If Homer's Iliad is the first work of Western literature, as it well may be, then the first word of Western literature is "anger." Homer begins his epic with a particular word for anger, "mênis"--it is but one of several ancient Greek words for this emotion, and means something like righteous anger, righteous indignation. That word, and Homer's famous portrayal of its meaning and effects, will inaugurate our seminar. Our topic is, in short, just this: anger. What is it? How to understand it? Is it a good thing to feel, or is it to be suppressed on grounds of irrationality, of its destructiveness, of its connection with possibly flawed quasi-moral notions such as honor? We have all felt anger, to the point that it seems to be an emotion intimately familiar to us. And yet we have all wondered at his power and nature, and about its morality. Anger certainly seems to be an extraordinarily prevalent and influential emotion at all levels of human life.