Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

HERMAN MELVILLE
subject of worldly wisdom and the understanding of human nature. The
scholar seeks to convince Melville that worldly experience does not of
itself entail knowledge of the deeper labyrinths of human nature. He
concludes with the remark: 'Coke and Blackstone [jurists whose writings
are legal classics] hardly shed so much light into obscure spiritual
places as the Hebrew prophets. And who were they? Mostly recluses. '
At first, Melville says, he did not see this. Now, faced with the task of
explaining Claggart's antipathy to Billy Budd, he believes he understands
his old friend's advice and says:
'And indeed, if that lexicon which is based on Holy Writ were any
longer popular, one might with less difficulty define and denominate
certain phenomenal men. As it is, one must turn to some authority not
liable to the charge of being tinctured with the Biblical element. ,5
Melville is no doubt inferring that the problem of envy is frequently
discussed in the Old and New Testaments. Yet he himself goes on for
nearly three more pages before he lets fall the decisive word. He is set to
prove conclusively that the malice in Claggart is something which the
environmental theory, later so popular, cannot explain. The evil in
Claggart lies at his very core, quite independent of the world around
him.
Melville quotes a definition of 'natural depravity' attributed to Plato:
'Natural Depravity: a depravity according to nature. ' Melville hastens to
warn us against the error of believing that what is meant here is the
depravity of the whole of mankind, in Calvin's sense. It is found only in
certain individuals. And 'Not many are the examples of this depravity
which the gallows and jail supply.' Claggart's depravity, for which
Melville is seeking the right word, is always dominated by the intellect.
In a brief and masterly paragraph that might have come from the pen of a
Scheler or a Nietzsche, the author of Billy Budd takes us into the
phenomenological sphere of the envious personality-without having
once mentioned the word 'envy': .
Civilization [by which Melville clearly means something like the educated,
worldly-wise, urbane man], especially if of the austerer sort, is
auspicious to it. It folds itself in the mantle of respectability. It has its
certain negative virtues serving as silent auxiliaries. It never allows wine to
5 Op. cit., p. 674.
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