This chapter considers the idea that if blame is no longer appropriate (as I have argued, in our penumbral agency) one might think that anger is not appropriate. Indeed, a number of theorists have argued that we ought always to transition away from feeling anger. On these views, feeling anger is never justified. But this chapter argues against this picture: even if blame is not appropriate in some cases, anger still may be. Anger is especially useful, this chapter argues, in cases where someone’s status and dignity have been assaulted or undermined. The chapter argues that, in most cases, vengeance is not appropriate in anger but it is still quite possible to make sense of anger without the idea of a payback wish, or pain passing, or vengeance toward the wrongdoer. Anger, on my account, is an emotion concerned with accounting for the wrong and demanding rectification from the wrongdoer. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how allies ought to respond to the justified anger of those who have been wronged by historic or ongoing injustices, arguing that allies must avoid centering themselves and instead focus on addressing past and ongoing injustice.

Chapter 3 considers the developments of the emotional genre of unemployment in the British postwar welfare state. The chapter goes on to consider the development of the genre of unemployment as it enveloped the feeling of guilt over a perceived violation of a social contract between state and worker.

The conclusion sums up the book’s argument and introduces various new working-class authors and their use of the literary genre of unemployment.

This chapter addresses the common concern that free will skepticism undermines morality. The author argues that this fear is misplaced. While skepticism about free will and basic desert moral responsibility challenges some traditional moral practices – particularly backward-looking blame – it does not eliminate the meaningfulness of moral judgments or ethical life. The chapter explains how axiological judgments of good and bad, deontic “ought” judgments, and respect for persons can all be preserved within a framework that denies basic desert. Drawing on contemporary moral philosophy, the chapter defends the idea that moral life is still possible – and even enriched – when we shift away from blame and toward virtue. The second half of the chapter turns from deontic ethics to virtue ethics, especially Aristotelian and Buddhist traditions, arguing that the central question of morality is not “What ought I do?” but “What kind of person should I be?” From this standpoint, free will skepticism supports the cultivation of virtues like compassion, humility, and loving-kindness, which do not rely on desert-based assumptions. Rather than weakening our moral lives, the author contends, free will skepticism provides a more compassionate, realistic, and psychologically attuned ethical framework – one that better promotes human flourishing and moral development.

Chapter 7 discusses anger in relation to gender. A character’s ability to display or suppress anger is tied to expectations of external judgment. In the Iliad, male characters frequently express anger; mortal women do not. Homer’s text highlights the gap between a female character’s words and her inner thoughts, creating an ambiguity that puzzles male audiences and characters attempting to read their minds. The chapter surveys theories of anger (from Aristotle to cognitive science) and analyses Homeric emotional expressions, including the emotional ‘script’ of anger. It focuses on ancient readings of Achilles’ anger. Aristotle’s influential definition of anger, presupposing Achilles as a model, shaped scholarly understanding but excluded anger from the emotions women could feel. Later, Seneca and Plutarch opposed this, linking anger to a lack of self-control, associating it particularly with women and barbarians. Ancient theories consistently stressed the connection between anger, rationality, and revenge.

Emotions and motivation are tied intimately together. Some motivations are based in emotions: fear, anger, and disgust. In other cases, though not forming their bases, emotion strongly interact with motivation; for example, disgust can strongly interact with sexual and feeding motivations. The chapter asks – what are the general properties of emotion and what do all emotions have in common? Emotions serve functionally coherent roles in behaviour, conscious experience, cognition, and the organization of the body’s physiology. The chapter draws a distinction between emotion, affect, and mood. It discusses specific action tendencies and Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. The chapter places central importance upon affective neuroscience. It reviews the evidence for seven basic affective systems as postulated by Jaak Panksepp: seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic/grief, and play. Links are described between these basic emotional systems and high-level cognition.

