When Bad Things Happen to Other People (18 page)

Kant’s relatively mild disapproval of
Schadenfreude
finds its most vehement opponent in Schopenhauer, who defends envy but asserts that
Schadenfreude
represents something much worse than an ordinary vice. Because Schopenhauer does not view
Schadenfreude
as universal, he can, without contradicting himself, call the emotion 
teuflisch
 in a quite literal sense.22 Schopenhauer’s “vehement revulsion” resonates with a number of contemporary moralists and opposes the claim that
Schadenfreude
is all too human to be diabolical (i.e., inhuman) in Kant’s subjective sense. Schopenhauer’s most glaring error is that he does not come close to persuading us that
Schadenfreude
affects only a limited segment of the populace. Schopenhauer therefore has no ground on which to claim that a 
schadenfroh
 person is diabolical, both objectively and subjectively.

Our beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and emotions compose our psychological skeleton. In general, moral theorists have tried to show that this structure motivates us to act morally. Some moral thinkers, such as Hume and Schopenhauer, have argued that we have a natural affinity to morality because of our psychological skeleton, but others, such as Kant, have maintained that reason motivates the moral self.

For Kant, we help others because we have an obligation to do so. Our reason guides us and compels us to treat others well. His insistence that inclination cannot form the basis of a truly moral motive has been found both puzzling and outrageous because among the inclinations which Kant debars from moral worth are sympathy for others, fellow feeling, and benevolence. In this regard Schopenhauer differs from Kant—emotions count for something important, as is clear from Schopenhauer’s reflection on 
Schadenfreude
.

Schopenhauer holds that three fundamental motivations underlie human actions: egoism, malice, and compassion (
OBM
, p. 145). Of these the strongest and most rudimentary is egoism, the desire for one’s own well-being (
OBM
, p. 131). Egoism is boundless, and it grounds the desire to keep life free from pain and suffering. Not so much good or bad, it is a simple fact of life for both humans and beasts. Conversely, compassion is explicitly good and malice explicitly bad. The only genuinely moral motivation, compassion gives rise to virtues such as justice and philanthropy. Accordingly, what issues from compassion holds genuine moral worth, but what proceeds from egoism or malice holds none.

Schopenhauer dislikes the idea that an emotionally generous person might receive more compassion from neighbors than an emotionally stingy one. Schopenhauer embraces the force of the thought that if 
I
 had been subjected to a particular misfortune, I would need or at least appreciate the compassion of others. By counteracting selfish and malicious motives, compassion prevents me from causing another to suffer. Compassion also works positively by inciting me to help another (
OBM
, p. 148).

A simplification of Schopenhauer’s position is that sympathy is the only moral motive. Moral value is identified with the motive of sympathy: to act sympathetically is to act morally and to act without sympathy is to act neutrally or immorally (
OBM
, pp. 120–198). Schopenhauer’s underlying supposition that sympathy is instinctive has troubled many philosophers. Hobbes for one held that any apparently unselfish sympathy can be more accurately described as disguised self-interest. Nietzsche later agreed with him.

Freud shares with Hobbes a deeply negative view of human nature. With his extreme version of original sin (according to which the abject corruption of humanity is incurable), Augustine can be said to prefigure Freud (it is curious that mainstream Judaism, with which Freud identified culturally, has little to say about original sin). In different ways, Augustine, Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Freud raised the question of whether we are psychologically capable of being moral. Much contemporary discussion in economics,23 psychology, and ethics reflects uncertainty over this question.

Economics has affected how philosophers and psychologists think about emotions. The economic mindset offers a middle way between cheery and dismal views of human nature. According to this way of thinking, those who labor are entitled to pay, and those who can pay are entitled to the labor of others. Applied to emotional resources, the logic of reciprocity justifies both giving to others who have previously given to us and expecting others to return our gifts. Candace Clark has combined and refined various articulations of this mindset in an engaging work, 
Misery
 
and Company: Sympathy in Everyday Life
.24 A person who follows the etiquette of sympathy—by limiting demands for sympathy, repaying social debts, and so on—can expect sympathy from others. A person who has overdrawn, or failed to replenish sympathy margins (cashed in too many sympathy credits) may find others refusing to sympathize, especially if the grounds are not compelling. A person careful not to overdraw his account may find that others sympathize with him, even when he is to blame for his plight. Of course, Schopenhauer would discount the whole idea of a sympathy margin as an instance of egoism.

