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Authors: John Portmann
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with reason. Kant endorses this bias and weaves it into moral philosophy that exhorts us to banish the emotions from the courtroom. When thinking about what someone else deserves, we are not to allow our emotions to influence our conclusions. But we can hardly keep our emotions at bay, especially when people we love have suffered injustice. The assumption that women cannot properly think through justice now offends us, and yet we still wrestle with fundamental questions about how our emotions might inform judgments about what other people deserve.
A century before Kant, Descartes insisted in his Meditations on First Philosophy that emotion is not essential to human nature, although reason is. This position has exercised a profound influence on much philosophical thinking and has come to be associated more closely with Kant, who deepened and rounded out the view. Even today, moral philosophers who follow Kant (and, implicitly, Descartes) focus their attention on action or conduct, as opposed to character. Professional preoccupation with moral action explains in part why Schadenfreude has received very little philosophical attention in either the English or German traditions. Such preoccupation derives in large part from Kant’s emblematic devaluation of emotion.
Kant must be wrong that we know nothing of moral significance about a person just from knowing his or her emotions, for we frequently do focus on a person’s emotions in judging his or her worth. Our knowledge of the emotions of other people often determines whether we wish to befriend or avoid them. Familiarity with our own emotions precedes the honest examination of conscience through which we determine whether other people deserve their suffering. Without some basic understanding of how our emotions affect our beliefs, we will not be able to identify the sources of Schadenfreude . Our deepest and strongest emotions, oblique as they may sometimes seem, reveal the effect others have had on us. Far from an irrational passion, Schadenfreude reflects both the moral sensibility of the communities around us and the social notion of where we stand in those communities.
The Genesis of Schadenfreude
Beyond the myriad of possible causal antecedents of Schadenfreude lie what I consider its principal sources: 1) low self-esteem; 2) loyalty and commitments to justice; 3) the comical; and 4) malice. Each of the four contributes uniquely to an understanding of why people might choose to profit emotionally from the misfortune or suffering of someone else.
We ought to view the first three categories as mitigating factors in the determination of moral guilt and blame. The fourth cause, like its resulting case, must always be condemned. Both the second and the third catalysts are intrinsically questionable from a psychological point of view. This is so because of the ease with which we may rationalize pleasure in the suffering of others as a function of love for justice (with regard to the second category) or the value of a sense of humor (with regard to the third).
Nietzsche and Freud found human aggression lurking behind both religious devotion and laughter. I aim to move beyond this insight. Less convinced of the intersection of religious devotion and aggression than they, I take particular interest in expectations among the pious that sinners will suffer. As for laughter: while I agree that much of the comical does hinge on aggression, enough joy qualifies as what Freud referred to as the “regained lost laughter of childhood” to caution us against a hasty reduction to aggression.
Common to all four categories is a thought about another person. The following self-other contexts set the stage for Schadenfreude :
1. Low self-esteem
Injuries to self-esteem often generate suffering. An experience as insignificant as negotiating day-to-day life or as potentially torturous as romantic disappointment can collapse self-confidence and trigger
A century before Kant, Descartes insisted in his Meditations on First Philosophy that emotion is not essential to human nature, although reason is. This position has exercised a profound influence on much philosophical thinking and has come to be associated more closely with Kant, who deepened and rounded out the view. Even today, moral philosophers who follow Kant (and, implicitly, Descartes) focus their attention on action or conduct, as opposed to character. Professional preoccupation with moral action explains in part why Schadenfreude has received very little philosophical attention in either the English or German traditions. Such preoccupation derives in large part from Kant’s emblematic devaluation of emotion.
Kant must be wrong that we know nothing of moral significance about a person just from knowing his or her emotions, for we frequently do focus on a person’s emotions in judging his or her worth. Our knowledge of the emotions of other people often determines whether we wish to befriend or avoid them. Familiarity with our own emotions precedes the honest examination of conscience through which we determine whether other people deserve their suffering. Without some basic understanding of how our emotions affect our beliefs, we will not be able to identify the sources of Schadenfreude . Our deepest and strongest emotions, oblique as they may sometimes seem, reveal the effect others have had on us. Far from an irrational passion, Schadenfreude reflects both the moral sensibility of the communities around us and the social notion of where we stand in those communities.
The Genesis of Schadenfreude
Beyond the myriad of possible causal antecedents of Schadenfreude lie what I consider its principal sources: 1) low self-esteem; 2) loyalty and commitments to justice; 3) the comical; and 4) malice. Each of the four contributes uniquely to an understanding of why people might choose to profit emotionally from the misfortune or suffering of someone else.
We ought to view the first three categories as mitigating factors in the determination of moral guilt and blame. The fourth cause, like its resulting case, must always be condemned. Both the second and the third catalysts are intrinsically questionable from a psychological point of view. This is so because of the ease with which we may rationalize pleasure in the suffering of others as a function of love for justice (with regard to the second category) or the value of a sense of humor (with regard to the third).
Nietzsche and Freud found human aggression lurking behind both religious devotion and laughter. I aim to move beyond this insight. Less convinced of the intersection of religious devotion and aggression than they, I take particular interest in expectations among the pious that sinners will suffer. As for laughter: while I agree that much of the comical does hinge on aggression, enough joy qualifies as what Freud referred to as the “regained lost laughter of childhood” to caution us against a hasty reduction to aggression.
Common to all four categories is a thought about another person. The following self-other contexts set the stage for Schadenfreude :
1. Low self-esteem
Injuries to self-esteem often generate suffering. An experience as insignificant as negotiating day-to-day life or as potentially torturous as romantic disappointment can collapse self-confidence and trigger
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