Anger and resentment

Resentment and anger are neighbours. But how does the former stand to the latter? In the following, we will argue that resentment is a kind of anger, but unlike ordinary anger, resent-ment is a checked and always bitter emotion, that triggers characteristic ruminations, brood-ing, the reliving of certain experiences and repetitions. Resentment endures as long as wrongs have not been righted, which is the reason why experiencing it necessarily comes with a desire for revenge. But before we outline all these properties in more detail, let us here look first at anger and its different variants, and contrast these with resentment.

8 Darwall, 2006, p. 67.

Anger encompasses a large family of emotions. It occurs, for example, as rage, furore, out-rage, or irritation. The Englishman is also said to be annoyed, peeved, pissed off, piqued, or incensed. Some of anger’s forms are violent and explosive, such as wrath (Entrüstung, colère), some correspond to milder annoyances (Ärger), and some have a strong moral dimension, such as indignation (Empörung), which we will consider in Chapter 5. Common to all these varieties is a sense of dissatisfaction.⁹ In ordinary speech, anger is mostly reserved for descriptions of our responses to thwarted expectations, plans and desires; it is the name we give to our response to annoyances¹⁰ or frustrations.¹¹ We shall refer to it here as ordinary anger. Some other forms of anger seem to imply the belief or the perception that one has suffered some harm and ill-will. In fact, anger is often reduced to such responses to intentional harm.¹² And anger in that latter sense can also involve offences that are not direc-ted at one’s person. As Aristotle reminds us, this emotion “may be defined as an impulse, accompanied by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight directed without jus-tification towards what concerns oneself or towards what concerns one's friends”.¹³ Apart from the fact that all these variants involve a form of dissatisfaction, they also tend, as Shand points out, “to accomplish their ends by some kind of aggressive behaviour”.¹⁴ Anger is hence characterised by a desire for retaliation, the nature of which changes according to the differ-ent variants of anger. Rage (Wut) and ordinary anger for example involve a desire to aggress-ively strike back at the triggering obstacle – human or not.¹⁵ But resentment and indignation are accompanied by a desire for revenge or a desire to see the other punished by a third-party. Also, one can be angry at one's present self, but one cannot, as far as I can see, be resentful or indignant at oneself. When a storm jeopardises my hiking plans, I may be irrit-ated and angry at myself for not having checked the meteorological forecast. My anger though is not directed at the storm itself. Bollnow goes as far as to claim that anger qua frus-tration (Ärger) is in fact always self-directed.¹⁶ By contrast, anger qua indignation or resent-ment is always directed at some other person.

9 Gordon, 1987, p. 53.

10 Helm in Salmela & Mayer, 2009, p. 16.

11 Gordon, 1987; Livet, 2002.

12 Solomon, 1993, p. 227. Solomon for example explains: “anger is basically a judgement that one has been wronged or offended” (Solomon, 2007, p. 18). See also: Ben Ze'ev, 2002, p. 154; Horberg et al., 2011.

13 Aristotle, 1378 a31–34. Emphasis added.

14 Shand, 1926, p. 250.

15 As Bollnow says: “Der Wütende stürzt sich auf seinen Gegner und schlägt – im wörtlichen und übertra-genen Sinn – blind auf ihn ein. Man spricht treffend von einer blinden Wut. Die Wut is eine Art Raserei, die den Menschen erfasst und ihn in einen Rauschartigen Zustand versetzt, der ihn der klaren Besinnung weit-gehend beraubt” (Bollnow, 2009, p. 72).

16 Bollnow, 2009, p. 69.

Resentment is a form of anger¹⁷, too. It seems that we can always legitimately attribute the property of being angry to an individual harbouring resentment. Yet, the emotion can still be distinguished from mere rage as well as ordinary anger. Let us first examine this question from a phenomenological standpoint and try to distinguish ordinary anger from resentment.

Brudholm suggests that the phenomenological qualities of resentment are in fact the same as those of ordinary anger.¹⁸ But this latter claim is not quite right as we can in fact distinguish two kinds of experience. First, ordinary anger in this narrow sense is a short-lived episode, with thoroughly studied physiological symptoms (increased heart rate and blood pressure, a high level of adrenaline, etc.), typical facial expressions (aggression, a threatening attitude, etc.) and retaliatory action tendencies. Resentment is different. If it is a kind of anger, it is always experienced over a longer time scale: resentment is something that endures and where memory nurtures revenge fantasies in relation to a past offence. One may object that there is an insurmountable difficulty in trying to distinguish, phenomenologically, recurrent episodes of anger from enduring emotions such as resentment. However, their differences may derive from the way these enduring states or repeated episodes are experienced. For ordinary anger emerges in explosive bouts that rapidly diminish in intensity; resentment, once it occurs, takes more time to fade away. Anger may cause sudden bursts of rage and violence (as when one throws a tantrum)¹⁹; resentment is rather experienced as a controlled animosity – usually because the resenter finds himself unable to retaliate on the spot or simply vent his feelings. Someone in the grip of resentment often cannot be openly aggress-ive, which is why he carefully checks his impulses, concocts a plan and dreams of his future revenge. Resentment is a checked emotion, closer to a grudge than to the sudden affective discharge typical of ordinary anger.²⁰ In German, one distinguishes between Wut and Zorn.