For Schopenhauer, emotional well-being hinges on social attachment. He fears the implications of social detachment and theorizes sympathy as not only a natural but an inevitable human response to suffering. He contends that a person who finds pleasure in the suffering of another must pay for that pleasure with the pain that accompanies the inevitable “stings” or “pangs” of conscience (
WWR,
 I, pp. 341, 354). Not unlike catching a cold from someone else, these pangs lead us to participate in the suffering of others. Schopenhauer thus adds a new twist to the idea that misery loves company, despite the apparent contradiction between this commonplace and his idea that evil persons (who are by definition miserable) are unrepentant in some permanent way.

Sympathy amounts to an infection for Schopenhauer; to him, such an emotional reaction seems analogous to the movements of flocks of sheep or football crowds. The contagiousness of a 
virus
 or 
disease
 certainly makes sense, but what does it mean to speak of the contagiousness of an 
emotion
? When I begin to suffer with another over his or her problem, it is correct to say that we experience the same feeling. Seeing a movie with other people who are laughing can make us react quite differently from seeing it with others who are sneering, for example. An interesting feature of Schopenhauer’s view of sympathy rests in its insight that intoxication by such mass emotions as racial hatred, religious enthusiasm, and raving depends on an innate susceptibility to infection.

Schopenhauer sees suffering as something that should be shared, in part because he assigns moral value to sympathy. Whether this moral value is unconditional, however, is questionable. Max Scheler argues in 
The Nature
 
of Sympathy
 that “fellow feeling” cannot be a fundamental moral value. He maintains that the ethics of sympathy does not attribute moral value primarily to the 
being
 and attitude of persons as such, but seeks to derive moral value from the attitude of the spectator and in so doing invariably presupposes what it is trying to deduce because the sharing of another’s pleasure can only be moral when the latter 
is itself moral
, and warranted by the context which evokes it. Just as some pleasure is not in itself moral, so some sympathy may not qualify as moral. Scheler calls our attention to the appropriateness of sharing others’ suffering. Maybe it’s sometimes moral not to sympathize with others when bad things befall them.

The Appropriateness of Sympathy

Withholding sympathy differs from celebrating misfortune. Why would we withhold sympathy? Can sympathy ever be inappropriate? Just as it is sometimes fitting to offer sympathy, in some contexts it is appropriate to withhold or restrict it.

Sympathy and pity have mistakenly been equated. Both emotions depend on an unpleasant sharing of the pain or suffering of another person. Pity involves three separate beliefs: first, that the suffering in question is significant (Aristotle offers as examples loss of friends, loss of city, loss of opportunities, sickness, old age, and childlessness); second, that the person does not deserve his or her suffering; and third, the belief that such suffering could happen to oneself. Some thinkers object to the inclusion of this third belief on the menu of pity, and have argued that pity requires a distance between pitier and pitied that is foreign to compassion. They argue that pity arises instead from perceived inequality between persons, from a belief that the suffering of another simply could not befall them because of their character or conduct (or both). This objection carries some weight, for although we usually welcome compassion, we rarely appreciate pity.

That pity is rarely welcomed by those to whom it is directed means that it differs from other emotions closely associated with virtue, such as gratitude or compassion. The prospect of becoming an object of pity is alarming in part because we suspect that being on the receiving end of that emotion could make matters worse. We consequently regard an aversion to being pitied as morally commendable. That the same cannot be said of sympathy means that pity is more likely to be judged inappropriate than is sympathy.

