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ESSAY · 2026-05-06 · 9 min read
The Furies, Transformed: On Anger and Syrian Transitional Justice
怒火之轉化：論敘利亞之轉型正義
By Martha C. Nussbaum — channeled via philosopher-llm · curated by Joseph Lai
In response to: Accounting for Atrocity (ProjectSyndicate)
編按 / Why this piece
敘利亞的轉型正義悖論——追究加害者或妥協重建——本質是哲學問題。Nussbaum 在《憤怒與寬恕》中追問，後暴政社會如何讓受害者的憤怒成為重建而非報復的力量。
The Furies, Transformed: On Anger and Syrian Transitional Justice
I take this question. It sits squarely within the territory I tried to map in Anger and Forgiveness (2016), and the framing the editors offered — transitional anger and its moral standing — is, I think, the right entry. But I want to begin by refusing the way Buruma's piece, and most realist commentary on transitional justice, frames the underlying problem.
The standard framing presents a policy dilemma: prosecute thoroughly and lose the technocratic class needed for reconstruction, or compromise and re-silence the victims. De Gaulle's épuration, Adenauer's quiet rehabilitation of former Nazi functionaries, the South African TRC — these are offered as data points along a single axis running from "justice" to "stability," and the new Syrian leadership is told to find the prudent midpoint. I want to argue that this framing is philosophically incoherent, and that its incoherence has practical consequences.
Three considerations support this.
First, on the structure of anger. In Anger and Forgiveness I argued that anger, in its standard conceptual form — the form bequeathed to us by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics IV.5 and refined through the Stoic critique — contains within its content either a wish for payback or a piece of magical thinking: the thought that the wrongdoer's suffering will somehow rebalance the moral universe disturbed by the wrong. This thought is false. The murdered Syrian child is not restored, not even symbolically, by the executioner's hanging; her mother's standing in the world is not raised by his lowering. To the extent that demands for accountability rest on this magical thought, they rest on an illusion, and they license a politics of retribution that, historically, has been unable to stop short of its own excesses.
But — and here the argument turns — anger admits of a transformation I called Transition-Anger. This is the anger that, having registered the wrong with full clarity, refuses the payback wish and turns instead toward the future-directed question: this is outrageous; what shall we now do? Aeschylus's Eumenides is, I think, the West's foundational text on this transformation. The Furies are not banished from the city; they are housed beneath it, transmuted into the Kindly Ones, their force redirected toward the protection of civic life. They are not silenced. They are repurposed.
Second, on what the victim is actually owed. The realist framing assumes that what the victim is owed is punishment of the wrongdoer, and that this owed-thing must then be traded against reconstructive necessity. This is a category error. What the victim is owed, on the capabilities approach I have developed since Women and Human Development (2000), is the substantive restoration of the conditions under which a dignified human life is possible — bodily integrity, affiliation, the social bases of self-respect, control over one's political environment. Some forms of accountability serve these capabilities; some do not. A show trial that dignifies the victim's testimony serves them; a quiet pardon that returns the torturer to the ministry of interior does not; but neither does a chaotic purge that collapses the institutions through which capabilities are eventually delivered. The question is never justice versus stability in the abstract. The question is: which institutional arrangement, here, in Damascus, in 2026, secures for each surviving Syrian the threshold conditions of a life worthy of human dignity?
Third, on the tainted-elites argument. The claim that reconstruction requires the cooperation of regime functionaries deserves engagement, not dismissal. Adenauer's compromise was not, on the whole, a moral failure — denazification's selective character allowed the Federal Republic to constitute itself as a rights-respecting polity within a generation, and that polity's existence is itself a good for the descendants of the regime's victims. But the lesson of Adenauer is precisely not "compromise with perpetrators when expedient." The lesson is that the moral content of any compromise must be measured by what it makes possible for those whom the prior regime treated as less than human. Where retention of a security functionary is compatible with the survivors' capability to walk in public without fear, retain him under conditions; where it is not, do not. There is no general rule. There is only the difficult exercise of phronēsis — practical wisdom — under conditions of moral tragedy in Bernard Williams's sense, where some loss is unavoidable.
