Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

SOREN KIERKEGAARD 209
According to Kierkegaard, mistrust also belongs to the same genus as
envy, as do Schadenfreude and baseness. He writes:
And there is envy; it is quick to abandon a man, and yet it does not
abandon him as it were by letting him go, no, it hastens to assist his fall. And
this being once assured, envy will hasten to his dark corner whence he will
summon his even more hideous cousin, malicious glee, that they may
rejoice together-at their own cost. 29
Kierkegaard sees, too, envy's role in drawing unenvious people into
class conflict. Who does not envy with us is against us! His aversion to
envy as a legitimate weapon in social reform naturally causes him to be
reproached with conservatism. Yet he correctly recognizes the difficult
position, doubtless acute in any society, of the man who either cannot or
will not envy:
And should one of the humble folk, whose heart was innocent of such
secret envy of the power, honour and distinction of the powerful, the
honoured and the distinguished, and who refuses to succumb to corruption
from without-should he, without craven obsequiousness, and fearing no
man, modestly, but with sincere delight, give due honour to those above
him; and should he sometimes be happier and more joyous even perhaps
than they, then he too will discover the twofold danger that threatens him.
By his own kind he will, perchance, be rejected as a traitor, despised as a
servile spirit; by those who are favoured he may be misunderstood and
perhaps reviled as a presumptuous man. 30
Kierkegaard's writings provide not only a running commentary on
envy in human existence, but in some places a step towards a philosophy
of envy which is one of the most profound treatments of the subject.
Kierkegaard depicts his era: It is a revolutionary but passionless and
reflective age performing the dialectical feat of 'allowing everything to
remain intact, but craftily robbing it of its meaning. Instead of culminating
in rebellion it enervates the inner reality of things in a reflexive
29 Ibid., Kjerlighedens Gjerninger (The Works of Love) , Vol. IX, p. 245.
30 Op. cit., p. 245.