This book provides a variety of diverse perspectives related to the ethics of anger, some more analytical in nature, others focused on practical issues, some in defense of anger, and others arguing against its necessity. This book is an essential resource for scholars who want to reflect critically on the place of anger in contemporary life.

This book develops a rights-based theory of justice that maintains that genuine repentance creates a right to be forgiven. Examining the nature of rights and theological conceptions of forgiveness, the author shows why such a right is nonrepugnant and produces the most just state of affairs for victims and wrongdoers.

This essay examines why some introductory ethics students are averse to any sort of moral requirement. It provides a series of descriptions and techniques to help teachers recognize, diagnose, and engage such students. After discussing the nature of student aversions to moral obligations, I discuss three causes and several ways to engage each: 1) Student Relativism; 2) student fears and misunderstandings of obligations; and 3) the phenomenon of what I call fetishized liberty, which leads to the “liberty paradox”—where students actively (...) fight for liberties, yet actively give up or fail to use the ones they currently have. (shrink)

In this introduction to a special section on the philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On, guest editor Court Lewis introduces Jennifer Kling’s article on equitable resettlement of refugees, Wim Laven’s article on meaningful political citizenship, and his own work on the analysis of the violent threat of citizen culture-warriors.

In tribute to the philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On, this article draws upon her Arendtian analysis of fascism to explore recent dynamics of ethnic nationalism in the US. Whereas Bar On analyzed the problem of citizen-soldiers, this study extends analysis toward the citizen culture-soldier, suggesting that recent dynamics in the US are suggestive of a Cultural Revolution that threatens the inclusive practice of citizenship required of democracy. Bar On’s work motivates philosophers to not be lulled into acceptance of anti-democratic practices (...) of citizenship. The values of respect, equality, and equity suggest that another form of citizenship should be practically pursued. (shrink)

Righteous Indignation explores the philosophy of Christian anger—for example what anger is, what it means for God to be angry, and when anger is morally appropriate. The contributors examine several dimensions of the topic, including divine wrath, imprecatory psalms, and the proper place of anger in the life of Christians today.

Court D. Lewis, author of Repentance and the Right to Forgiveness, presents a rights-based theory of ethics grounded in eirenéism, a needs-based theory of rights (inspired by Nicholas Wolterstorff) that seeks peaceful flourishing for all moral agents. This approach creates a moral relationship between victims and wrongdoers such that wrongdoers owe victims compensatory obligations. However, one further result is that wrongdoers may be owed forgiveness by victims. This leads to the “repugnant implication” that victims may be wrongdoers who do not (...) forgive. Author Lewis addresses the “repugnant implication” by showing that victims are obligated to work toward forgiveness, if not forgiveness itself. Critic Gregory L. Bock argues that victims are not the only ones who can forgive, that the personal dimensions of forgiveness are overlooked, and that the force of the “repugnancy implication” may be questioned. Instead of rights-based eirenéism, Bock supports a virtue ethics framework. Instead of rights-based eirenéism, Bock encourages virtue ethics. Critic David Boersema raises questions about the binding nature of relationships, the dependency of flourishing upon forgiveness, and the nature of needs or rights. Boersema also questions the wisdom of a rights-based approach to forgiveness. Critic Jennifer Kling asks whether a rights-based approach is necessary to ground obligations to meet the needs of others: why not an ethics of care? If a rights-based approach is taken, perhaps a wrongdoer is obligated to not make forgiveness a life good. By disengaging this obligation, we avoid constraining a victim’s work toward forgiveness, especially when the wrongdoing is oppressive. Author Lewis responds to these objections. (shrink)

Is it possible for the Modern State to function without violence? How is violence ingrained in national identities, and how do the borders that supposedly “protect” nations actually foster unconscious biases, the anger and hatred of “others,” and the racism and ethnocentrism of shootings, mass murders, and other atrocities? Eddy M. Souffrant and the contributing authors of A Future without Borders? provide insights into how to answer these and other questions.

Volume II of Vernon Press’s series on the Philosophy of Forgiveness offers several challenging and provocative chapters that seek to push the conversation in new directions and dimensions. Volume I, Explorations of Forgiveness: Personal, Relational, and Religious, began the task of creating a consistent multi-dimensional account of forgiveness, and Volume II’s New Dimensions of Forgiveness continues this goal by presenting a set of chapters that delve into several deep conceptual and metaphysical features of forgiveness. New Dimensions of Forgiveness creates a (...) theoretical framework for understanding the many nuanced features of forgiveness, namely, third-party forgiveness, forgiveness as an aesthetic process, the role of resentment in warranting forgiveness, the moral status of self-forgiveness, epistemic trust, forgiveness’s influence on the moral status of persons, forgiveness in time, the status of Substance and Subject within a Hegelian framework, Jacques Derrida’s “impossible” forgiveness, and the use of imaginative “magic” to become a maximal forgiver. Readers will be challenged to question and come to terms with many oft-overlooked, yet important philosophical dimensions of forgiveness. (shrink)