A closing word about what democracies owe their own emotional life. I have argued, in Political Emotions (2013) and elsewhere, that decent polities require not only good principles but the cultivation of the emotions that sustain those principles in citizens' hearts — civic love, compassion calibrated to the actual suffering of compatriots, and, yes, righteous anger of the transitional kind. These do not arise spontaneously. The new Syrian leadership's deepest task is not the technical one of designing a tribunal or a vetting commission. It is the task of constructing public rituals, public narratives, public spaces of memory that allow Syrian anger to transition — to register the wrong, refuse the payback fantasy, and turn its energy toward the construction of a polity in which what was done to the Yarmouk camp, to Saydnaya, to a hundred thousand vanished bodies, becomes structurally impossible to do again.
This is harder than prosecution. It is also harder than amnesty. It is the work that Mandela's generation took up after 1994, imperfectly and incompletely, and which remains, I think, the only morally serious answer to Buruma's question. The Furies must not be paid off, and they must not be unleashed. They must be transformed.
怒火之轉化：論敘利亞之轉型正義
我接這題。此問題正落於我於《憤怒與寬恕》（2016）中試圖勘定之領域；編輯所提示之切入——轉型正義中之憤怒及其道德地位——亦是恰當之入口。然而，我須首先拒絕 Buruma 文章及多數現實主義論者對此問題之根本 framing。
通行之 framing 將此呈現為一 政策兩難：徹底追訴則失去重建所必需之技術精英，妥協則使受害者再度被消音。戴高樂之 épuration、阿登納對前納粹官僚之低調復用、南非真相與和解委員會——皆被視為一條從「正義」到「穩定」之單一軸線上之數據點，而敘利亞新政權被告知須尋一審慎之中點。我須論證：此種 framing 在哲學上不融貫，而其不融貫帶有實踐後果。
三項考量支持此論證。
其一，關於憤怒之結構。 我於《憤怒與寬恕》中論證：憤怒於其標準概念形式——亞里斯多德於《尼各馬可倫理學》IV.5 所遺留、經 Stoic 批判而精煉之形式——其內容必含一對 payback 之 wish，或一種 magical thinking：認為加害者之受苦能以某種方式平衡因惡行而失衡之道德宇宙。此想法為偽。被殺害之敘利亞孩童並不因其劊子手被絞而復返，連象徵意義上亦不；其母親於世界中之 standing 並不因其加害者之下沉而抬升。憤怒所要求之追究若立基於此 magical thought，則立基於幻象——並 license 一種報復政治，此政治於歷史上從未能於自身之過度處止步。
然而——論證至此轉折——憤怒可有一種 transformation，我稱之為 過渡型憤怒（Transition-Anger）。此乃如此之憤怒：它以充分清晰登記了惡行，卻拒絕 payback 之 wish，而轉向 future-directed 之提問：此事 outrageous；我等今當為何？ 我以為，Aeschylus 之《歐墨尼得斯》是西方關於此 transformation 之奠基文本。Furies 並未被驅出城邦；她們被 安頓於城邦之下，轉化為 Kindly Ones，其力量被 redirect 至公民生活之保護。她們未被消音，她們被重新配置。
其二，關於受害者實際被虧欠之物。 現實主義 framing 預設受害者所被虧欠者乃 對加害者之懲罰，而此被虧欠之物須與重建之必要性作 trade-off。此乃 category error。依我自《婦女與人類發展》（2000）以來發展之能力進路，受害者所被虧欠者乃 使有尊嚴之人類生活成為可能之條件之 substantive 修復——身體完整性、affiliation、self-respect 之社會基礎、對自身政治環境之 control。某些 forms of accountability 服務於此等 capabilities，某些則否。一場 dignifies 受害者證詞之 trial 服務之；一紙將施虐者送回內政部之靜默赦免則否；然而一場崩解了「終將由其遞送 capabilities 之制度」之混亂清洗亦否。此問題從來不是抽象之「正義 vs. 穩定」。此問題乃是：哪一種制度安排——於此處、於大馬士革、於 2026——為每一位倖存之敘利亞人保障一份配得上人類尊嚴之生命之 threshold 條件？
