Abstract

Anger is not just ubiquitous, it is also popular. Many people think it is impossible to care sufficiently for justice without anger at injustice. Many believe that it is impossible for individuals to vindicate their own self-respect or to move beyond an injury without anger. Particularly in situations of great injustice, people often think that anger is a key to revolutionary transformation. Is this how we should think about anger, or is anger above all a disease, deforming both the personal and the political? Focusing on revolutionary justice,and considering the freedom movements of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela, I attempt to answer these questions.

Speaker Bio

Professor Martha C. Nussbaum

Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics
University of Chicago

Professor Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School and the Philosophy Department.

She is an Associate in the Political Science Department, the Classics Department, and the Divinity School, and a Board member of the Human Rights Program. Her many publications include The Fragility of Goodness, Upheavals of Thought, Women and Human Development, Frontiers of Justice, Creating Capabilities, Political Emotions, and, most recently, Anger And Forgiveness.

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• Political philosopher explains anger and revolutionary justice