Aggression is associated with inflicting damage. Anger underlies it. Links to coercion and dominance are described, as well as excitation transfer. Defensive/offensive aggression and predatory aggression are distinct. The dichotomy between reactive aggression and instrumental (proactive) aggression is described. ‘Appetitive aggression’ is conducted for intrinsic pleasure. The notion of levels of control applies to the inhibition on aggression. Explanatory models are discussed (e.g. Lorenz’s hydraulic model). Aggression can exhibit positive reinforcement. A number of brain regions are discussed (e.g. the amygdala, VTA−NAcc, hypothalamus, cortex, and periaqueductal grey). The role of hormones is reviewed. Healthy development consists in part of learning to inhibit aggression. Early exposure to toxic role models increases the chances of later showing aggression. Other things that inhibit aggression are discussed (e.g. empathy). The chapter concludes with a discussion of several situations associated with aggression: ostracism, xenophobia, dehumanization, the weapons effect, media violence, alcohol, and traumatic brain injury.

This chapter shows that, while there is reason to be skeptical about the value of public admiration in general, there is one kind of admiration – heroising admiration – that stands out as particularly problematic. Heroising admiration is public admiration of an individual’s or a groups’ supposed heroism. The main issue has to do with the way heroising admiration obscures its targets’ moral status as human beings, by overwriting it with heroic social status. The two are fundamentally in conflict. The imposition of hero status partially deprives targets of their moral status as fellow human beings within a socio-normative realm, so that that they are no longer as eligible for other people’s help or even sympathy, as they were before. It centrally contains depriving people of their social recognisability as human beings who potentially need other people’s help or solidarity. It is argued that there is perfect duty not to contribute to such deprivation.

Philosophers are increasingly examining climate emotions – feelings experienced in response to the climate crisis. Yet anger has received surprisingly little attention. This is striking, since anger is renowned for being a strong motivator of collective action against injustice and the climate crisis is widely framed as an issue of justice. We begin by clarifying the notion of “climate emotions” and the criteria for assessing their rationality. We then argue that anger is both non-instrumentally justified–because the climate crisis involves clear injustices to which anger is a fitting response–and instrumentally rational, insofar as it can motivate beneficial individual and collective action. In doing so, we identify appropriate targets of eco-anger and argue that climate obstructionists constitute its most urgent object. Our argument is empirically informed and empirically generative, generating specific hypotheses and concrete directions for empirical work on the topic. We conclude by offering recommendations for how eco-anger can be effectively mobilized in the pursuit of climate justice.

In war we see xenophobic hate, resentment, and violence-triggering anger, coupled with in-group solidarity, love, and altruistic sacrifice. This combination is mirrored in the opponent society. This structure recurs so often that there is an unfortunate tendency to naturalize it as adaptations produced by an ancestral environment characterized by widespread, intense, and frequent war. From this point of view, we are bellicose because our most successful ancestors were; our emotional structure comes from the fact that we are descendants of victors in battle. I don’t agree with this interpretation, which I will call the bellicose adaptationist story. I will sketch an alternative evolutionary story from ongoing anthropological controversies. I don’t deny that humans are violent, but I will try to show that a coherent story can be told in which war qua anonymous inter-group violence was not universal in human history and so could not serve as the selection pressure for altruism. After clearing the ground in this manner, to account for a non-war-based altruism I describe the hypotheses of collective breeding and collaborative foraging put forth by Sarah Hrdy and by Michael Tomasello.

Plato was the initiator, in the philosophical literature, of the idea that punishment should look to the future, not to the past. It must be beneficial and serve some useful purpose. Beneficial to whom? The first part of Plato’s answer is striking: ‘to the offender’. Punishment should be directed at reforming offenders rather than simply penalizing them because they had offended. This idea was accepted by a succession of (non-abolitionist) thinkers. It is still with us today. Plato was presumably unaware that he was opening a loophole that could be exploited by later reformers who sought a reduction, and then finally abolition, of the death penalty: an offender sentenced to a programme of rehabilitation was not a prime candidate for execution. However, a further possible answer to Plato’s question might be: ‘(beneficial) not for the criminal but for society as a whole’. Plato also held that punishment might serve as a deterrent, and this opened the door to harsh treatment, including death, of some offenders, namely, those who were judged ‘incurable’. One might kill a murderer, or a disparager of the gods, to deter others.