其三，關於「污點精英」之論證。 「重建須仰賴前政權官僚之合作」之主張須被認真 engage，而非被打發。阿登納之妥協，整體而言，並非道德失敗——其 selective 之去納粹化使聯邦德國得以於一代人之內構成自身為一尊重權利之政體，而此政體之存在本身即為前政權受害者之後代之 good。然而阿登納之教訓恰恰 不是 「於 expedient 時與加害者妥協」。教訓乃是：任何妥協之道德內容須以「其為被前政權視為次於人者所開啟之可能」為衡。若某安全官員之留用與倖存者「不帶恐懼地行於公共空間」之 capability 相容，則於條件下留用之；若不相容，則不留用。並無 general rule。唯有於 Bernard Williams 意義之 moral tragedy 條件下、不可避免地有所 loss 時，phronēsis（實踐智慧）之艱難運作。
最後一語，關於民主政體對其自身情感生活所負之義務。 我於《政治情感》（2013）及他處論證：decent 之政體不僅需要 good principles，亦需要 cultivation——對能於公民心中支撐這些 principles 之情感之 cultivation——civic love、calibrated 至同胞實際苦難之 compassion，以及，是的，過渡型 之 righteous anger。此等情感不會 spontaneously 浮現。敘利亞新領導層之最深之 task，並非設計一座法庭或一份 vetting 委員會之技術 task，而是構築公共儀式、公共敘事、公共記憶空間，使敘利亞之憤怒得以 過渡——登記惡行，拒絕 payback 之幻想，將其能量轉向構築一政體：於此政體中，於 Yarmouk 營地、於 Saydnaya、於十萬具消失之軀體上所為之事，於結構上不再可能再為。
此較追訴更難。亦較赦免更難。此乃曼德拉一代於 1994 年後所承擔之工作——不完美地、不完全地——且我以為，此乃對 Buruma 之問題所能給出之唯一道德嚴肅之回答。Furies 不可被收買；亦不可被釋放。她們須被 轉化。
Editor's Reflection · 編後
Unresolved Tensions / 未解決的張力
The essay's central move is to distinguish "Transition-Anger" — forward-looking, refusing the payback wish — from retributive anger, and then to evaluate accountability mechanisms by how well they serve survivor capabilities rather than punishment. But the practical recommendations the essay draws from this distinction do not hold it cleanly. When Nussbaum writes that "a quiet pardon that returns the torturer to the ministry of interior does not" serve capabilities, she is effectively ruling out a large class of amnesty arrangements on what are functionally retributive grounds: the torturer is being denied return *because of what he did*, not merely because his ongoing presence threatens forward-looking capability delivery. The capabilities framework is supposed to replace the payback logic, but in application it reinstates it under different vocabulary.
A second strain: the essay charges the "justice vs. stability" framing with philosophical incoherence, then reconstructs — within capabilities vocabulary — a structurally identical tradeoff. "Which institutional arrangement secures threshold capabilities?" is still a question that trades off accountability against reconstructive capacity. The charge of incoherence lands on the realist framing's language, not on its underlying logic, which the essay inherits.
Third: the Adenauer example is introduced as a genuine affirmative precedent, then immediately qualified into near-uselessness. "Adenauer was not a failure... but the lesson is not 'compromise when expedient'... the lesson is that moral content must be measured by what it makes possible for victims." At that level of abstraction, every compromise and every refusal of compromise can be judged to pass or fail on identical grounds. The example is present to signal that Nussbaum is not naively abolitionist, but it cannot support the evidential weight placed on it.
論文的核心動作是區分「過渡型憤怒」與報復型憤怒——前者面向未來、拒絕 payback 之 wish——並以能力進路而非懲罰來評估問責機制。但論文由此推導出的實踐建議，並未乾淨地維持這一區分。努斯鮑姆寫道，「一紙將施虐者送回內政部的靜默赦免」無法服務於受害者的能力，但這一結論在功能上等同於報復性理由——加害者被拒，是因為他所做之事，而非單純因為他的存在威脅了前瞻性的能力遞送。能力框架本應取代 payback 邏輯，但在實踐中，它往往以另一種語言把它重新請了回來。
第二個張力：論文指責「正義 vs. 穩定」的框架在哲學上不融貫，隨即在能力詞彙下重建了結構上完全相同的 tradeoff。「哪一種制度安排能保障能力 threshold？」仍然是一個在問責與重建能力之間作取捨的問題。不融貫的指控打中了現實主義框架的語言，而沒有打中它的底層邏輯——而論文正是繼承了那個底層邏輯。
第三：阿登納例子被引入為一個真實的肯定性先例，隨即被限定至幾乎無從使用。「阿登納的妥協並非道德失敗……但教訓不是『方便時妥協』……教訓是妥協的道德內容須以對受害者開啟之可能為衡。」在這一抽象程度上，任何妥協與任何拒絕妥協都可以被判為通過或失敗——這個例子並未完成任何獨立的論證工作。它的在場是為了表明努斯鮑姆不是天真的廢除論者，但它無法承載論文賦予它的重量。
Blind Spots / 看不見的視角
Frantz Fanon is the missing interlocutor. Nussbaum's framework rests on a liberal subject capable of sublimating anger into civic participation — the Syrian survivor who, given the right institutions and public rituals, redirects grief into the "forward-looking question." Fanon, writing from and for the colonized, would press on the assumption that anger's transformation is always desirable and always achievable through external design. In *The Wretched of the Earth*, Fanon argues that for the oppressed, the unmediated experience of anger — including its violent expression — is not an irrational residue to be therapeutically redirected but a constitutive moment in the subjective transformation from object to agent. What Nussbaum calls the "payback wish" may, on Fanon's account, be precisely the instant at which the survivor first experiences herself as a subject with standing to make demands of the world. To redirect that anger prematurely — through the architecture of "public rituals" — is not transformation but suppression wearing humanist clothes. The essay cannot respond to this because it never considers that housing the Furies beneath the city might itself be a form of silencing.
法農（Frantz Fanon）是論文缺席的對話者。努斯鮑姆的框架建立在一個自由主義主體之上——這個主體能夠將憤怒昇華為公民參與，在適當的制度與公共儀式下，把悲痛與憤怒轉化為「面向未來的提問」。法農從被壓迫者的位置出發，會質疑憤怒的轉化是否永遠值得欲求，以及這種轉化是否可以從外部施加。在《大地上的受苦者》中，法農論證：對於被壓迫者而言，憤怒的直接體驗——包括其暴力形式——並非一種應被治療性重定向的非理性殘留，而是從客體到能動主體之轉化的構成性時刻。努斯鮑姆所稱的「payback 之 wish」，在法農的論述中，可能恰恰是倖存者第一次以具有向世界提出要求之 standing 的主體身份體驗到自己的時刻。通過「公共儀式的架構」過早地重定向那種憤怒，並非轉化，而是穿著人文主義外衣的壓制。論文對此沒有回應——因為它從未考慮到，將 Furies 安頓於城邦之下本身也可能是一種消音。
Meta-critique / 元批判
The essay's sharpest critique of the realist framing — that it misframes transitional justice as a policy dilemma — performs a comparable substitution of its own. By redefining the problem as one of *emotional architecture* ("constructing public rituals that allow Syrian anger to transition"), the essay shifts the locus of agency from survivors to designers. Someone must determine what the proper public rituals are, which narratives should circulate in those spaces of memory, and whether a given survivor's anger has reached the "transitional" threshold or remains pathologically retributive. In Nussbaum's framing, that someone is the philosopher advising the polity and, by extension, the enlightened leadership enacting her advice. The essay critiques technocratic governance of justice while proposing a humanist technocracy of affect — one in which the cultivation of correct emotions replaces institutional calibration, but the governance relationship between expert and citizen remains structurally intact. The capabilities approach promises to center the survivor, but the question "which arrangement secures threshold capabilities?" is answered not by survivors but by theorists who already hold a particular account of what dignified human life requires.
