Envy

This paper addresses the somewhat neglected topic of envy and its relationship to education and social inequality in Britain. Drawing on the work of Rawls, Runciman and Crosland, the paper proposes a distinction between envy as a vice and 'justified resentment' aroused by perceived injustices in the social distribution of primary goods, including education. Various pejorative uses of the term 'the politics of envy' in UK politics are examined. The conditions necessary for a politics of justified resentment are then analysed. (...) Current developments in higher education in the UK are discussed with reference to signs of the emergence of new social resentments among the relatively highly educated. Prospects for a wider politics of justified resentment are assessed in relation to a range of emergent policies and priorities of New Labour in government. (shrink)

The moral status of emotions has recently become the focus of various philosophical investigations. Certain emotions that have traditionally been considered as negative, such as envy, jealousy, pleasure-in-others'-misfortune, and pride, have been defended. Some traditionally "negative" emotions have even been declared to be moral emotions. In this brief paper, I suggest two basic criteria according to which an emotion might be considered moral, and I then examine whether envy, anger, and resentment are moral emotions.

This essay introduces and defends a new analysis of prudential value. According to this analysis, what it is for something to be good for you is for that thing to contribute to the appeal or desirability of being in your position. I argue that this proposal fits well with our ways of talking about prudential value and well-being; enables promising analyses of the related concepts of luck, selfishness, self-sacrifice, and paternalism; preserves the relationship between prudential value and the attitudes of (...) concern, love, pity, and envy; and satisfies various other desiderata. I also highlight two ways in which the analysis is informative and can lead to progress in our substantive theorizing about the good life. (shrink)

Envy and resentment are generally thought to be unpleasant and unethical emotions which ought to be condemned. I argue that both envy and resentment, in some important forms, are moral emotions connected with concern for justice, understood in terms of desert and entitlement. They enable us to recognise injustice, work as a spur to acting against it and connect us to others. Thus, we should accept these emotions as part of the ethical life.

In this article I argue against Ronald Dworkin's rejection of the labour auction in his ‘Equality of Resources’. I criticize Dworkin's claims that the talented would envy the untalented in such an auction, and that the talented in particular would be enslaved by it. I identify some ways in which the talent auction is underdescribed and I compare the results for the condition of the talented of different further descriptions of it. I conclude that Dworkin's deviation from the ‘envy test’ (...) criterion results in an inequality between the talented and the untalented which cannot be justified in egalitarian terms. Correspondence:c1 m.christofidis@ucl.ac.uk. (shrink)

Malice that cannot speak its name, cold-blooded but secret hostility, impotent desire, hidden rancor and spite--all cluster at the center of envy. Envy clouds thought, writes Joseph Epstein, clobbers generosity, precludes any hope of serenity, and ends in shriveling the heart. Of the seven deadly sins, he concludes, only envy is no fun at all. Writing in a conversational, erudite, self-deprecating style that wears its learning lightly, Epstein takes us on a stimulating tour of the many faces of envy. He (...) considers what great thinkers--such as John Rawls, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche--have written about envy; distinguishes between envy, yearning, jealousy, resentment, and schadenfreude ; and catalogs the many things that are enviable, including wealth, beauty, power, talent, knowledge and wisdom, extraordinary good luck, and youth. He looks at resentment in academia, where envy is mixed with snobbery, stirred by impotence, and played out against a background of cosmic injustice; and he offers a brilliant reading of Othello as a play more driven by Iago's envy than Othello's jealousy. He reveals that envy has a strong touch of malice behind it--the envious want to destroy the happiness of others. He suggests that envy of the astonishing success of Jews in Germany and Austria may have lurked behind the virulent anti-Semitism of the Nazis. As he proved in his best-selling Snobbery, Joseph Epstein has an unmatched ability to highlight our failings in a way that is thoughtful, provocative, and entertaining. If envy is no fun, Epstein's Envy is truly a joy to read. (shrink)

The book deftly shows that understanding envy and scorn—and seeking to mitigate their effects—can prove invaluable to our lives, our relationships, and our society.

