When Bad Things Happen to Other People (14 page)

Various writers have emphasized that pre-modern societies differ from modern societies in the amount of attention accorded to individuals’ emotions. When the individual was not as important as the community, individuals’ emotions were not very important. In complex societies, by contrast, the individual’s “psychic life” is freer to develop on its own, separate from the “collective personality.” Not only do social actors develop inner, psychic lives, they also deem these inner lives important and valuable. Others now tend to think more highly of us if we take deliberate steps toward maintaining our well-being. Accordingly, we try to follow healthy diets, exercise regularly, and lessen stress in our lives. Foucault, Christopher Lasch (in 
The Culture of Narcissism)
, and others, have noticed that the care of the self has become a distinctly moral matter in the modern West. Care of the self extends to managing our emotions. Appropriate emotions will produce appropriate lives.

Against Kant, numerous philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists have argued that a person’s emotions will often motivate behavior and should do so—people cannot help but pay attention to their emotions and should (to some degree) heed them. Thus we believe people should pursue happiness, marry for love, and under some circumstances express their justified anger. A growing number of psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers tell us that the more important a society considers emotions, the more it expects us to govern our emotions wisely. Behavior at funerals, inaugurations, weddings, and at the office entails conforming to some important extent to what is expected of us emotionally. Even in our most private thoughts, we can see evidence of social structures. A never-ending stream of books and films center on characters who suffer mightily from social pressures.

Freud’s critique would carry little force if emotion were generally un-responsive to deliberate attempts to suppress or evoke it. In several different places the sociologist Erving Goffman demonstrates that social and religious rules affect emotions as well as behavior. He concludes,

We find that participants hold in check certain psychological states and attitudes, for after all, the very general rule that one enter into the prevailing mood in the encounter carries the understanding that contradictory feelings will be in abeyance...so generally, in fact, does one suppress unsuitable affect, that we need to look at offenses to this rule to be reminded of its usual operation.22

The love commandment and failures to live up to it form a good case in point here. We try to conform inwardly as well as outwardly. Belonging to a particular group affects not only the way we appear to others, but also the way we appear to ourselves. We can control to some extent these appearances. Following Goffman, Arlie Hochschild aims to demonstrate how profoundly social we are by arguing that we frequently endeavor to pay tribute to reigning conceptions of appropriateness with our emotions.23 Within a social system of mutual dependence, it can be self-destructive to ignore or oppose the opinions and judgments of those on whom we depend. Taking a moral stance against our neighbors or our government carries risks.

To study why and under what conditions persons hold in check certain psychological states, one must begin with the premise that persons are capable of assessing when an emotion is appropriate. If people were not socially conditioned to feel the inappropriateness of not following the Golden Rule, the sort of suffering I take Freud to articulate would make no sense. With Freud, I agree that the Golden Rule compels us to manage not only outward appearances but also inward sentiments.

Our own suffering should morally trouble us as much as the suffering of others. To be sure, there is something dangerous lurking beneath the claim that love of ourselves matters more than love of others. Racists, for example, may argue that they simply cannot bring themselves to care for members of other races, and that asking them to do so requires an unreasonable sacrifice of their own self-interest. Certainly this is an important objection to the sort of argument Freud advances in 
Civilization and Its
 
Discontents
, and it is one that had occurred to Freud. Freud argues for a moral justification not for hating others, but for loving some people more than others. By urging us to treat ourselves in the way that we strive to treat others, Freud wants to ensure that we maintain adequate psychological resources to pursue and honor those commitments that make our lives seem worth living. Freud discovered existing structures; he did not invent new ideals.

Freud’s critique of the love commandment reaches farther and strikes harder than the quip of Oscar Wilde, who three decades earlier in the essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” had sarcastically prayed for a society that, by an equitable distribution of duties and pleasures, would emancipate humankind from “that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody.” Wilde’s weak sigh passed largely unnoticed by the world around him, but Freud managed to elevate the same concern to a position of urgent prominence. That those who cannot bring themselves to love strangers or enemies like friends or family members might risk important psychological harm draws into question the goals of compassion. Freud’s attention to the sacrifice involved in rule-following contributes to and expands our understanding of suffering through its insistence that the happiness of any one individual is as important as the happiness of any other.

FOUR:
Wicked Feelings

SCHOPENHAUER PROFESSES TO BELIEVE that people are all basically the same (although, as we will see, his adulation of genius undermines this profession). This monolithic view leads to another: Schopenhauer believes that all suffering is essentially the same. In this second belief Schopenhauer typifies much reflection on evil and suffering. He stands in the way of coming to accept the rationality of
Schadenfreude
.

Schopenhauer’s profound appreciation of the awfulness of human suffering leads him to sanctify suffering and to equate
Schadenfreude
with evil. His somewhat unreflective reverence for suffering culminates in a full-blown condemnation of 
Schadenfreude
. Revulsion to
Schadenfreude
, specifically, refusal to view the emotion as an object of rational assessment, suggests confusion about suffering. The question to be answered is precisely what is so evil about
Schadenfreude
?

Schopenhauer, who thought that Germans use unusually long words in order to give themselves more time to think, claims that
Schadenfreude
is “diabolical” and “the infallible sign of an entirely bad heart”:

In some respects the opposite of envy is the 
malicious joy at the
 
misfortunes of others
[this is Payne’s translation of 
Schadenfreude
]. Yet to feel envy is human; but to indulge in such malicious joy is fiendish and diabolical. There is no more infallible sign of a thoroughly bad heart and profound moral worthlessness than an inclination to a sheer and undisguised malignant joy of this kind.1

In contrast to many other philosophers who link envy to happiness in the misfortunes of others, Schopenhauer conceptually separates the two and regards
Schadenfreude
as essentially the opposite of envy (
Neid
). So far, so good. But Schopenhauer then proceeds to defend envy as human and universal, only to admonish that the man in whom
Schadenfreude
is observed should be “forever shunned.”