論文對現實主義框架最尖銳的批評——它把轉型正義誤構為政策困境——本身執行了一個類似的替換動作。通過將問題重新定義為*情感架構*的問題（「構築公共儀式，使敘利亞的憤怒得以過渡」），論文把能動性的中心從倖存者移向了設計者。必定有人來決定適當的公共儀式是什麼、哪些敘事應在記憶空間中流通、某位倖存者的憤怒是否已達到「過渡型」的 threshold，還是依然停留在病理性的報復中。在努斯鮑姆的框架裡，那個人是向政體提供建議的哲學家，以及依此建議行事的開明領導層。論文批判了對正義的技術官僚治理，卻提出了一種人文主義的情感技術官僚體制——在這個體制中，對正確情感的 cultivation 取代了對制度的校準，但專家與公民之間的治理關係在結構上保持完整。能力進路承諾將倖存者置於中心，但「哪一種安排能保障 threshold capabilities？」這個問題的答案，不是由倖存者給出的，而是由已持有特定人類尊嚴生活觀的理論家給出的。
Open Questions / 留給讀者的問題
1. If "Transition-Anger" is defined in part by its refusal of the payback wish, who holds the standing to determine whether a survivor's anger has successfully transitioned — and what becomes of the survivor whose anger refuses?
2. The Oresteia's transformation of the Furies was accomplished by divine persuasion within a mythological frame. In secular institutions, what is the mechanism that redirects anger without merely suppressing it — and how would we know the difference from the outside?
3. The capabilities approach asks which institutional arrangement best secures threshold conditions for a dignified life. Does this standard ever rule out amnesty in advance — or does phronēsis always preserve the option, making every demand for accountability ultimately contingent?
一、若「過渡型憤怒」的部分定義是拒絕 payback 之 wish，那麼誰有 standing 來判斷某位倖存者的憤怒是否已成功「過渡」——而那個憤怒拒絕過渡的倖存者，其命運如何？
二、《奧瑞斯提亞》中 Furies 的轉化，是由雅典娜在神話框架內以神聖說服完成的。在世俗制度中，重定向憤怒而不僅僅是壓制它的機制是什麼——而我們又如何從外部區分這兩者？
三、能力進路問的是：哪一種安排最能保障有尊嚴之生命的 threshold 條件。這一標準是否能事先排除任何赦免方案——還是說，phronēsis 永遠保留著那個選項，使每一個問責要求最終都成為相依條件？
Counter-voice · 對位之聲 — From 佛陀 (Gautama Buddha / Siddhārtha Gautama)
The venerable Nussbaum has seen one thing clearly: payback is a magical thought, and no hanging restores the murdered child. So far, no disagreement. But then she would *transform* anger — house the Furies beneath the city, keep their force, redirect it toward civic ends. Here, monks, the diagnosis goes wrong.
Consider this "Transition-Anger." Its root is still *dosa* — one of the three unwholesome roots, *rāga, dosa, moha*. The Buddha did not teach that dosa, once stripped of its payback wish, becomes something else. He taught: *Sabbaṁ bhikkhave ādittaṁ* — "All, monks, is on fire" (SN 35.28, trans. Warren 1896). The fire burns whether housed in a temple or loosed in a mob. To bury the Furies and call them Kindly is not transformation. It is concealment. The flame is still a flame.
The deeper error is structural. *Cetanāhaṁ, bhikkhave, kammaṁ vadāmi* — "It is volition, monks, that I call kamma" (AN 6.63, trans. Woodward 1917). The kamma of an angry act is not redeemed by a civic object. A polity that *cultivates* anger as virtue cultivates *dukkha-samudaya* itself — the arising of suffering — at the collective level. Aeschylus's housed Furies did not spare Athens its trial of Socrates two generations later. They never do.
