Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

196 ENVY AS THE SUBJECT OF PHILOSOPHY
. conviction that the only way to assuage envy is by propitiation or
providing a substitute is illuminating. Yet Bacon suggests one other form
of envy-avoidance, which is deliberate self-harm or abasement: '. . .
whereas wise men will rather do sacrifice to envy, in suffering themselves
sometimes of purpose to be crossed and overborne in things that
do not much concern them. ,4
Nevertheless, Bacon goes on to suggest that the man who carries his
greatness in a plain and open manner will attract less envy than one who
does so craftily and hypocritically. The man who seeks, but clumsily, to
conceal his greatness-his luck, reputation, etc.-or to belittle it, seems
to be saying what he does not himself truly believe, that fate is to blame
for treating him better than he deserves. Such a man gives the impression
of being conscious of his unworthiness and lack of desert, thus truly
arousing the envy of others. 5 Elsewhere Bacon suggests that what
especially inflames the envious man's animosity is the observation that
his envy has rendered its object unsure of himself, so that he seeks to
conciliate the destructive feelings by half-hearted gestures. Why is this?
An indirect answer is found in Bacon's phrase for the clumsy avoidance
of envy, 'to disavow fortune, ' which gives the appearance of casting
doubt upon good fortune itself. It might be further added that if those
who ought to benefit thereby-those, that is, who are favoured by
fortune-reproach fortune, for the benefit of the envious, with unjustified
partiality, they shatter the convention implicit in the concept of
fortune or luck which is acknowledged by both the well placed and the
less well placed in society, so that envy is given free rein.
From the start, Bacon distinguishes between two kinds of envy, public
and private. Public envy is not merely envy that is openly admitted, but
more exactly it is envy for the benefit of the public weal. This concept is
similar to E. Raiga's 'indignation-envy.' Bacon could not have guessed
that two centuries later a few social philosophers would succeed in so
camouflaging or repressing private envy as almost always to present it in
the guise of advocacy of the common weal. What since the nineteenth
century has been called 'democratic envy' is most often, though by no
means necessarily always, the presumed aggregate of the electors' privateenvy.
4 Op. cit., p. 60.
sOp. cit., p. 60.