Patterns of Manhood: Episode #5
The latest episode of the Patterns of Manhood podcast is available. In this episode, I explore the question why anger, and its destructive effects, are 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 outlet in the active self-assertion of fury. Kierkegaard examines this alchemy by which sadness turns to anger - what he called the "masculine form of despair" - 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.