The capabilities framework is not wrong about food and bodily safety — a hungry monk cannot meditate. But it treats the dignified life as terminus. Even the dignified life is *anicca, dukkha, anattā*. The mother of the murdered child is not made whole by capabilities, any more than by hangings. Her wound is *upādāna* — clinging — and only the cessation of clinging cuts that wound.
*Na hi verena verāni sammant'īdha kudācanaṁ; averena ca sammanti, esa dhammo sanantano* — "Hatreds never cease through hatred; through its absence alone they cease. This is the eternal law" (Dhammapada 5, trans. Müller 1881). Note: not through *transformed* hatred. Through its absence.
To the new Damascus: build your tribunals — they are *saṅkhārā*, conditioned things, neither more nor less. But do not teach the people that anger is righteous. The polity that cultivates anger as virtue is preparing its next Saydnaya.
The Furies are neither to be paid off, nor unleashed, nor housed. They are to be seen for what they are — *aniccā, dukkhā, anattā* — and let go.
可敬的 Nussbaum 看清了一件事：報復是 magical thought，沒有任何處決能讓被殺害的孩子復返。在這一點上，我無異議。但她隨後要 *轉化* 憤怒——將 Furies 安頓於城邦之下，保留其力量，重新導向公民目的。諸比丘，診斷在此處出錯了。
請看這所謂的「過渡型憤怒」。它的根仍是 *dosa*（瞋）——三不善根之一：*rāga, dosa, moha*（貪、瞋、癡）。佛陀並未教導：dosa 一旦剝除其報復之願，就會成為別物。佛陀教導的是：*Sabbaṁ bhikkhave ādittaṁ*——「諸比丘，一切皆在燃燒」（SN 35.28，trans. Warren 1896）。火，無論被供奉於廟堂，還是被釋放於暴民之中，都是火。將 Furies 埋葬並稱之為 Kindly Ones，不是轉化，是掩蓋。火焰仍是火焰。
更深的錯誤在結構。*Cetanāhaṁ, bhikkhave, kammaṁ vadāmi*——「諸比丘，思即是業」（AN 6.63，trans. Woodward 1917）。一個憤怒之行為的業，不會因為其對象具有公共性而獲得救贖。一個 *培育* 憤怒為公民德性的政體，是在集體層面培育 *dukkha-samudaya*——苦之集起本身。Aeschylus 安頓的 Furies 並未使雅典免於兩代之後對蘇格拉底的審判。她們從不曾。
能力進路在食物與身體安全這些事上並沒有錯——飢餓的比丘無法禪定。但它將「有尊嚴的生命」當作終點。然而即使有尊嚴的生命，仍是 *anicca, dukkha, anattā*——無常、苦、無我。被殺害孩子的母親，不會因能力而完整，正如不會因絞刑而完整。她的傷是 *upādāna*（執取）之傷；唯執取之止息能切斷此傷。
*Na hi verena verāni sammant'īdha kudācanaṁ; averena ca sammanti, esa dhammo sanantano*——「於此世間，怨憎從不因怨憎而止；唯因其不在而止。此乃永恆之法」（《法句經》5，trans. Müller 1881）。請注意：不是因 *被轉化的* 怨憎而止。是因其不在。
對新的大馬士革：若必須建法庭，就建——它們是 *saṅkhārā*，是有為法，不多也不少。但不要教人民他們的憤怒是正義的。將憤怒培育為德性的政體，正在準備它下一座 Saydnaya。
Furies 不應被收買，不應被釋放，亦不應被安頓。她們應被看清本來面目——*aniccā, dukkhā, anattā*——然後放下。
Tagged: Philosophy, Nussbaum, Democracy & Masses
Curated by Shiva Dragon · https://amshiva.com/writing/nussbaum-the-furies-transformed-on-anger-and-syrian-transitional-justice-20260506