero said, the medicine of the soul.

Sources

• Seneca. On Anger (De Ira). In Seneca: Moral and Political Essays. Trans. John Cooper and J.F. Procopé. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Seneca" (plato.stanford.edu/entries/seneca)
• Cooper, John, and J.F. Procopé. Seneca: Moral and Political Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.