We live in what the novelist Pankaj Mishra calls "The Age of Anger.” In everyday life, we hear that we are entitled to our anger, that anger is an authentic expression of the self, and that we need to vent our anger. Is this true? Meanwhile, politics is increasingly a zone in which angry dismissive performance battles opposing angry dismissive performance. Can the humanities help? In this talk, I explore findings from emotion science and cross-cultural philosophy and offer ways to think critically about how we do anger in personal relations, commercial relations, and in political life. I make some suggestions for how we might do anger in more sensible and productive ways to increase both well-being and social justice.
About Owen Flanagan
Owen Flanagan is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Duke University. His work is in Philosophy of Mind and Psychiatry, Ethics, Moral Psychology, Cross-Cultural Philosophy.
His recent works related to the topic of anger are The Moral Psychology of Anger (Rowman & Littlefield) and How to Do Things with Emotions: The Morality of Anger and Shame across Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2021). Some of his recent books are: The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility (Oxford University Press, 2016); The Bodhissattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (MIT Press, 2011); and The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World (MIT Press, 2007). He has lectured on every continent except Antarctica.
Co-sponsors: Center for Ethics and Human Values and the Department of Philosophy
