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This chapter examines the Ciceronian letter collection, a rare and precious example of an informal and almost spontaneous writing style among the Roman elite, and how much Cicero's epistolary style reflects casual spoken Latin among the elite. In some of Cicero's letters to Atticus, his thoughts and manner of expression from day to day, even hour to hour, can sometimes be tracked. The degree to which the collection is still only a formalized literary representation of actual conversation is discussed by focusing on a prominent feature of Cicero's letters — the use of repeated allusive expressions — paying special attention to expressions that refer to resentment and suppressed indignation (often involving the word stomachus). Such features are analysed as their tendency to cluster together, their tendency to be used at rhetorical turning-points and in connection with epistolary content and style, and, most notably, their tendency to have loaded political significance in expressing resentment at the despotism of Julius Caesar and other dynasts. The chapter aims to show how one can simultaneously analyse Cicero's intimate letters both as rare windows into casual Latin conversation and as masterpieces of literary construction in the epistolary genre.

This chapter investigates the various scripts of invidia, the Latin term from which English “envy” is ultimately derived, though the Latin term is of much wider application. A system or “taxonomy” of scripts is described, and it is shown how the emotion — a form of distress felt when you see another person enjoy some sort of good — ranges from sheer malice to righteous indignation depending on whether or not the person experiencing the emotion is applying some principle of right or fairness. The chapter then shows how the different forms of the script commonly interacted in Roman social life.

It is argued in this chapter that various moral sentiments, such as forgiveness, guilt, and indignation are essentially associated with objective reasons. It is also proposed that the truth of certain judgments concerning happiness as well as the truth of a number of virtue judgments is also essentially linked to our having objective reasons, and, thus, to our having alternatives.

This chapter analyzes Rousseau's evolving relationship with his public by examining the distinctions he draws between good and bad anger, between righteous indignation and self-centered resentment. The different ways anger is discussed and displayed in the two Discours, in the Lettre à d'Alembert, in Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, and in Émile, serve to legitimize the low-born author's critique of social conventions and to provoke his readers to action. Yet, they also illustrate Rousseau's belief that a Senecan transcendence of emotion is a key both to social harmony and to the inner equilibrium of the self, and equanimity no less than a Juvenalian capacity for anger is set up as evidence of the author's claim to cultural authority. The tension between these two attitudes is shown to be a primary source of dynamism in Rousseau's work.

This chapter argues that hope plays a crucial role in our standard ways of relating to each other “interpersonally” (and to ourselves intrapersonally). One way that we relate to each other interpersonally—or from the “participant stance”—is to hold each other responsible. This mode of interaction is best construed as a “normative expectation.” This chapter argues that to normatively expect someone to comply with a requirement is to be prepared to justify a narrow set of “reactive” feelings: resentment, indignation, and guilt. Normative expectation and these reactive feelings are at the heart of relating to people as rational agents by holding them responsible.

When Barth had already started with his rewriting of the Romans, he was offered the possibility of receiving a Chair position at Göttingen in January 1921 that was confirmed in May of that year. After the demise of the Weimar Republic, Barth was then expelled from Germany. General Ludendorff — who initiated 1918's spring offensive — informed the Kaiser that suing for peace would be necessary by the end of September in that year. Although there were attempts at maintaining a liberalized monarchy, various events kept this from being achieved. As we look into the different significant impacts brought about by the war, this chapter attempts to illustrate how Barth shared a German indignation during the Ruhr occupation, how Barth had made various observations regarding the German academic life during the period, and how Barth's theology is located against not only the intellectual and cultural background, but also against political events.

The word “addiction” appears to limit our perception of a much wider realm—general behavioral reinforcement within the human brain. If neurochemical processes reinforce “good” habits such as love, loyalty, and joy in music or skill, then addiction should be studied in a larger context of both harmful and wholesome reinforcement triggers, their commonalities and differences. Self-righteousness and indignation may sometimes become pernicious addictive habits, arising as much from chemical need as from valid concerns about unfair actions. Among other outcomes, this may cause pathologically altruistic behavior. Indignation addiction may underpin the obstinate behavior of those on both the far left and far right of the political spectrum. Moderate-progressives who seek problem-solving pragmatism may get a boost if it were openly demonstrated that the self-righteous mental state is reinforced chemically by hijacking internal addiction mechanisms.

Who may forgive? Most philosophical accounts assume that only the victim of a wrongdoing has the standing to forgive. In many cases, this answer to the question is asserted without even an attempt at offering a supporting argument. However, when reasons are offered, they tend to take one of four forms: the debt-cancelling argument, the emotion-based argument, the relation-based argument, or the normative difference argument. In this chapter, these four arguments are shown to be inadequate. In addition, a case is made for expanding the class of those with the standing to forgive to include second and third parties.

