Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 213
attributed to countless experiences of being envied. His entire opus,
from first to last, contains references to the problem of envy, but they are
most abundant in his middle period, of which the central work is
Human, All Too Human. As a classical philologist he was familiar with
the Greek idea of the envy of the gods. He had, however, a tendency to
idealize this and, like Kierkegaard, to underestimate the full import of
envious manifestations in Athenian democracy. This realization came
only much later, with the Dane, Svend Ranulf.
The concepts of envy and resentment are frequently to be met with in
Nietzsche; there is no periphrasis and they are invariably understood in
the sense of those authors we have already discussed. Nietzsche does not
confuse the concepts jealousy and envy as unfortunately so many of his
predecessors and successors have repeatedly done. In his anthropology,
Nietzsche proceeds from ever latent envy, one of man's deepest tendencies,
which is aroused as soon as he finds himself in society. Yet
Nietzsche hardly perceived the inevitability of envy, even in cases where
the difference between the individuals under comparison is infinitesimal.
No doubt Nietzsche focused too much on considerable and
startling differences between the great and the small, the high and the
low, to notice how little the intensity of envy depends on the objective
margin between the envious man and his object.
Nietzsche, the philosopher, postulates a man who has finally succeeded
in overcoming the envy within him. To Nietzsche, the French
Revolution and all subsequent revolutions, the idea of equality and
certain conceptions of social justice were all equally abhorrent, as they
had been to Goethe, on whom he here draws for support. Yet here and
there we find in Nietzsche thoughts which suggest the view that the
social dynamic of these motives and ideas is indispensable, that the roots
of social control lie in the desire for equality and justice, or in other
words the envious impulse, and that without them human society as we
know it is barely conceivable. Notable, too, is the clarity with which he
perceives the need for every group ('herd') to provide a safety valve for
the envy of its members so as to divert it from destroying the group. In
one of his aphorisms, he declares that this function has been taken over
by the priest. With uncanny insight he foresaw the manner in which the
envious and resentful would succeed, during the twentieth century, in
making people feel that happiness was a disgrace. He literally anticipates
the problem with which Paul Tournier has to struggle.