Sing Rage

Abstract

AbstractChapter 6 addresses the following question: Can we recommend curative forgivingness to people living under oppression? At first blush, virtuous anger seems overall a more fitting response to wrongdoers whose actions express and perpetuate systemic evil. The chapter surveys and clarifies several ways in which anger can be taken to be virtuous. It then articulates a model of practical selfhood—the dialogical/dramatic model—that aims to accommodate both forgivingness and the virtue of anger for individuals living in non-ideal circumstances. It illustrates how the dialogical/dramatic model responds to a serious worry about anger-entrenchment. It suggests a theological meta-narrative that makes sense simultaneously of the virtues of anger and forgivingness. The picture that emerges is this: the virtuousness of anger cannot be assessed piecemeal, in separation from larger psychological forces active in one’s agency. These in turn depend on the larger meta-narratives, and one of the stories available to those oppressed expresses God’s own responses to systemic injustices. The chapter and the book end by suggesting not only that curative forgivingness is compatible with virtuous anger, but that they can be brought closer together through the concept of normative hope in persons.