Bitterness and revenge: Practical philosophy club Stockholm 🇸🇪

The subject of Bitterness and Resentment has been discussed over centuries: Aristotle — anger contains a desire for retaliation In Rhetoric, he describes anger as involving both pain over an unjustified slight and a desire for retaliation. The pleasure is therefore anticipatory: imagining the offender being made to pay can itself feel good. Lets discuss: If I want the person who hurt me to suffer, am I seeking justice - or trying to transfer my pain to them? Why can imagining revenge feel “sweet” or satisfying? Do we need the person who hurt us to suffer in order to feel that justice has been restored? Seneca — revenge keeps the original injury alive In De Ira (On Anger), he argues that anger presents itself as useful and righteous but it may take over the control out of the reason and proportion. The Stoic insight is particularly powerful for bitterness: the original offender may hurt us once, but our continuing anger can reproduce the injury internally for years. In that sense, bitterness has a strange structure: Someone harmed me → I refuse to let it go because it mattered → by refusing to let it go, I continue carrying what they did. Can refusing to forgive sometimes give the offender more power over us rather than less? If I am planing revenge - am I proceeding with my life beyond offender? How much revenge is it enough? Can someone hurt us once, while we hurt ourselves with the memory for years? What do we actually want when we seek revenge: justice, recognition, restored dignity, or the other person's pain? Nietzsche explored ressentiment —a deep, enduring resentment that develops particularly when a person experiences injury, humiliation, or powerlessness but cannot respond directly. An emotion of anger, may develop into bitterness can become a worldview. When does justified anger turn into bitterness - and when does bitterness begin harming the person who carries it? Can a bitter person be happy in other contexts? Francis Bacon — revenge as “wild justice” Francis Bacon in his essay Of Revenge, he called revenge “a kind of wild justice” -You hurt me → therefore I want to hurt you. Such a revenge may keep the person psychologically attached to the injury. Moving beyond it allows someone to move beyond the offender. We kan identify four dimensions: Revenge: You made me suffer; I want you to suffer. Justice: Something wrong happened; it should be acknowledged and corrected. Forgiveness: What you did was wrong, but I choose not to organise my future around punishing you. Indifference or letting go: What you did no longer deserves space in my mind. Reflection - Which of these actually restores dignity? Look forward for very interesting discussion! Vilija and the leaders group! \\\\\\ Practical Philosophy is a weekly meet-up that brings critical thinkers together for an opportunity to dive deep on a topic, practice communicating, and building a community. All with no ‘official’ philosophy knowledge required! 😎 Practical Philosophy is based on the idea that philosophy should be accessible to all, and not something reserved only for academics. Each week we choose a topic, and the goal is to use the conversation to develop our critical thinking and communication as we explore that topic. The goal is to help develop our Critical Thinking, Communication, and Community 🙌 📓 HOW DOES IT WORK? Each week, we pick one topic and discuss it. The topic for the week is shared, generally in the Whatsapp groups, https://chat.whatsapp.com/GmIWvXtyJL4JmA1vEPlJJl?mode=emscopyc along with jump-off points to get the conversation going. When groups get bigger than 7-8 people, it’s important that we break into smaller groups. This way we are able to maintain a conversational flow as opposed to having our meetups feel like a discourse or lecture.