Self-Anger and Moral Motivation

Lately, I have been angry at myself. I have made consolations with myself instead of actually following through with my own goals. With this in mind, I want to take a look at why we sometimes don’t do what we find to be the right course of action. In this article, I will be reflecting on a thought-provoking passage from philosophy, defending an argument that it inspires within me. This articles passage is as follows:

“The occurrences that trigger self-anger do not straightforwardly qualify as offensive, unfair or unjust however. It does not seem right to characterize my having forgotten my keys as unfair, or my having missed out on an opportunity as offensive.”

-Laura Silva, “On Being Angry at Oneself,” Ratio, 2022

To start things out, I would like to agree with Silva in one specific regard: self-anger is not unfair or unjust. This is visible in her example of misplacing one's keys or missing out on an opportunity. Though, self-anger certainly has an air of offense, an offense towards the self. If I have had trouble losing my keys, why do I keep losing them? I have offended myself by not making it a priority.

Though, if I have offended myself by not heeding my own word, doesn’t that imply that my anger is justified? If so, maybe the question really is why do I keep offending myself? This question is incredibly important to me and of moral motivation. Ultimately, my argument is as follows:

(1) If we are angry at oursleves, then we have offended oursleves. (Basic)

(2) If we have offended ourselves, then we need to take what caused it as seriously as we take offending others we care about not offending. (Basic)

(3) Therefore, if we are angry at oursleves, then we need to take it as seriously as we take offending others we care about not offending. (Hypothetical Syllogism 1, 2)

We have already talked about premise 1, so let's get into premise 2. What is important to note is that people don’t normally seem to take offending themselves as seriously as they take offending others they care not to offend. Maybe it’s compassion or empathy that makes it seem more serious when we offend others. Though we shouldn’t do this, we have offended, whether we find our own offense towards ourselves as meaningful as offending another, we have still offended. We have offended the most meaningful person in our lives: ourselves. An offense requires a remedy, and we need to remedy what causes our own self-anger. To answer the question of why we keep offending ourselves, we don’t seem to take the consequences of offending ourselves as seriously as offending others we care not to offend. Regardless, though, we offended, and that must be remedied.

This, then, leads to the conclusion that if we are angry at ourselves, then we need to take it as seriously as we take offending others we care not to offend. First, if we are angry at ourselves, then we have offended ourselves in some way. we have done something against our own word and conviction. If we have offended ourselves in some way, then we need to take it seriously. We can’t hold ourselves to a lower standard than we hold ourselves towards others. We need to take the offenses towards ourselves as seriously as we do towards offending others, in brief, have some self-respect, and heed your own anger.

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