This extended abstract critically exams the use of the terms "rigorous" and "soft" in the context of engineering modeling. Common usage of the terms is contrasted with Toulmin's notion of "reasonableness" and Schoen's notion of "reflective practice." The abstract continues by considering an economic model of models in engineering, suggesting that overly "rigorous" engineering practice may box itself into being unable to afford the models it values, thereby presenting a conundrum for the practice and teaching engineering that demands relaxation.

This essay examines Aquinas's discussions of hatred in Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 29 and II-II, Q. 34, in order to retrieve an account of what contemporary theorists of the emotions call its cognitive contents. In Aquinas's view, hatred is constituted as a passion by a narrative pattern that includes its intentional object, beliefs, perceptions of changes in bodily states, and motivated desires. This essay endorses Aquinas's broadly "cognitivist" account of passional hatred, in line with his way of treating passions in (...) general. I suggest that Aquinas's account of hatred's arising out of attachment is compelling. However, I also argue that if Aquinas's treatment of hatred is to help us understand the phenomenon of hate, where classes of people are abominated for an identity they bear, and to avoid equating an oppressor's hatred with that of the oppressed for the oppressor, the cognitive pathway to hatred must be broader than through envy. (shrink)

Joseph Heath1 The Pareto principle states that if a proposed change in the condition of society makes at least one person better off, and does not make anyone else worse off, then that change should be regarded as an improvement. This principle forms the conceptual core of modern welfare economics, and exercises enormous influence in contemporary discussions of justice and equality. It does, however, have an Achilles’ heel. When an individual experiences envy, it means that improvements in the condition of (...) others may worsen the condition of that individual. As a result, envy has the potential to block a vast range of changes that we might intuitively be inclined to regard as Pareto improvements. (Or more precisely, envy results in too many states getting classified as Pareto-optimal, not because, intuitively, they cannot be improved upon, but because no one’s condition can be improved upon without making someone else envious.) For example, a market exchange between two people might not wind up being classified as a Pareto improvement if the benefits produced for the two parties generated envy in some otherwise uninvolved third. (shrink)

Man [in commercial society] is sometimes found a detached and solitary being; he has found an object which sets him in competition with his fellow creatures, and he deals with them as he does with his cattle and his soil, for the sake of the profits they bring; the mighty engine which we suppose to have formed society, only tends to set its members at variance, or to continue their intercourse after the bonds of affection are broken.1.

According to Cicero, “all emotions spring from the roots of error: they should not be pruned or clipped here and there, but yanked out” (Cicero 2002: 60). The Stoic enthusiasm for the extirpation of emotion is radical in two respects, both of which can be expressed with the claim that emotional responses are never appropriate. First, the Stoics held that emotions are incompatible with virtue , since the virtuous man will retain his equanimity whatever his fate. Grief is always vicious, (...) both bad and bad for you, even when directed at events commonly considered tragic, such as the loss of one’s child. (shrink)

The World Trade Organization has faced many criticisms from human rights and social justice advocates. And yet it is difficult to identify direct clashes between WTO obligations and human rights obligations. Nevertheless, as demonstrated in this article, the concerns of WTO critics are justifiable, for example in the areas of the organisation's democratic deficit, the effect of its rules on developing States, and in the arena of labour rights. The criticisms are not, as it were, manifestations of mere 'regime envy' (...) by social justice constituencies. Indeed, the present imbalance in effectiveness between international economic institutions and international social justice institutions must be redressed. Comments are welcome - Please either use SSRN comments or email to the author. (shrink)

