Can anger be useful? — Little Thinker

Two great traditions disagree about anger, and the disagreement is not going away, so it is worth holding both.

Seneca held the harsher view. Anger, he wrote, is a short madness: it arrives faster than reason can get there, and the person carrying it is damaged more reliably than the person it is aimed at. His remedy was not to manage anger but to starve it — to avoid rehearsing grievances, to notice the moment before it starts, and to treat a provocation as weather rather than an instruction.

Aristotle’s position is more uncomfortable and more practical. He did not say never. He said the right amount, at the right time, at the right person, for the right reason — and then pointed out the obvious implication: a person who never gets angry will not act against something unjust. In his terms, the deficiency is as much a failure of character as the excess.

Audre Lorde gives the version that matters when the injustice is real and systemic. She argued that anger between people who have been treated badly is not noise, it is information — a signal pointing at something specific that needs changing — and that the demand for calm is a way of keeping things as they are.

The tests worth keeping are small. What is the anger telling you? And is what you are about to do aimed at the wrong, or at the person?

Try it

Think of the last time you were angry. Write down what the anger was telling you — what was unfair, what needed to change. Then ask whether acting on it helped or made it worse.

What do you think?

Do you think there is a right answer to this question?

Talk about it

Is anger ever the right response?
What is the difference between anger and cruelty?
Should you ever hide that you're angry?

Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make

Anger is always bad. You should never be angry.
Then nothing should be done about cruelty, since doing something about it starts with being willing to be angry. A person who never gets angry is usually a person who has learned not to notice.
Letting it out makes you feel better.
Sometimes briefly, and it also rehearses it. Practising a reaction is how you learn it, which is why shouting gets easier every time rather than less necessary.
But they deserved it.
Possibly. The question is whether what you did was aimed at the wrong, or at the person — and those start identically and end very differently.

What other philosophers think

AristotleSaid a person can be angry at the right time, at the right person, in the right amount — and that failing to be angry at injustice is a flaw, not a virtue.
SenecaCompared anger to a brief madness: too fast to consult reason, and destructive to the person holding it more than to whoever it is aimed at.
Joseph ButlerSeparated the immediate sting of resentment, which defends you, from the demand for revenge, which goes far beyond the wrong.
Audre LordeArgued that anger carries information about injustice, and that refusing to hear it is a way of keeping a bad situation unchanged.

If you want to go further

Nicomachean Ethics — AristotleBook IV, on the virtue of being angry in the right way rather than not at all.
On Anger — SenecaAddressed to his brother, and it is the fullest ancient case that anger is a temporary loss of control.
Sister Outsider — Audre LordeThe essay 'The Uses of Anger' is in this collection, and it is short.

Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.