Spinoza's Critique of Moral Outrage

I. The Sweetness of Indignation

Moral outrage is the most intoxicating of the passive affects. It combines the pleasure of self-righteousness with the energy of anger. It allows the person who feels it to experience himself as virtuous while indulging the very passions that virtue is supposed to govern. It is anger dressed as justice, and the costume is so convincing that the person wearing it rarely recognizes what lies beneath.

Spinoza defines indignation as hatred toward someone who has done evil to another. The definition is precise. Indignation is not a rational judgment that an action was wrong. It is an emotion, a form of hatred, and like all hatred it is a passion that diminishes the power to act. The person in the grip of indignation is not thinking clearly. He is being acted upon by an external cause, and the cause is the perceived wrongdoing of another.

II. The Error at the Core

The problem with indignation is not that it motivates people to oppose injustice. It often does. The problem is that it is an inadequate response to injustice, because it is governed by an inadequate idea of the wrongdoer. The indignant person sees the wrongdoer as a free agent who chose to do evil. He does not see the wrongdoer as a causal system producing effects according to its nature and its circumstances.

This is not to excuse wrongdoing. It is to understand it. The person who steals, lies, or harms is not a free agent exercising an uncaused will. He is a mode of nature, determined by his history, his biology, his environment, and his inadequate ideas. Understanding this does not mean he should not be stopped from doing harm. It means that stopping him should not be accompanied by the passion of indignation, because the passion clouds judgment and leads to responses that are punitive rather than effective.

III. The Political Use of Indignation

Like fear, indignation is a political instrument. The ruler or the media figure who can provoke indignation in the population can direct that energy toward whatever target serves his interests. The indignation feels spontaneous to the person who feels it. He believes he is responding to a genuine injustice. But the injustice was selected for him by someone who understood that indignation, once provoked, does not examine its own causes.

This is why political discourse is saturated with outrage. Outrage drives engagement. Engagement drives advertising revenue. Advertising revenue drives the production of more outrage. The cycle is self-sustaining, and the participants believe they are engaged in moral action when they are actually engaged in emotional consumption.

IV. The Adequate Response

What replaces moral outrage? Causal analysis. The person who sees an injustice does not ask "how could they do this?" with rhetorical horror. He asks "what caused this, and what would prevent it from recurring?" The first question leads to indignation. The second leads to action.

This does not mean the person who asks the second question is cold or indifferent. He may care deeply about the harm that was done. He may devote his life to preventing similar harms. But he does not fuel his efforts with hatred, because he knows that hatred diminishes his power to act and clouds his judgment. He acts from understanding, not from outrage, and his actions are more effective because they are not distorted by passion.

V. The Discipline of the Calm Observer

The Spinozan who has mastered the critique of moral outrage becomes a peculiar figure in a culture that runs on indignation. He is not indifferent to suffering. He is not passive in the face of injustice. But he does not participate in the emotional economy that sustains both. He acts without needing to be outraged. He opposes without needing to hate. He is effective without needing to be righteous.

This is not an easy discipline. Indignation is pleasurable, and the pleasure of self-righteousness is one of the most addictive pleasures available to the human mind. To give it up is to experience a kind of withdrawal, a loss of the emotional intensity that makes participation in moral discourse feel meaningful. But the loss is a gain. The energy that was consumed by indignation is now available for understanding and action. The mind that was clouded by hatred is now clear. The person who was a reactor has become an agent.

VI. The Freedom Beyond Outrage

The person who has freed himself from the need for moral outrage has achieved something rare. He can oppose evil without being consumed by it. He can witness injustice without being diminished by hatred. He can act effectively without needing the fuel of anger. He is not a saint, and Spinoza would not want him to be one. He is simply a person who understands that indignation is a passion, that passions are caused, and that understanding the causes of one's own passions is the beginning of freedom from them.