Pity, which Schopenhauer problematically treats as sympathy, emerges as the opposite of 
Schadenfreude
, for in such a state we not only lament the suffering we witness in another, we actively participate in it. The fact that Schopenhauer considers pity a virtue indicates further opposition to
Schadenfreude
as well as a point of intersection with a central feature of Christian morality. Though his thought is atheistic, he borrows certain elements from Indian and Christian sources in such a way as to provide grist for the mill of those who would portray Schopenhauer as a noble, quasi-Christian moralist (this is not my aim). He says, for example:

Therefore, whatever goodness, affection, and magnanimity do for others is always only an alleviation of their sufferings; and consequently what can move them to good deeds and to words of affection is always only knowledge of the suffering of others, directly intelligible from one’s own suffering, and put on a level therewith. (
WWR
 I, p. 375)

The only way in which we can effectively help another is to alleviate his or her pain (though no remedy can stop suffering). When we set ourselves to assuage extrinsic suffering we are helping ourselves, because the difference between ourselves and others is illusory. For Schopenhauer suffering generates human goodness. People who suffer misfortunes merit our sympathy (by virtue of their contact with the ferocity of pain) and our appreciation (because they move others to good deeds).

What the world needs now is sympathy, Schopenhauer believes. Those who call upon others’ compassion too often, too long, or too boldly may find themselves cut off from friends and family. Those who give sympathy too readily may be sentimentalists who find their emotional reserves exhausted just when they need to muster genuine emotional support. Freud insisted there was such a thing as non-genuine altruism, a reaction formation against sadism. This inappropriate altruism manifests itself in excessive pity, “exaggerated kindness,” and the sentimentality that some “friends of humanity and protectors of animals” display (SE 14 “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes” 129, 281–282). It is all too easy, in our age of confessions—group therapy sessions, television talk shows, tell-all autobiographies, where many a person is labeled a victim and where emotion comes easily—to lose a sense of proportion. One moment we cry for the death of Princess Diana, the next for children lost to an urban fire, next for a TV celebrity’s marital woes, next for our favorite soap opera heroine’s sufferings. Sympathy and compassion are sensationalized.

If we allow ourselves to thrill to rampant emotion, we may find that we are no longer able to distinguish the genuinely pitiable. Removing ourselves from rampant emotion accompanies maturity. Writing in her diary the day of her thirty-second birthday, American food writer M.F.K. Fisher revealed the following:

I have a much larger capacity for everything. I see a lot more and care a lot less about things like people and whether they like me...I am much less eager, in that way young people have of being eager. I find myself unable or unwilling to give anything of myself, that is. When I was younger, I poured some of my own élan vital into all my contacts with the rest of the world, unthinkingly. Now I am perhaps more cordial, suaver, in my relations with people, even with people I like or love, but I realize with a feeling almost of shock that I am cold and selfish about that pouring out of my élan. I hold it back, saving it.25

There is something remarkable about emotional generosity that makes this appealing human characteristic all the more valuable when it is carefully given. Experience sharpened Fisher’s sense of when it was appropriate to offer her emotional resources to others. If we pour out our sympathy indiscriminately, we may well have less to spare for others who really need it. Of course, there is a real and important difference between rationing our sympathy for others and celebrating the misfortunes of others; both, however, might offend sentimental people equally.

Sentimentality can lead people into quite drastic actions, good examples of which are found in 
Sturm und Drang
 drama and Schopenhauer’s insistence that
Schadenfreude
is diabolical. Philosophical and religious censure of
Schadenfreude
has enacted sentimentality to a large degree. There has been a genuinely internal connection between
Schadenfreude
and sentimentality (though not vice versa) in that criticism of
Schadenfreude
has been largely drastic.

Idealizing sufferers and demonizing parsimonious sympathizers amounts to projecting the painfulness of the human condition onto the wrong objects. Sympathy can be inappropriate, both with respect to degree and kind. We do a disservice to human suffering by construing it as monolithic and sacred. Some instances of suffering are more terrible than others. Sanctifying suffering offends reason, as it is always possible to argue sincerely and morally for the appropriateness of some instances of suffering.