Anger is directed against the individual, not the genus or species (comp. c. 3. 16): that is, it is excited by a definite, concrete, single individual, and by a distinct provocation, not by a mere mental abstraction, or a whole class of objects. This is one of the characteristics which distinguish it from μῖσος or ἔχθρα; infra c. 4, καὶ ἣ μὲν ὀργὴ ἀεὶ περὶ τὰ καθ̓ ἕκαστα, οἷον Καλλίᾳ ἢ Σωκράτει, τὸ δὲ μῖσος καὶ πρὸς τὰ γένῃ τὸν γὰρ κλέπτην μισεῖ καὶ τὸν συκοφάντην ἅπας. [For Κλέωνι, see III 5. 2.] Add to these, national antipathies, family feuds, class prejudices, religious and political enmities, the odium theologicum, &c. On the ordinary objects of anger, Prof. Bain says, Emotions and Will, p. 163, “The objects of irascible feeling are chiefly persons; but inanimate things may occasionally cause an imperfect form of it to arise.” Aristotle omits this. Mr Bain, more correctly than Aristotle, includes under the same head, ‘the irascible emotion’, hatred, revenge, antipathy and resentment, or righteous indignation (νέμεσις) with anger, as mere varieties of the same πάθος or emotion. Again, it is provoked by any injury (or insult) committed or intended, ἢ πεποίηκέ τις ἢ ἤμελλεν, either against ourselves, or any of our relations, friends, dependants, anyone in whose welfare we are interested. ‘Thirdly, (as we gather from the terms of the definition, ὄρεξις τιμωρίας,) every angry emotion is accompanied by a feeling of pleasure, that, namely (τὴν Bekk. τῆς A^{c}), which arises from the hope of vengeance upon, or of punishing (both are included in τιμωρία), (the person who has offended us)’. First of all revenge is in itself pleasant: καὶ τὸ τιμωρεῖσθαι ἡδύ: οὗ γὰρ τὸ μὴ τυγχάνειν λυπηρὸν τὸ τυγχάνειν ἡδύ: οἱ δ᾽ ὀργιζόμενοι λυποῦνται ἀνυπερβλήτως μὴ τιμωρούμενοι, ἐλπίζοντες δὲ χαίρουσιν. Comp. Eth. Nic. IV 11, 1126 a 2, ἡ γὰρ τιμωρία παύει τῆς ὀργῆς, ἡδονὴν ἀντὶ τῆς λύπης ἐμποιοῦσα. τούτου δὲ μὴ γενομένου τὸ βάρος ἔχουσιν. ‘For it is pleasant to think that we shall attain to the object of our desire’, (the pleasure of hope or anticipation, I 11. 6, 7,) ‘and no one ever aims at what is evidently impossible for himself (to attain), and the angry man's desire always aims at what he (believes to be) possible for himself’. He always supposes that he shall obtain the object of his desire, the punishment of the offender, and therefore even in his anger he feels pleasure in the prospective satisfaction. The first of the two following lines of Homer, Il. Σ 109, has been already quoted in illustration of the same topic, the pleasure of anger in the prospect of revenge, I 11. 9. In the passage quoted above from Seneca, de Ira, I 3. 2, what is here said, οὐδεὶς τῶν φαινομένων ἀδυνάτων ἐφίεται αὑτῷ, may seem at first sight to be contradicted. The two statements are however different: Seneca says that a man may wish for what is quite beyond his reach; Aristotle says that he never aims at it, never uses any exertion to attain to that which he knows to be unattainable: which is equally true. No one ever deliberates about things which are not under his own control. (For a list of such things see Eth. Nic. III 5, sub init.) But this anticipation of the future is not the only source of the pleasure which we feel in an angry mood: ‘it as accompanied by yet another pleasure, the present pleasure of dwelling in the mind on the prospective vengeance: it is the fancy that then arises (presents itself) that produces the pleasure in us, just like that of dreams’. On the pleasures of the φαντασία, and the φαντασία itself, see again I 11. 6, 7, and the notes there. Schrader refers to an excellent illustration of this pleasure of dwelling on the prospect of vengeance, in Terent. Adelph. III 2. 12, seq. beginning, me miserum, vix sum compos animi, ita ardeo iracundia1.
1 See also ‘on the pleasure of irascible emotion,’ Bain, Emotions and Will, c. ix. § 4. Mr Bain acknowledges, though he regards it as anomalous, the painful fact that pleasure at the sight of suffering inflicted, especially under circumstances of violent excitement when the passions are already inflamed, as at the sack of a captured town, is in reality a phenomenon of human nature. Other examples of this are the notoriously cruel habits of children in their treatment of animals, and in their ordinary sports; the pleasure found in gladiatorial combats, bull fights, bear baiting, cock and quail fights, and all the other cruel exhibitions which have amused the most civilized as well as barbarous spectators. He traces this to three sources, of which the principal is the love of power. I will venture to add three more possible elements of the emotion, which may contribute, without superseding the others, to the production of it. First, the sense of contrast between the suffering which we are witnessing in another and our own present immunity: this is the principle implied in Lucretius' Suave mari magno, and is illustrated in I 11. 8, of this work. Secondly, it may be partly traced to curiosity—the pleasure of learning, as Aristotle calls it—and the stimulus of surprise or wonder which we feel at any exciting spectacle; another source of pleasure mentioned by Aristotle in the same chapter. And thirdly, perhaps, a distorted and perverted sympathy (this is an ordinary source of pleasure), which gives us an independent interest in the sufferings of any creature whose feelings, and consequent liability to suffering, we share—that is, of all animated beings; with inanimate objects there can be no sympathy.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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