This chapter discusses theory and research on mental mechanisms that mediate primitive prosocial behaviors, including the neuro-hormonal mechanisms that mediate impulsive helping behaviors and those that give rise to such emotional reactions as fear, admiration, sympathy, gratitude, pride, guilt, shame, indignation, vindictiveness, and forgiveness. Evidence that empathy and sympathy dispose people to want to help others as an end in itself is reviewed. It is argued that the emotions that mediate prosocial behaviors evolved because they disposed people to forgo immediate benefits and to suffer immediate costs in order to maximize long-term gains. Emotionally-mediated dispositions to make commitments and to invest in members of their groups evolved because the fitness of those making the investments was linked to the fitness of those in whom they invested, and because the long-term benefits of credibility and a reputation for trustworthiness outweighed the short-term costs of keeping promises and carrying out threats.

This chapter contains a classification of the moral senses and a speculative account of how they originated. It is suggested that a sense of duty originated in the emotional and motivational states that induce people to behave in prosocial ways. A sense of rights originated in a consciousness of implicit social norms defining how people are permitted to advance their interests in the context of their groups. Conscience originated in emotional reactions to social sanctions administered by others. Such moral sentiments as gratitude and indignation originated in emotional reactions to prosocial and antisocial behaviors emitted by others. A sense of justice originated as a means of counteracting cheating in cooperative exchanges. Abstract ideas about morality emerged when early humans acquired the ability to reflect on their moral intuitions. Jonathan Haidt’s model of moral decision-making contrasts rational sources of moral judgment with moral intuitions.

This paper engages critically with the new account of blame that is presented in T. M. Scanlon’s recent work. On Scanlon’s account, blame involves the justified adjustment of an agent’s attitudes in response to actions that impair the agent’s relationship with another party. I argue that this approach fails to capture the distinctive force of moral blame, and also that its emphasis on the impairment of relationships leads to a distorted account of the relational dimension of morality. I develop an alternative account of blame in terms of the reactive sentiments (such as resentment, indignation, and guilt), and show why blame, on the account of it I favor, is an important form of response to actions that offend against moral values. The tendency to blame people for moral wrongs is a way of caring about moral ends that is peculiarly appropriate to the relational character of those ends.

In this chapter, the rational abilities view is defended from arguments that the ability to do otherwise is required for both praiseworthy and blameworthy actions. The ability to do otherwise has been thought to be essential for several reasons, including connections to the fairness of blame, to one's being the ultimate source of one's actions, and because it has simply seemed true. In this chapter, variants of each of these challenges is addressed and the rational abilities view is shown to have the resources to answer each. The discussion of fairness of blames leads naturally into questions concerning the fairness of so-called “retributive attitudes,” such as resentment and indignation, as well as the fairness of inflicting harm and punishment, and these questions are also addressed.

This chapter examines the recurrence of the theme of death in Philip Roth's novels, including Indignation, Exit Ghost, and Nemesis. The draft and the Korean War in Indignation, the 9/11 aftermath and Bush reelection in Exit Ghost, and the 1944 polio epidemic in Nemesis interest Roth only insofar as they induce an atmosphere of collective fear. The words “dread,” “terrified,” “frightened,” “scared” “horror,” “jeopardize,” “imperil,” “vulnerable,” “panic” abound in Roth's fiction. Only pages into The Humbling we hear that celebrity actor Simon Axler is “awash with terror and fear.” “Everything gruesome must be squarely faced,” says Axler. This chapter also highlights one figure who persists in Roth's novels: the solid if unimaginative father who provides his family with protection.

Chapter I provides a positive answer to the question, Why should a society engage with a painful past? By drawing attention to the normative weight — but also to the strategic value — of resentment and indignation as evaluative responses to oppression and injustice, Chapter I dismisses the sceptic’s fear of their destabilising impact on democratisation processes.

The Conclusion recapitulates the major arguments, sketches further directions of research, and addresses several potential criticisms. The path forward is to recognise the role that emotions such as resentment and indignation can play in the normative and cultural reproduction of democratic orders at all times, beyond the foundational moment.

The Introduction formulates the two guiding questions of the book: Do aspiring democracies need to engage with a past of violence? If yes, what institutional form should justice take, given the volatile emotional circumstances of democratic transitions?

Social movements ultimately aim to transform our moral intuitions and principles. Morality influences us more through our emotions, and intuitively, than through well articulated statements of principle. Some morality consists of gut-level compassion for the suffering of others. Other forms include shame and pride, admiration and contempt. We also have a sense of fairness when it comes to the distribution of valued resources and opinions.

Chapter 3 explores desert of moral blame on a different understanding of moral blame, one on which to morally blame an agent for an action is to hold a negative moral reactive attitude (moral indignation or reprobation) towards her on account of what she has done. The chapter takes the form of a reconstruction and defence of P.F. Strawson’s core argument for the compatibility of moral responsibility and determinism. It is argued contrary to critics that Strawson’s account of the exemptions is not incomplete. The incapacity that exempts from moral responsibility, placing one outside the moral community, is the incapacity that Strawson stresses: viz., the incapacity for participation in ordinary adult interpersonal relationships as we normally understand them. Also endorsed is Strawson’s claim that the reactive attitudes, where strong, involve certain retributive sentiments. That they involve these sentiments ties desert of the moral reactive attitudes to moral desert of punishment.