Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

14
The Sense of Justice and
the Idea of Equality
A NUMBER OF AUTHORS have drawn attention to the fact that those
1'"\.. feelings and attitudes that are so vitally important to a political
order-namely, the sense of equity, of justice and injustice-are inherent
in man because of his capacity to envy. Envy is aroused if, in one
locality, the political power allows a merchant privileges which are not
conceded in another, if one man is subject to arbitrary taxation while the
other remains untaxed. Something approaching equality before the law
arises out of the political tug-of-war between those who make the laws
and those who have to live under them. Originally it was in the interests
of the authorities to leave some room for differential treatment, which
could be financially profitable; moreover, arbitrary control, permitting
the unequal distribution of favour, tends to an increase in power.
But gradually the legislators themselves came to be affected by the
laws, and so their interest in equality before the law became more
personal. Yet even in democracies there are, for a number of reasons,
exceptions to this rule. Farmers, trade unions, oil-well drillers and
professional groups often enjoy a special status in relation to certain
laws. In general, however, the citizen of a modern democracy can rely on
equality before the law. His claim to it is assured by the envy that all his
fellow citizens feel towards anyone who might conceivably gain by
inequitable treatment being meted out to him, even if this gain were only
the pleasure felt by the powerful man in the power that enables him to be
unjust.
This reasonably predictable equality before most laws and public
ordinances thus creates for the individual a clear field of activity in which
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