Rehabilitating resentment and choosing what we feel

I wish to focus on Jeffrie Murphy's contributions to moral psychology, which have been considerable. Whether his topic has been the justification of punishment, the place of victim impact statements in sentencing procedures, or the nature of forgiveness, Murphy has enlarged our understanding by paying attention to the subtle structure and conditions of our interactive attitudes and judgments. And he has done it while writing with a vigor and a humor rare in the philosophy of law. He has managed to be continually provocative and engaging, from his early writings in Kantian, Marxist, and Darwinian modes, to his most recent religiously informed explorations--always drawing on a diversity of disciplines and materials (using especially the resources of philosophy, literature, and the law), always offering incisive analysis, and always providing pleasure' through the liveliness of his writing. (I still smile every time I recall his irreverent reference to the vengeful God of the Old Testament as a "supernatural sorehead.") Murphy and I share what he once referred to as a "rehabilitation strategy" with respect to certain much-maligned emotions. (1) That is, we have taken emotions of which people may be inclined to disapprove and attempted to place those emotions in an analytical context in which they can be seen as having valuable aspects, associations, or conditions. I have followed such a strategy in relation to jealousy, pride, and certain other disvalued emotions--arguing in the case of jealousy that the possibility of jealousy is not eliminable without the sacrifice of much else, including perhaps erotic attachment. (2) A psychoanalytically informed developmental understanding can enable us to see how jealousy may have more to do with the conditions of identity formation and with fears about disintegration of identity than with a pathological possessiveness that insists on treating other people as though they were things. Ultimately, I have argued, the links of jealousy to certain forms of love should make us hesitate before insisting on its elimination as a confused, bourgeois, and worthless pathology--were such elimination possible. Murphy has adopted a similar rehabilitation strategy in relation to resentment and vindictiveness, "arguing that these emotions, which have suffered so much unfair bad press, may be seen in a better light when it is realized that they may be tied to the goods of self-respect and self-defense." (3) And he has richly elaborated these insights. Murphy follows Bishop Joseph Butler in understanding forgiveness as involving a "forswearing of resentment" and so his appreciation of the possible values of resentment has enabled him to enter useful cautions against the too-ready and unconditional forgiveness advocated by some on religious or psychological self-help grounds. If forgiveness is to be rational, it must be based on reasons. If it is to be a virtue, those reasons must be moral. Much current pop psychology and many modern recovery movements, as well as certain forms of traditional religion, urge an uncritical forgiveness (including self-forgiveness) as a path to "closure," self-healing, and peace of mind. Murphy rightly questions the assumptions behind such urgings. Grounding his views on careful analysis of the nature of forgiveness, subtle understanding of the psychology of anger and resentment, and fine appreciation of the ethical issues of self-respect and self-defense, he provides a nuanced approach to a proper understanding of the place of forgiveness in moral, political, and personal life, most fully elaborated in his 2003 book, Getting Even: Forgiveness and Its Limits. (4) But there is a problem for all of us who would rehabilitate certain emotions, and it is a problem that ultimately also bedevils those who would be content to banish them without ambivalence or regret. Is what we feel up to us? Can we control whether we forgive or resent, are jealous or content to share? …