section_path: Philosophical perspectives/Modern perspectives
section_name: Modern perspectives
paragraph_text: Modern perspectives
  
  Immanuel Kant rejects revenge as vicious. Regarding the latter, David Hume argues that because "anger and hatred are passions inherent in our very frame and constitution, the lack of them is sometimes evidence of weakness and imbecility". Martha Nussbaum has also agreed that even "great injustice" is no "excuse for childish and undisciplined behavior". Two main differences between the modern understanding and ancient understanding of anger can be detected, Kemp and Strongman state: one is that early philosophers were not concerned with possible harmful effects of the suppression of anger; the other is that, recently, studies of anger take the issue of gender differences into account. Soraya Chemaly has in contrast argued that anger is "a critically useful and positive emotion" which "warns us, as humans, that something is wrong and needs to change" when "being threatened with indignity, physical harm, humiliation and unfairness" and therefore "a powerful force for political good". Furthermore, she argues that women and minorities are not allowed to be angry to the same extent as white men. In a similar vein, Rebecca Traister has argued that holding back anger has been an impediment to the progress of women's rights.
  
  The American psychologist Albert Ellis has suggested that anger, rage, and fury partly have roots in the philosophical meanings and assumptions through which human beings interpret transgression. According to Ellis, these emotions are often associated and related to the leaning humans have to absolutistically depreciating and damning other peoples' humanity when their personal rules and domain are transgressed.