The former is blind, constitutes a barely controllable expression of displeasure and upset, and corresponds to rage – a Wutausbruch is an “outburst of rage”. The latter refers to an intense emotion that remains contained and focused on the disvalue to me of a particular object or state of affairs.²¹ Resentment (Groll) on the other hand is never by itself character-ised by fits of anger, irrational actions, and violence; it is neither ordinary anger nor rage or

17 Griswold, 2007, p. 22; Walker, 2006, p. 110; Prinz & Nichols in Doris, 2010; Taylor, 2006; Aristotle. Reid seems to be indifferent between the two concepts, but eventually opts for “resentment”, of which he distin -guishes different kinds (Reid, 1815, p. 115).

18 Brudholm, 2008, p. 11.

19 As Bollnow rightly puts it: “Wut is nach aussen hin ausgebrochener Ärger” (Bollnow, 2009, p. 71).

20 Ben Ze'ev, 2002, p. 153; Darwall, 2010, p. 319.

21 Fries, 2003, p. 115. As Bollnow puts it: “Im Unterschied zur blinden Wut ist der Zorn immer, und zwar in ausgezeichnetem Masse sehend.” (Bollnow, 2009, p. 75).

fury. Note however that rage (Wut) can be triggered by accumulated resentment.²² Symmet-rically, accumulated indignation (Empörung), Bollnow suggests, bursts out as wrath (Zorn).²³ Contrary to many forms of anger, resentment presupposes an incapacity on the part of the subject to strike back on the spot and tends to endure as long as the perceived wrongdoer remains unpunished for his action. Not only is resentment more controlled compared to anger, it comes with a characteristic mental activity. The resenter broods and ruminates, and some suggest that these thoughts continue even once revenge has been taken.²⁴ Resentment in contrast to ordinary anger is bitter. It is typically sullen and smoulders like a low fire.

Compared to rage or ordinary anger, resentment also appears to be cognitively richer and more complex; it is a “sophisticated” anger that endures as long as the desire for revenge remains unfulfilled.²⁵ The experience of resentment often turns into a self-reinforcing state of grudge-bearing and discontent which becomes more difficult to overcome and more all-consuming as time passes.²⁶ This characteristic is already suggested by the etymology of the word itself: in French, “re-sentir” literally means to “feel again”. Resentment, in other words, translates into racing thoughts rather than a racing heart.

In light of this contrast, the formal object of ordinary anger may be some wrong or offence which has the particularity that it is either immediately redressed or provokes no thought of redress. Resentment on the other hand breeds an enduring desire for revenge directed at the person or group believed to have caused a wrong – a fact already stressed by Aristotle.²⁷ The memory of the triggering event certainly remains vivid which is why the emotion is associ-ated with “un état d’animosité maintenu par le souvenir d’une offense dont on aspire à se venger.”²⁸ But thoughts of a desired retribution become a focus too, one that grounds resent-ment’s revengefulness. Westermarck specifies that revenge is the outcome of resentment when retaliation and the expression of anger need to be checked, when the “hostile reaction is more or less restrained by reason and calculation”.²⁹ Evolutionary psychologists have recently claimed that the desire for revenge is a fundamental and hard-wired feature of human nature.³⁰ But some reject the view that a desire for revenge is an essential part of

22 Bullnow, 2009, pp. 72-74.

23 Bollnow, 2009, p. 77.

24 Smith, 2013, p. 90; Carlsmith et al., 2008, p. 1324.

25 Taylor, 2006, p. 86.

26 Some do believe that this is sometimes easy and recognise a lighter sort of resentment that does not leave any persistent marks, that is redressed and forgotten with an apology or with time (Oksenberg-Rorty, 2000, p. 91).

27 Barton, 1999, p. 65.

28 Foulquié, 1992, p. 662.

29 Westermarck, 1906, p. 22.

30 McCullough, 2008.

resentment at all. La Caze for example claims: “vengefulness involves the desire to hurt someone in retaliation for a perceived wrong, whereas resentment involves the acknow-ledgement that a wrong has occurred, without a clearly corresponding desire to punish.”³¹ Her account however provides too passive and intellectual a description of resentment, for it seems difficult to envisage a resenter who does not at least wish for the punishment of the wrongdoers. It might suffice that her desire for revenge be fulfilled by punishment of the offender by a third-party. In all previous examples of unfair treatments (me-being-mis-treated, me-being-humiliated, me-being-burgled, etc.), the victim certainly believes that she has been wronged. But instead of exacting retribution personally, one may simply prefer the offender to be punished impersonally, by the judicial system for example. In general, success-ful revenge occurs – and resentment is ended – when wrongs are righted, for, as Smith remarks: “the righting of a wrong can merge most clearly with the powerful motive of revenge and its resulting gratifications”.³² The anticipation and experience of Schadenfreude are essential markers of the desire for revenge, and Smith claims that it is also manifested when the wrongdoer is punished by a third-party or when misfortune befalls him.³³ This strongly suggests that different types of events may satisfy the desire for revenge. More par-ticularly, it seems we can distinguish three possible events or actions that end resentment and satisfy its associated desire for revenge, retaliation (personal revenge), third-party pun-ishment (impersonal revenge), and misfortunes which overtake the wrongdoers.