Schopenhauer’s is an extreme position, to be sure. In our own century, after numerous psychological and sociological studies of human motivation have cast light on the question of why some people act morally while others seem driven to commit evil, educated persons are loath to think that any given human being could be either completely good or completely evil. Coincidentally, just as Schopenhauer’s censure of
Schadenfreude
has lost much of its invective power, so too has popular fear of Satan.

Schopenhauer’s censure of
Schadenfreude
is directly indebted to Kant, though Kant links it with envy and ingratitude as the three devilish vices and explicitly specifies that they become
teuflisch
only “when they reach their full degree.” Because Kant leaves to us to determine the contours of this “full degree,” Schopenhauer’s somewhat less ambiguous statement might serve as a helpful starting-point. The question-begging qualifications “
reiner
” (sheer) and “
herzlicher
” (undisguised) serve not so much to mitigate the scope of his condemnation as to persuade his readers of his having ruminated over this question at reassuring length. However intimately enmeshed Schopenhauer’s personality is in the spirit of this condemnation, the charge of simple hyperbole at the expense of its psychological shrewdness slights Schopenhauer’s talent for transforming raw insights and buried fears into forceful moral judgments. Nietzsche and Wittgenstein alike were impressed by that ability.

The most charitable reading of Schopenhauer would attribute to him the view that any pleasure from another’s misfortune is always the sign of a bad heart, period. Every instance of that pleasure exhibits the same vice. The amount and kind of suffering are likewise irrelevant; it is the disposition, that is to say character, that matters in every case, for “in 
morality
, the will, the disposition, is the object of consideration and the only real thing” (
WWR
 I, p. 344). Even if it were true that character deserved greater moral attention than conduct, some problems remain with Schopenhauer’s judgment.

Various objections can be raised to Schopenhauer’s interpretation of this moral experience. He takes a remarkably narrow view of good character. He leaves crucially underspecified the description of a “bad heart,” which consequently leaves him open to the charge of circularity. His formulation seems to make sense only if we grant the view, curiously consonant with Christianity, that evil results from, is constituted by, finding pleasure in the (unqualified) misfortunes of others. But we should not grant Schopenhauer that view because he offers no real argument for it. He simply appeals to the sentiments of his readers as if those sentiments represented a body of unquestioned and unquestionable fact. His reasoning is circular:
Schadenfreude
is diabolical, therefore only diabolical people feel 
Schadenfreude
.

Whether or not a bad character or simply a bad attitude is necessary in order for
Schadenfreude
to arise obscures the underlying question of prediction. The problem with correlating responses to attitudes is that emotional reactions can rarely be predicted, irrespective of what we know of the attendant attitude. We are often at a loss to explain even to ourselves why one particular misfortune will affect us so deeply or, possibly, so little. Not surprisingly, philosophers of the emotions remain divided over the question of whether our emotional attitude toward someone
entails
a certain way of thinking about that person, or that our thinking that way about that person
causes
our emotional attitude toward him or her.

If only someone with a bad character would cause others to suffer, how can a society justify a prison? Schopenhauer does not oppose punishment, the deliberate infliction of suffering on other people. He justifies punishment in a familiar way: through a distinction between enjoying another’s suffering and enjoying justice. This is the conceptual difference between retributivist and utilitarian (or deterrent) theories of punishment.

Schopenhauer refuses to acknowledge distinctions between various 
kinds
 of suffering. Differences of kind figure into moral deliberation in many ways. Utilitarians, for instance, often cite white lies as a particular 
kind
 of deception in order to justify them. Again and again Schopenhauer demonstrates a distaste for such differences of kind. He tells us, “Intentional mutilation or mere injury of the body of another, indeed every blow, is to be regarded essentially as of the same nature as murder, and as differing therefrom only in
degree
” (I, p. 335, emphasis added). This is a strong claim indeed, one with which our legal system is at odds. Witness that one receives quite a different punishment for assault than for homicide. Further, there are a great many different kinds of homicide, some of which are even considered lawful (e.g., killing in self-defense or in a “just war”). In order to understand homicide or 
Schadenfreude
, one must attend to the specific circumstance behind it. This entails a discussion of kind.

Not only does Schopenhauer ignore specifics, he fails to indicate what does and does not qualify as pain (
Schmerz
) or suffering (
Leiden
) in the first place. Regrettably, Schopenhauer uses these two terms interchangeably and neglects to argue for his assertion that mental pain is plainly more important than physical pain (
WWB
 I, p. 299).2 He notes with approval that in cases of intense mental suffering, the self-infliction of physical pain serves as a useful diversion (the contrast here with Elaine Scarry’s discussion throughout 
The Body in Pain
 of “the annihilating power of pain” to “utterly nullify the claims of the world” suggests that Schopenhauer does not take seriously enough the formidable potential of physical pain). The premise that physical pain is unworthy of much attention, as academic and implausible as it may seem, might intuitively emerge as a good reason to show leniency toward the brand of pleasure which results from observing a harmless slip on a banana peel. Schopenhauer, however, does not open this door.

Consider once more Baudelaire’s view of comedy. Baudelaire agrees with his contemporary Schopenhauer about
Schadenfreude
and explains at greater detail why we should condemn the emotion. Claiming that “human laughter is intimately linked with the accident of an ancient fall” in “the orthodox mind,”3 Baudelaire concludes that “the comic is a damnable element, and one of diabolic origins” (note that 
teuflisch
 is generally translated as “diabolic”). He asks: