Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

IMMANUEL KANT 201
Schadenfreude. ' These he calls 'The vice of human hate that is the
complete opposite of human love.' It is a hate that is not 'open and
violent, but secret and disguised, so that baseness is added to neglect of
one's duty to one's neighbour, and thus one's duty to oneself also suffers. '
Kant gives full expression to the philosophical doctrine and ethic of
values, according to which envy is the very antithesis of virtue, the
denial of humanity. His is one of the most complete definitions of envy:
Envy (livor) is a tendency to perceive with displeasure the good of
others, although it in no way detracts from one's own, and which, when it
leads to action (in order to diminish that good) is called qualified envy, but
otherwise only ill-will (invidentia); it is however only an indirect, malevolent
frame of mind, namely a disinclination to see our own good overshadowed
by the good of others, because we take its measure not from its
intrinsic worth, but by comparison with the good of others and then go on to
symbolize that evaluation. 15
In more primitive societies, as we have seen, for instance, among the
Pacific Dobuans or the North American Navaho, it is held that another
person's good is factually the cause of a man's own ill. A certain degree of
rationality and maturity, or at least complete freedom from a magical
view of things, is required before the envious man can fully realize that
the man he envies does not possess something which, but for the
possessor's existence, he, the envious man, might otherwise have.
Kant goes on to discuss an expression that neutralizes envy. It is so
current today, particularly in America and England, that one may assume
that it serves to repress the knowledge of envy's true nature and
function in human relations. Kant writes: 'It is no doubt for this reason
that the harmony and happiness of a marriage, family, &c. , is sometimes
described as enviable, as if it were permissible in certain cases to envy a
person. ' It is a turn of speech often used today, as it was used apparently
in Kant's time, to give expression to genuine envy but in a socially
acceptable form-sometimes, even, to warn the envied man against
one's own envy or that of others. This may, indeed, represent a social
control whereby influence is gained over another person's style of life, or
over the pleasure he takes in life. The following sentence of Kant's
15 I. Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten (The Metaphysics of Morals) in Siimtliche Werke, ed.
K. Vorlander, Vol. 3, 4th ed., Leipzig, 1922, p. 316.