This examination of anger begins with an interesting preamble where Montaigne again mocks the leadership abilities of most men and declares that most parents are unsuited to the social responsibility of educating children. He has a special dislike for anyone who physically disciplines children in public, saying he has often been tempted to step in, but didn’t because he knew the law would not be on his side.
He concludes the opening section, relying on a quote from Juvenal, with his ideal for how children should be raised:
It is good to have given a citizen to the people and the State – provided that you make him fit for his country, good at farming, good in war and peace.
He then makes this very interesting analogy that hints at the need for a Hypocratic Oath in raising children:
For a child punishment is a medicine: would we tolerate a doctor who was animated by wrath against his patient?
Montaigne’s treatment of anger is really a statement about revenge, making this essay a companion piece to “Cowardice, the Mother of All Cruelty.” He makes a very wise point, that the best punishment meted out is that which comes after furor has wound down:
Punishments applied after being judiciously weighed are more acceptable and more useful to the sufferer. Otherwise he does not think that he has been justly condemned by a man shaking with anger and fury; he cites in his own justification the inflamed face of the schoolmaster, his unaccustomed swearing, his mental disturbance and his precipitate haste.
There have been many example in history that bear out this wisdom. The U.S. response to 9/11 and the additional vengeance war tacked on to Iraq is one. Another is the tragic Israeli response to the October 7 massacres by Hamas. Shortly after the attacks, Israeli officials loosely threw around the word vengeance and promised a brutal retaliation. I could tell that this would not end well for anyone as soon as I heard Israeli defense officials discuss the Gaza response in such stark terms. Perhaps they were embarrassed by the incredible intelligence failure that led to the massacre. But that only explains their words, it doesn’t excuse them. People incapable of moderating their rhetoric have already lost half the battle. The Israeli people had suffered a terrible, inhumane tragedy. There was no need to promise an angry, vengeful response, one that would soon make the world forget the horror that innocent Israeli citizens suffered.
Montaigne uses a curious example to make a similar point. After expressing his admiration for Plutarch, he relays a story about him having one of his slaves flogged for doing something that Montaigne assumed was evil. The slave, mid beating, starts berating Plutarch for being a hypocrite and not a philosopher, because he was taking out his anger on him. As Montaigne recalls it, Plutarch responds:
‘What makes you think, you ruffian, that I am angry at this time? Does my face, my voice, my colouring or my speech bear any witness to my being excited? I do not think my eyes are wild, my face distorted nor my voice terrifying. Is my face inflamed? Am I foaming at the mouth? Do words escape me which I will later regret? Am I all a-tremble? Am I shaking with wrath? Those, I can tell you, are the true symptoms of anger.’ Then turning towards the man who was doing the flogging he said, ‘Carry on with your job, while this man and I are having a discussion.’
Does Montaigne intend any irony here, because Plutarch’s cold blooded response sounds downright evil to me.
And then there’s this long paragraph that I feel the need to include both because it illustrate’s Montaigne’s point well, but also because it alludes to a point he makes later in On Experience about how the law can easily be warped to create injustice:
Anger is a passion which delights in itself and fawns on itself. How often, if we are all worked up for some wrong reason and then offered some good defence or excuse, we are vexed against truth and innocence itself! I can recall a marvellous example of this from Antiquity. Piso, a great man in every other way, noted for his virtue, was moved to anger against one of his soldiers. Because that soldier had returned alone after foraging and could give no account of where he had left his comrade, Piso was convinced that he had murdered him and at once condemned him to death. When he was already on the gallows, along comes the lost comrade! At this the whole army was overjoyed and, after many a hug and embrace between the two men, the executioner brought both of them into the presence of Piso; all those who were there were expecting that Piso himself would be delighted. Quite the contrary: for, through embarrassment and vexation, his fury, which was still very powerful, suddenly redoubled and, by a quibble which his passion promptly furnished him with, he found three men guilty because one had just been found innocent, and had all three of them executed: the first soldier because he was already sentenced to death; the second, the one who had gone missing, because he had caused the death of his comrade; the hangman for failing to obey orders.
A great man in every other way — Piso sounds like a psychopath to me. But even though Montaigne seems unusually forgiving of the angry, he doesn’t come across as someone who shows much anger himself.
When I get angry it is as lively, but also as short and as secret, as I can make it. I lose control quickly and violently, but not with such turmoil that I go gaily hurling about all sorts of insults at random and fail to lodge my goads pertinently where I think they can do the most damage: for I normally use only my tongue. My servants get off more cheaply in serious cases than in little ones. The little ones take me by surprise: unfortunately, once you are over the edge, no matter what gave you the shove, you go right down to the bottom; the very fall, of itself, presses on in haste and confusion. In the serious cases I am satisfied with their being so obvious that everybody expects me to give birth to justified anger: I glory in disappointing their expectations.
His closing quote returns to the question of anger as a tactic, citing Aristotle:
One more word to close this chapter. Aristotle says that choler sometimes serves virtue and valour as a weapon. That is most likely; nevertheless those who deny it have an amusing reply: it must be some new-fangled weapon; for we wield the other weapons: that one wields us; it is not our hand that guides it: it guides our hand; it gets a hold on us: not we on it.
There is great wisdom in this thought. There is an odd element to my anger. Some people when they become angry get purely irrational, but I get hyper-rational. I sometimes think I spent my entire five year career in competitive debate working myself up enough to get angry in rounds, so this side of me would come out, which is the weapon Aristotle describes.
But the rejoinder is correct as well. Wielding this weapon took a toll. Speaking at rapid pace while tearing an opponent to shreds with logic is one of the strangest skills for an adolescent to master, and by my freshman year of college, I couldn’t take the effect anymore. It might also account for why I went on very few dates in high school and by college, it was time to put that pseudo-angry personality aside.
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