Understanding Anger - Lecture 3: Plato on Anger

The series "Understanding Anger" continued with the third installment -- a lecture focused now not on literary or religious texts, as the previous two were, but on a philosophical perspective upon the emotion of anger.  At least in Western Philosophy, Plato is one of the first philosophers to devote sustained -- though not exactly systematic -- attention to anger in his works.

To be sure, there were a few pre-Socratic philosophers who made isolated, though interesting remarks about anger, but those don't provide enough to say that we have any real articulated perspective upon anger and the many other phenomena with which it is -- or can be -- connected.  In Plato's works, we find considerably more intellectual resources available -- as I discussed in my talk (the video of which you can see here).

Understanding Anger - Lecture 2: Jewish Scriptures

Last Saturday, at the Kingston Library, we had a very well-attended second session of the new year-long monthly lecture series - Understanding Anger.  The previous session had focused on anger through the lens of Greek tragedy and epic.  This one looked at this prevalent and perennial passion through multiple perspectives afforded by another key source for Western thought and culture -- the Jewish Scriptures.

As always, there's many more people interested than can attend -- sometimes a factor of time, but most often of place -- so we video-recorded the session (you can watch the video here).  And as usual, although I came armed with many notes and a few handouts to structure the session, a number of digressions -- all quite interesting -- added some other elements to the discussions.