Justice-Oriented Anger As a Virtue: Expanding the Morally Good in Situations of Oppression

Justice-oriented anger is a virtue for those desiring freedom. This paper will look at Lisa Tessman’s work on burdened virtues to establish that there are life circumstances, especially ones derived from oppression or a lack of freedom, that may not allow people to live without emotional experiences of anger. Tessman defines burdened virtues as “virtues that have the unusual feature of being disjoined from their bearer’s own flourishing” (Lisa Tessman, Burdened Virtues, 4). Tessman thinks virtue looks different in the context where people are incapable of fully flourishing, whether through oppression or bad moral luck. As such, the decisions that may be morally best contingent on one’s circumstances are not necessarily decisions considered to be generally morally good. It is significant for Tessman to delineate circumstantial moral bests from broad moral goods because it emphasizes the evil of oppression. Oppression is itself a burden placed upon people that extremely limits its sufferer’s capacity for virtue (Tessman, 6).

Virtues are typically seen as habitual action where emotions act as one piece of an individual’s moral guidance. However, while anger is recognized to be an emotion, it is also a virtue because it can be a sustained response, reacting against the realities of injustices. Anger is appropriate is situations where an individual suffers oppression or lack of freedom; this justice-oriented anger maintains itself as acts of resistance – as well as motivating other acts of resistance.

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum delineates herself as staunchly opposed to anger as normally understood because Nussbaum considers anger to be completely constrained by desires for revenge or payback (Martha Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness, 4-8). She claims that anger has a specific future-oriented aim for an offender to face comparable suffering that they caused. In her book Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice, Nussbaum argues in favor of a “transition-anger,” one in which the moral agent turns away from payback and towards non-retributive solutions (Nussbaum, 31, 35). Nussbaum upholds Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a success story; she sees principles of nonviolence during the Civil Rights Movement as a pinnacle example of letting anger turn into a non-retributive motivation. It should be noted that Nussbaum did not satisfyingly consider other motivations for nonviolence, such as threats of death for African Americans who publicly expressed their anger, but she pointed to Dr. King understanding that holding white Americans accountable for segregation could not lead to advocating for a kind of reversal of degradation (Nussbaum, 38-40). While Nussbaum did not use language of restorative justice, her work is undoubtedly leading in that direction. 

Ultimately, this paper argues that there is a form of justice-oriented anger that should be considered a virtue, especially in situations of oppression, and encouraged in actions that move towards freedom. Does virtue require that people are always working towards perfection? Tessman allows for anger in the context of a justice-oriented framework, not too dissimilar from Thomas Aquinas. Non-anger may exist as the ideal, but realities of a sinful world keep people from comprehensively envisioning what a just society looks like; therefore, if non-anger serves as the virtue, the possibility for people to be virtuous may hinge on a perspective not actualized in their earthly experiences. 

In her book Azusa Reimagined: A Radical Vision of Religious and Democratic Belonging, Keri Day lets the actualized experiences of the subjugated to speak their own stories. Day talks about the Azusa Street Revival as a site of radical transformation, both religiously and socially. Participants in this 1906 experience could witness the subversion of social norms requiring separation of races and genders, such as black men putting their hands on white women in the altar (Keri Day, Azusa Reimagined, 116-117). Day’s picture of Azusa is one where people undergo a personal, religious transformation that translates into social freedom within the spaces of that community.

Day presents readers with a conception of political moodiness, referring to the emotional experiences of the suffering and vulnerable that reveals immorality present in their life circumstances. The emotions involved in political moodiness are generally what is considered to be negative, such as grief, rage, pessimism, etc. Day calls for people to gravely attend to the politically moody, listening to how the oppressed individual’s circumstances keep them from flourishing, and using the emotional experiences to show that change is necessary (Day, 158). Day sees justice-oriented anger as conducive towards causing social change and considers its expression to be good. She works in a different mode of justice orientation. Negative experiences and the emotions within are forms of fuel for people to keep going, keep fighting for freedom. Her call to readers is to continue the radical, transformative community of Azusa by attending to the emotions of the vulnerable.

If political moodiness is engaged comprehensively, it offers a way to consider anger as a virtue. Day’s conception of political moodiness centers the oppressed individual and community as moral agent(s) capable of claiming their own moral good. Tessman writes about burdened virtues, recognizing they exist as qualities of the morally damaged. Having to choose a less morally good option under circumstances of subjugation pales in comparison to the immorality that comes from perpetuating systems of oppression. Justice-oriented anger points people in the direction of resistance and restoration, behaviors that may be more commonly accepted as virtuous. Resistance should include anger if anger is present to the resistor, and anger should be recognized as sustained responses that can be morally good.