Despite the resurgent interest in the emotions, not much attention has focused specifically on those emotions that relate to others. deserved or undeserved fortunes. In this essay, I explore such emotions, logically and morally, with special emphasis on indignation and Schadenfreude. I argue that, when Aristotle.s treatment of this family of emotions is stripped of certain anomalies, it gives a logically satisfying and morally suggestive, if perhaps overly rigid, account of all the relevant emotions and their relations. I use those (...) insights to challenge some recent accounts of Schadenfreude and to focus instead on pleasure at deserved bad fortune as satisfied indignation. Furthermore, I suggest that the proper experience of fortunes-of-others emotions lays the ground for justice as a personal virtue, a virtue which, in turn, is required for full-scale social justice. (shrink)

Some forms of envy and resentment are centrally connected with a concern for justice and so should not be morally condemned but accepted. Envy and resentment enable us to discern and respond to injustices against ourselves and others. I argue that whereas envy and resentment as character traits or dispositions may be ethically deplorable, as episodic emotions they can be both moral responses to injustice and lead to action against injustice.

This paper attempts to defend the value of equality against the accusation that it is an expression of irrational and disreputable feelings of envy of those who are better off. It draws on Rawls’ account of the sense of justice to suggest that resentment of inequalities may be a proper resentment of injustice. The case of resentment of ‘free riders’ is taken as one plausible example of a justified resentment of those who benefit unfairly from a scheme of cooperation. Further (...) examples then link the case of the free rider to other cases of unjust inequalities which are the appropriate objects of resentment and indignation. (shrink)

In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas offers an adept account of the vice of envy. Despite the virtues of his account, he nevertheless fails to provide an adequatedefinition of the vice. Instead, he offers two different definitions each of which fails to identify what is common to all cases of envy. Here I supplement Aquinas’saccount by providing what I take to be common to all cases of envy. I argue that what is common is a “perception of inferiority”—when a person perceives (...) her ownself-worth to be inferior to another and thereby feels her own self-worth diminish. By incorporating perceptions of inferiority into the definition of envy, we obtain adefinition that retains the spirit of Aquinas’s thought, while improving upon its letter. (shrink)

Envy is, roughly, the disposition to desire that another lose a perceived good so that one can, by comparison, feel better about one’s self. The divisiveness of envy follows not just from one’s willing against the good of the other, but also from the other vices that spring from it. It is for this second reason that envy is a capital vice. This chapter begins by arguing for a definition of envy similar to that given by Aquinas and then considers (...) its relationship to other vices (e.g. jealousy, schadenfreude, and hate). At the heart of envy is a disposition to make relative comparisons which lead to a sense of inferiority. This is turn can lead a person to feel and act in ways destructive of community and the self. The present chapter also addresses recent work in both psychology and economics related to envy. (shrink)

Can we love and envy the same person at the same time? There is an overwhelming, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary, consensus that love and envy are deeply incompatible. In this paper, I challenge this consensus, and focus in particular on the normative thesis that true love should be void of envy proper. I first propose an indirect argument. Because love and envy thrive in the same psychological conditions, it is not unlikely to feel envy toward the beloved. If we want ideals (...) that do not go against our psychological propensities, then we should not aim for a love that is wholly void of envy. I then propose a direct argument, in defense of two positive ideals. I argue that a certain kind of envy—emulative envy—can be beneficial to the loving relationship; in turn, a certain kind of love—wise love— which accepts the presence of envy, can be beneficial to our lives. Thus, that love and envy are so linked in our psychology is not something that we should merely tolerate, but wholeheartedly embrace. (shrink)

In this paper I present a novel taxonomy of envy, according to which there are four kinds of envy: emulative, inert, aggressive and spiteful envy. An inquiry into the varieties of envy is valuable not only to understand it as a psychological phenomenon, but also to shed light on the nature of its alleged viciousness. The first section introduces the intuition that there is more than one kind of envy, together with the anecdotal and linguistic evidence that supports it. The (...) second section proposes and explains in detail a definition of envy tout court. The third section presents a recurring distinction between behavioral tendencies of envy, which has been explained in two distinct ways, one mostly proposed by psychologists, the other discernible in the philosophical tradition. The fourth section argues that these models of explanation track two variables, whose interplay is responsible for the existence of the four envies. The fifth section illustrates four paradigmatic cases, and provides a detailed analysis of the phenomenology, motivational structure, and typical behavioral outputs of each. The paper ends with a brief discussion of the implications of the taxonomy for moral education. (shrink)

