Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

220 ENVY AS THE SUBJECT OF PHIlDSOPHY
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality, stressing, as the work does, that
resentment is a form of self-poisoning which culminates in the vindictive
impulse. What is involved is a group of emotions and affects, to which
hatred, ill-will, envy, jealousy and spite also belong. Scheler then distinguishes
between a counter-attack, a defensive gesture, such as a
physical blow in immediate response to an insult, and the act of revenge
which presupposes a certain lapse of time during which the reactive
impulse is inhibited or controlled: a postponement, that is, of the
counter-reaction till later on, in the sense of 'Next time I'll show you!'
But when, under the influence of this inhibition, a person is able to
predict that next time, too, he will be the under-dog, resentment begins. 56
The stressing of the time factor is important. Scheler writes:
Impulse and emotion, as it were, progress from vindictive feelings
through rancour, envy and jealousy, to spite, approximating to genuine
resentment. Revenge and envy represent types of hostile negation usually
directed towards some definite object. They require definite causes for their
manifestation, and their progress is determined by definite objects, so that,
with the cessation of the cause, the emotion also disappears. 57
Scheler implies here that my envy will disappear when the envied
property becomes my own. This is probably an over-optimistic view. He
regards begrudging as a more dangerous feeling than mere envy because
it seeks out those value factors in things and people from which it can
derive painfully angry satisfaction. To the begrudging man, systematic
destruction is, as it were, the structure of the individual concrete experience
in social life. He neither sees nor experiences anything that does not
correspond with his emotional situation. In the case of spite, the detractive
impulse is even deeper and more internalized, while at the same
time always ready to pounce, betraying itself in some uncontrolled
gesture, a way of smiling, etc. Now Scheler continues:
None of these, however, amounts to resentment, but all are stages in the
development of its points of departure. Vindictive feeling, envy, begrudging
spite, Schadenfreude and ill-will become components of resentment only in
56 Op. cit., p. 39.
57 Op. cit., pp. 39 f.