54 min
Sons of Rage: Achilles, Raskolnikov, and Ahab Patterns of Manhood
-
- Philosophy
Why are anger and its destructive effects such endemic features of life for men? In the heroes of the Iliad, Crime and Punishment, and Moby Dick, we see a similar pattern repeat itself. Sorrow over life's intrinsic injustice transmutes into rage, as the passivity intrinsic to sorrow finds its necessary remedy in the active self-assertion of fury. This alchemy by which sadness turns to anger - what he called the "masculine form of despair" - is incisively explored by Kierkegaard in his extraordinary tract, The Sickness Unto Death. What emerges from this work is the need for some other response to the bitter suffering of life than rage and defiance, a lesson that is dramatized in the relationship between King Lear and Cordelia.
Why are anger and its destructive effects such endemic features of life for men? In the heroes of the Iliad, Crime and Punishment, and Moby Dick, we see a similar pattern repeat itself. Sorrow over life's intrinsic injustice transmutes into rage, as the passivity intrinsic to sorrow finds its necessary remedy in the active self-assertion of fury. This alchemy by which sadness turns to anger - what he called the "masculine form of despair" - is incisively explored by Kierkegaard in his extraordinary tract, The Sickness Unto Death. What emerges from this work is the need for some other response to the bitter suffering of life than rage and defiance, a lesson that is dramatized in the relationship between King Lear and Cordelia.
54 min