Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

210 ENVY AS THE SUBJECT OF PHILOSOPHY
tension which allows everything to remain intact and yet has changed the
whole of life into an ambiguity. ,31
Thus there is no intention to do away with royal power, to tear down
what is excellent, to abolish Christian terminology, but
secretly they desire the knowledge that nothing decisive is meant by it. And
they want to be unrepentant, for they have indeed destroyed nothing. They
would no more like to have a great king than a hero of liberty, or someone
with religious authority-no, what they want is to let what exists continue
to exist in all innocence, while knowing in a more or less reflective
knowledge that it does not exist. 32
The age of levelling
From here, Kierkegaard proceeds to the principle of envy. In the same
way that enthusiasm is the unifying principle in an impassioned age, so
in a passionless and strongly reflective age envy is the negative unifying
principle. Yet this should not be immediately understood in the ethical
sense as a reproach, no, the idea of reflection, if one may speak thus, is
envy, and envy is therefore a twofold quality, being the selfishness of the
individual and then again that of others against him. 33
Thus to Kierkegaard envy is primarily, as one might say, a social-psychological
factor, condemning the individual to a false self-image:
Selfish envy in the form of the wish demands too much of the individual
himself, and thus becomes an obstacle to him. It pampers him as would the
predilection of a yielding mother, for envy of himself prevents the individual
from surrendering himself. The envy of others in which the individual
participates against others is envious in the negative critical sense. 34
The reflective envy then becomes changed into ethical envy, like
enclosed air which always develops its own poison, and this is then
detestable envy.
31 Ibid., En literair Anmeldelse to Tidsaldre (The Present Age), Vol. VIII, p. 73.
32 Op. cit., p. 76.
33 Op. cit.-'against him' refers to the individual.
34 Op. cit., p. 77.