A fourth candidate for the role is perhaps authentic forgiveness, which seems to have a sim-ilar effect on resentment as a satisfied desire for revenge. As Scheler puts it:

The desire for revenge disappears when vengeance has been taken, when the person against whom it was directed has been punished or has punished himself, or when one truly forgives him.³⁴

As Bishop Butler already pointed out in his Sermons, forgiveness overcomes resentment.³⁵ Strawson explains that:

To ask to be forgiven is in part to acknowledge that the attitude displayed in our actions was such as might properly be resented and in part to repudiate that attitude for the future (or at least for the immediate future); and to forgive is to accept the repudiation and to forswear the resentment.³⁶

31 La Caze, 2001, p. 38.

32 Smith, 2013, p. 86.

33 Smith, 2013, p. 91. He claims: “There seems no question that misfortunes happening to others who have severely wronged us appeal to our deep-rooted sense of justice” (Smith, 2013, p. 92).

34 RAM, p. 26.

35 Butler, Upon Foregiveness and Injuries.

36 Strawson, 2008, p. 6.

Both resentment and gratitude may be considered opposites. Unlike anger, but like resent-ment, gratitude endures. The proper objects of resentment and gratitude are persons and their actions; resentment is a response to the perception of ill-will and gratitude a response to the perception of good-will. One remains grateful to someone for what he has done as one continues to resent someone for what he has done. ³⁷ According to Scheler, gratitude is a mode of love, as are kindness, goodwill, friendliness, attachment, and affection.³⁸ It seems, on the other hand, that resentment can be considered a mode of hate. We shall develop the idea that the man of ressentiment is characterised by hatred and its different modes in Section 3.1.

Another element often brought forward to differentiate anger from resentment is the more expressive nature of the former. But is resentment merely an unexpressed emotion?³⁹ Coun-ter-examples to such a claim are easy to find. I may for example threaten the jury, shout and cry, clench my fists and stamp my feet after a sentencing or a verdict I take to be unreason-able, or my unfair exclusion from university. The resenter can and will sometimes, quite spontaneously, manifest his discontent. And he can, without censuring himself, publicly express either his pain at being wronged or his desire for revenge. In fact, as Griswold remarks: “a person in the grip of resentment often demands that the narrative be heard, and yearns that it be published, so to speak (resentment loves company)”.⁴⁰ Hence nothing sug-gests that resentment is merely unexpressed anger. The resenter may express his hostility and suffering publicly; but none of it emerges in a sudden response capable of leading to retaliation. If he is unable to retaliate. This may also add to the bitterness of his experience, turn into obsessive thoughts of revenge, and reinforce his desire to get even. These auxiliary symptoms depend on circumstantial considerations about the advisability of a public display of hostility. Their occurrence remains rather contingent. Yet, resentment always implies a primary inability to retaliate in response to an offence and, as the emotion endures, an inca-pacity to end or act on a desire for revenge. The resenter dreams of revenge but cannot act accordingly. Scheler describes this characteristic experience as a state where: “the immediate

37 As Strawson puts it:

If someone treads on my hand accidentally, while trying to help me, the pain may be no less acute than if he treads on it in contemptuous disregard of my existence or with a malevolent wish to injure me. But I shall generally feel in the second case a kind and degree of resentment that I shall not feel in the first.

If someone’s actions help me to some benefit I desire, then I am benefited in any case; but if he intended them so to benefit me because of his general goodwill towards me, I shall reasonably feel a gratitude which I should not feel at all if the benefit was an incidental consequence, unintended or even regretted by him, of some plan of action with a different aim (Strawson, 2008, p. 6).

38 SYMP, p. 174.

39 “Contrasting resentment with aggressive anger is not meant to imply that the former is free of aggressive desires; the difference is merely in the being expressed or repressed” (Taylor, 2006, p. 85).

40 Griswold, 2007, p. 30.

reactive impulse, with the accompanying emotions of anger and rage, is temporarily or at least momentarily checked and restrained, and the response is consequently postponed to a later time”.⁴¹ Resentment is therefore the experience of a revenge that cannot be fulfilled, of non-retaliation rather than unexpressed anger.

Resentment's valence, finally, is mixed. An outburst of anger is often felt to be in many ways a positive emotion, to be exhilarating or a way of feeling alive. This is never true of the occur-rence of resentment except precisely when it flares up into anger. The bitterness of memor-ies of unremedied offences can turn it into a deeply unpleasant brooding. But Aristotle also remarks that the prospect of revenge is a rather pleasant thought.⁴² The resenter certainly relishes his obsessive revenge fantasies. But he is not only taking pleasure in the prospect of revenge; revenge that materialises, either through personal and direct vengeance, through third-party punishment of the wrongdoer, or when misfortune befalls him, are delightful events too.⁴³