The conceptions of jealousy used by philosophical writers are various, and, this paper suggests, largely inadequate. In particular, the difference between jealousy and envy has not yet been plausibly specified. This paper surveys some past analyses of this distinction and addresses problems with them, before proposing its own positive account of jealousy, developed from an idea of Leila Tov-Ruach(a.k.a. A. O. Rorty). Three conditions for being jealous are proposed and it is shownhow each of them helps to tell the emotion (...) apart from some distinct species of envy.It is acknowledged that the referents of the two terms are, to some extent, overlapping,but shown how this overlap is justified by the psychologies of the respective emotions. (shrink)

Envy and Jealousy in Classical Athens examines the sensation, expression, and literary representation of envy and jealousy in Classical Athens.

Schimmel, a practicing psychologist, maintains that psychologists and psychotherapists must incorporate many of the ethical and spiritual values of religion and moral philosophy if they are effectively to address the emotional problems faced by modern men and women. The book draws on the psychological insights provided by the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, Aristotle, Maimonides, Aquinas and others to show what we can learn from their teachings about the relationship between virtue and psychological well-being and vice and emotional distress.

It may be that the process of socialization is generally thought to depend upon the development of the slave consciousness. It appears that at present the type of indoctrination a child receives when he or she is socialized by parents and teachers is the general way in which a society makes sure it transmits its values from one generation to the next. If this is so, the analysis of the slave consciousness we have been pursuing would fundamentally call into question (...) the benefits that are to be expected from this most pervasive and fundamental social practice. The development of the heteronomous conscience does not simply guarantee that the citizen will comply with the standards of society; it also guarantees that individuals will develop (some to a greater extent than others) such socially disruptive attitudes as a revengeful sense of justice and a psychological predisposition toward envy. Furthermore, given the massive amounts of social inequality and injustice characterizing many contemporary societies, the combination of economic and psychological factors almost guarantees a tacit or explicit level of frustration which will often erupt into violence. This violence is senseless, repeated, and pervasive because it is nothing but the nourishment needed by the slave consciousness to maintain itself in power. Exploitation, murder, rape, war, the nuclear weapons contest, the polarization of groups against each other, etc., are manifestations of a consciousness that always has to outdo itself vis-à-vis the other. As Nietzsche (1966, p. 140) observed, “Thus the will, the liberator, took to hurting; and on all who can suffer, it wreaks revenge for its inability to go backward [to a condition of autonomy].” With the liberation of imagination and memory, and a combined dedication to fighting all forms of social injustice, however, one can begin to transform society in ways that will confirm rather than deny the human aspiration for harmony and freedom. (shrink)

Although stakeholder salience theory has received a great deal of scholarly attention in the business ethics and management literature, the theory has been criticized for overemphasizing rationality in managerial perceptions. We argue that it is important to better understand what socially constructed emotions signal in business relations, and we posit the role of envy as a discursive resource used to signal and construct the asymmetrical power relations between small business owner–managers and their stakeholders. Our study is based on a qualitative (...) study on discursive accounts elicited from 33 interviews with small business owner–managers in Finland. Our study makes two primary contributions. First, we suggest that socially and culturally constructed emotions have significance in stakeholder salience analyses. Second, we suggest that socially and culturally constructed emotions provide a fruitful context in which to understand the limitations of owner–managers’ personal and moral autonomy. (shrink)

Gabriele Taylor presents a philosophical investigation of the "ordinary" vices traditionally seen as "death to the soul": sloth, envy, avarice, pride, anger, lust, and gluttony. In the course of a richly detailed discussion of individual and interrelated vices, which complements recent work by moral philosophers on virtue, she shows why these "deadly sins" are correctly so named and grouped together.