ESSAY · 2026-05-06 · 9 min read

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。

Tagged: Philosophy, Nussbaum, Democracy & Masses

By Shiva Dragon · https://amshiva.com/writing/nussbaum-the-furies-transformed-on-anger-and-syrian-transitional-justice-20260506