Read Online When Bad Things Happen to Other People by John Portmann - Free Book Online
Authors: John Portmann
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people supposedly enjoy life more than do the non-virtuous.
Virtuous people do not hope that people around them will suffer. That we believe another deserves to suffer some injury does not necessarily mean that we hope for or attentively wait for an injury to occur. The pleasure of Schadenfreude can cause (or causally sustain) a desire that it simultaneously satisfies. In Schadenfreude we receive a delight that we did not desire, if by “desire” we are to understand any motivational factor that may figure in the explanation of intentional action. Something bad happens to someone else, and we suddenly realize that we find the resulting suffering appropriate.
Because we do not desire Schadenfreude , we do not work to obtain it: it simply falls into our hands, as a fruit of passivity. In speaking of the passivity of Schadenfreude I do not mean to imply that we are victims of our emotions in the sense that emotions seem to toss us about like ships in a storm. I do not claim that either Schadenfreude or malicious glee is beyond our control; indeed, because we are not purely passive in the face of feelings and emotions, our efforts to manage our emotions sometimes succeed. We can repudiate, silently, the opportunity to feel pleasure in the injury or suffering of another. Alternatively, we can rationalize our enjoyment of the suffering of another: we can tell ourselves that we take pleasure in the fact that another suffers (as opposed to pleasure in the actual suffering) and that this pleasure results from love of justice. Such mental dodges attest to the rationality of Schadenfreude , as well as to our responsibility for it.
That we could stop ourselves from feeling Schadenfreude with some willpower, but might choose not to, makes the emotion appear to stand in tension with the religious commandment to love others as ourselves (Mark 12:31), a normative principle that has exercised an incalculable influence on Western culture. How one thinks about and experiences aggression and cruelty determines to some extent the way one views the love commandment, as well as one’s own acts of cruelty and betrayal. Explanations of why we are driven toward or tempted by hatred and cruelty tend to fall into two general and sharply divergent categories. According to the tradition at whose heart the love commandment stands, humans are born with original sin and naturally possess hateful and cruel instincts.
The baseness of human nature stems from Adam’s original, moral freedom to reject a life free of pain and suffering. According to a contrary tradition, over which Freud to some extent presides, we are born innocent, although some of us become hateful and cruel from having suffered deprivation or cruelty. Freud’s view of human nature, which resonates with that of the ancient Greeks, seems to hold out more hope for the prospect of human happiness. Likewise did Marx view strife, conflict, and competition among human beings as pathological conditions that admit of solutions. A psychological and sociological axiom of Marxism is that persons are permanently constituted to seek harmony, not discord. Although Jewish, neither Freud nor Marx professed to be religious. It is somewhat ironic, then, that each seemed more optimistic than many Christians about putting into practice the spirit of the love commandment.
Many religious thinkers and various philosophers (Kant and Schopenhauer, for example) have endorsed the moral obligation to feel sympathy for other people. Other people, by the same token, must feel sympathy for us when we suffer. This obligation has nothing to do with reciprocity, for we are expected to feel sympathy even (or especially) for those who feel no sympathy for us.
Love subverts rationality here, for it might seem entirely reasonable to dislike or shun people whose moral views appall us. In Schadenfreude, rationality predominates. Consequently, we need to look most searchingly not at pleasure virtually everyone would
Virtuous people do not hope that people around them will suffer. That we believe another deserves to suffer some injury does not necessarily mean that we hope for or attentively wait for an injury to occur. The pleasure of Schadenfreude can cause (or causally sustain) a desire that it simultaneously satisfies. In Schadenfreude we receive a delight that we did not desire, if by “desire” we are to understand any motivational factor that may figure in the explanation of intentional action. Something bad happens to someone else, and we suddenly realize that we find the resulting suffering appropriate.
Because we do not desire Schadenfreude , we do not work to obtain it: it simply falls into our hands, as a fruit of passivity. In speaking of the passivity of Schadenfreude I do not mean to imply that we are victims of our emotions in the sense that emotions seem to toss us about like ships in a storm. I do not claim that either Schadenfreude or malicious glee is beyond our control; indeed, because we are not purely passive in the face of feelings and emotions, our efforts to manage our emotions sometimes succeed. We can repudiate, silently, the opportunity to feel pleasure in the injury or suffering of another. Alternatively, we can rationalize our enjoyment of the suffering of another: we can tell ourselves that we take pleasure in the fact that another suffers (as opposed to pleasure in the actual suffering) and that this pleasure results from love of justice. Such mental dodges attest to the rationality of Schadenfreude , as well as to our responsibility for it.
That we could stop ourselves from feeling Schadenfreude with some willpower, but might choose not to, makes the emotion appear to stand in tension with the religious commandment to love others as ourselves (Mark 12:31), a normative principle that has exercised an incalculable influence on Western culture. How one thinks about and experiences aggression and cruelty determines to some extent the way one views the love commandment, as well as one’s own acts of cruelty and betrayal. Explanations of why we are driven toward or tempted by hatred and cruelty tend to fall into two general and sharply divergent categories. According to the tradition at whose heart the love commandment stands, humans are born with original sin and naturally possess hateful and cruel instincts.
The baseness of human nature stems from Adam’s original, moral freedom to reject a life free of pain and suffering. According to a contrary tradition, over which Freud to some extent presides, we are born innocent, although some of us become hateful and cruel from having suffered deprivation or cruelty. Freud’s view of human nature, which resonates with that of the ancient Greeks, seems to hold out more hope for the prospect of human happiness. Likewise did Marx view strife, conflict, and competition among human beings as pathological conditions that admit of solutions. A psychological and sociological axiom of Marxism is that persons are permanently constituted to seek harmony, not discord. Although Jewish, neither Freud nor Marx professed to be religious. It is somewhat ironic, then, that each seemed more optimistic than many Christians about putting into practice the spirit of the love commandment.
Many religious thinkers and various philosophers (Kant and Schopenhauer, for example) have endorsed the moral obligation to feel sympathy for other people. Other people, by the same token, must feel sympathy for us when we suffer. This obligation has nothing to do with reciprocity, for we are expected to feel sympathy even (or especially) for those who feel no sympathy for us.
Love subverts rationality here, for it might seem entirely reasonable to dislike or shun people whose moral views appall us. In Schadenfreude, rationality predominates. Consequently, we need to look most searchingly not at pleasure virtually everyone would
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