Reading Aristotle’s explanation of emotions made me realize how often I confuse one emotion for another or mislabel the feeling all together. While reading the section on kindness, I found it interesting to see all the ways in which this emotion can be mistaken. People automatically label someone as kind if they do something nice for them, but Aristotle points out that one must look at the motivations behind the kindness to determine the emotions validity. Aristotle writes:
“…we may maintain that they are being or have been helpful simply to promote their own interest- this, as has been stated, is not kindness: or that their action was accidental, or was forced upon them; or that they were not doing a favor, but merely returning one, whether they know this or not- in either case the action is a mere return, and is therefore not a kindness…( pg. 76) ”
Aristotle shows in this quote that true kindness comes from wanting to help someone because they need your aid. When a helper has second motivations to their giving, whether it is “accidental” or “reciprocal”, the helper can’t be considered as kind. With the definition of kindness being straight, narrow, and with no exceptions, I began to wonder just how many people in my life could be considered truly kind by Aristotle's standards? Do I even fit the criteria?
Other emotions that Aristotle describes as separate are anger and enmity/ hate. While many of us usually combine these two emotions together, Aristotle shows us just how different they can be. On pg. 69, Aristotle says “ Much may happen to make the angry man pity those who offend him, but the hater under no circumstances wishes to pity a man whom he has once hated: for the one would have the offenders suffer for what they have done; the other would have them cease to exist.” In this quote, Aristotle is trying to show how anger is based on feelings while hate is not. When you look at the emotions through this concept, you do not only see how different anger and hate are but you realize how important it is to label them correctly. Many of us in a moment of fury may scream “I Hate You” to someone but unless we wish that person stopped existing, we are just angry with them.
While Aristotle offers many valid explanations and depictions of emotions, some of his claims about anger do not seem applicable. Aristotle says that you cannot be angry with someone you respect or are afraid of “…you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him ( page 65).” I do not agree with this claim because you can find real life instances in which a person is both afraid and angry. In areas where genocide and wars are rapid, these two emotions would be extremely prevalent in many individuals. Many people in these situations are afraid for their lives, but they are also probably angry at individuals who have done them or their loved ones harm. Even though the victims’ fear may stop them from retaliating against their oppressors, many probably fantasy about revenge.
When it comes to Aristotle’s claim that you can’t be angry with someone you respect, I believe that this view can also be invalidated if you look at real life examples. No matter if you respect your parents, boss, or the President of the United States, if they were to do something to wrong you; the feeling of anger would certainly be present towards them. While some may claim that the people we respect would not do bad things toward us, the fact is that no one is perfect and everyone is subject to receiving and giving these negative emotions.
I felt at several points that Aristotle was being overly cynical in this reading, and the bit about kindness was one of those times. After all, if someone is kind to me, I'm not sure that it's my job to worry about all the ins and outs and question their motives. It's one thing if I know for sure that someone has an ulterior motive for kindness, but if I don't know that, I'm don't think I could spare the mental energy to figure it out. That sounds like a short road to paranoia! I'm happy with a more "innocent until proven guilty" approach to life.
ReplyDeleteI position my attitude toward kindness somewhere between Donah's and Su's. Donah, and Aristotle, contend that whether you are being truly kind depends on your motives. I agree, it does depend on your motivation. But what Su said has a lot of merit too- we aren't really in a position to question the motives of those who are doing us favors.
ReplyDeleteI personally define kindness (altruism, selflessness, supererogatory actions, etc)in terms of where the giver's attention is directed. So if I see you walking along a rainy street and offer you a ride, whether I'm being kind depends on whether I want YOU to be comfortable, or have another motive (I need someone to talk to, try and bum gas-money, etc).
The classic example, from philosophy/ethics is Mother Theresa. With a view like Aristotle's, you can easily discredit her kindness by saying that being charitable made Mother Theresa happy, and therefor she wasn't being genuinely kind, but rather self-serving. However, most of us want to say that Mother Theresa's is a classic example of selfless kindness. Hence, by looking at the objective of her actions(was it to make herself happy, or to make starving children's lives better?) you can conclude that Mother Theresa is genuinely kind.
If we read Aristotle very literally, we can almost never credit anyone with being genuinely kind. People generally do kind things because it makes them happy to see others be happy. Thus, they have an ulterior motive. I believe that if your ulterior motive is to feel happy because you helped someone, you're still being genuinely kind.
Donah, I agree that Aristotle's view that one cannot be angry with someone he or she respects/fears is a misinformed one. The example that I immediately think of is the story of Job from the Bible. God allowed Satan to bring a series of calamities into Job's life to test his faith. As these calamities unfold, Job gets very angry with God. But it is clear from what we learn about Job in the book that he fears God, or at least respects him. While this may not seem like a real life example, I think it pretty accurately depicts people's experiences with believing/respecting God on the one hand and being very angry with him on the other.
ReplyDeleteThat's a very good point about anger and respect. Gordon's point is excellent; we can't always take things to be literal. There are few, if any, absolute statements that always hold true.
ReplyDeleteHowever, when I read passages like this I sometimes wonder if there is another way to interpret it, one that can be seen as more realistic. In this instance I would wonder if Aristotle was trying to say that you loose your respect for a person while you're angry at them. For example: I respect my parents, so I speak to them in a way that reflects that. However, when I was a teenager we used to argue quite a bit. In the heat of an argument, my anger would lead me to say things that did not at all reflect my respect for them. In those moments, I don't think I respected them very much at all.
I agree with you criticism of Aristotle's conception of anger. It seems that he arbitrarily sets up guidelines for the specific situations that we could potentially feel a particular emotion within. It seems that we are never in a pure state of emotion but that they are constantly in a state flux, flowing in and out of different ones to varying degrees.
ReplyDeleteAristotle says that we can feel different emtoions at varying levels, but its as if he presupposes a fixed amount of emotional energy we constantly have at our disposal but that it can only be directed in one way.
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ReplyDeleteI'd argue that Aristotle's slip ups in this respect are not so much from cynicism but from a kind of practicality that he is engaging in while writing his advice. If we look at this book as a kind of guide to becoming better speakers, his positions on these emotions are more guidelines on how to observe, apply and understand them for our own uses. In this case these definitions do have some practical differences, although I do agree that discrediting kindness in that way may be a little distasteful. By the same token, while those feeling fear may also be angry, for practical purposes the fear overrides the anger and makes it a non-factor until the fear subsides. The anger exists, but it has no practical output while faced by the dominant emotion.
ReplyDeleteI like your take on Aristotle's definition of kindness because I felt the same way. In the midst of reading it, I felt like I was trying to analyze what actually made a person kind or how you could achieve this high level to be "kind." He talks about kindness as that of doing a favor for someone who needs something, and he really doesn't limit the needs a person can have.
ReplyDeleteI always thought kindness was me doing something from my heart to make someone else feel good, not me thinking "oh, this person is hungry so I better get to making them some food, boy that was kind of me."
I believe that you cannot be angry with someone that you respect, if only because the two are somewhat mutually exclusive. If someone I look up to does something to anger me, I no longer look up to them; they become flawed in my eyes and despicable. However, if they do something that does not anger me but rather simply disappoints me, I may still look up to them, though it's still possible that that disappointment will lead to disillusionment and eventually anger and hatred at the person.
ReplyDeleteI do however agree with your argument that one can be angry with a person they fear at the same time, despite what Aristotle says. The constant act of people attempting to undermine those they fear behind the scenes due to a slight they once received is proof positive of this.