Is anger sometimes a useful emotion? It is often suggested that we should try to suppress our anger. Perhaps passion is a virtue, but anger is simply unproductive. But might anger be useful for achieving positive social change? Can it help us make better moral judgments (or even form part of those judgements)? Can 'good' anger be distinguished in a principled way from 'bad' anger? How do different schools of thought answer these questions?

Meet our speakers and chair

Owen Flanagan is the James B. Duke University Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University. His work spans the philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, ethics, and moral psychology. His recent book How to Do Things With Emotions: The Morality of Anger and Shame Across Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2021) brings anthropological realism to the study of cross-cultural ethics and the philosophy of emotions.

Céline Leboeuf (@philo_celine) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Florida International University. Her research lies at the intersection of Continental Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, and the Critical Philosophy of Race. Inspired by the idea of philosophy as a way of life, her work aims to develop an art of living the body in a world that primarily understands the bodies of members of oppressed groups through the lens of reductive stereotypes.

Emily McRae is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico. Her work addresses topics in Buddhist ethics, moral psychology, and feminist philosophy. She has studied Tibetan language and Buddhist philosophy at the University of Wisconsin and Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal. She is currently writing a book on moral ignorance.

Jesse J Prinz is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. They have published widely, addressing such topics as emotion, moral psychology, aesthetics and consciousness. One of their books, The Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford University Press, 2007), argues that moral values are based on emotional responses—responses that are inculcated by culture.

Ella Whiteley (@ellakwhiteley) is a Fellow in Philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Their primary research interests are in ethical and political philosophy, and the social dimensions of epistemology and language. Ella is currently writing on the philosophy salience, focusing on how individuals and social groups can be harmed when the wrong thing about them is made their most salient feature.

More about this event

The Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method (@LSEPhilosophy) at LSE was founded by Professor Sir Karl Popper in 1946, and remains internationally renowned for a type of philosophy that is both continuous with the sciences and socially relevant.

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A podcast of this event is available to download from Anger.

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