Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

356 THE SOCIETY REDEEMED FROM ENVY-A UTOPIA
approval or acceptance. This thirst for 'status' in one or more primary
groups represents, indeed, the main lever of social control. 13
The solitary man thus becomes the victim of the envy of such as
begrudge him the freedom from society which he asserts. In addition to
this, there is consuming curiosity, envy of whatever it may be that the
individual will make of his solitude: is he going to invent or think of
something that will raise him above the rest? Will he be able to give the
finishing touches to his poem, his book or his private work? Hence
anyone who, for the achievement of self-imposed goals, asserts his right
to his personal time or, more exactly, to a small portion of his limited
time, for living, and excludes others from that time, affronts in a truly
existential sense those other, envious people through his creation of that
most elementary of possessions, the individual experience of a personal
time for living; and this he cannot do to the full unless he has the courage
to withdraw himself from the presence of others.
Basically, any man who prefers his own company to that of others is
always an irritant. Petrarch, who refers repeatedly to other people's envy,
must both have been acutely aware of it and have feared it, since he so
clearly feels he has to defend his liking for solitude no less than his advice
to the poet to seek it out. Petrarch defends himself against all those
arguments used by others in an endeavour to invoke rage against the
champion of solitude: there are admonitions against solitude even in the
Bible; Aristotle is cited, with his remark about the zoon politikon, and
Cicero, according to whom even the autarchic, self-sufficient man invariably
seeks a companion. 14 Elsewhere Petrarch speaks of the immoderate
attacks to which he found himself exposed from those who believed that
solitude constituted a threat to the virtuous life. 15
In recalling Petrarch's preoccupation with the envious man, we might
almost be led to suppose that the ideal of solitude among early European
poets itself represented in part an escape from the eyes of the envious.
For the very reason that there were then comparatively few professional
writers, and that these were dependent on certain social conditions, such
as the patron's court, they kept a watch on each other that was closer and
13 R. T. La Piere, Theory of Social Control, New York, 1954.
14 Petrarch, De contemptu mundi, also De vita solitaria.
15 Ibid.