When Bad Things Happen to Other People (29 page)

Häring’s 
Christian Renewal in a Changing World
, first published in 1961, can illuminate what Häring makes of the attitude of the faithful to others. Referring to sentiments and dispositions as “thoughts of the heart,” Häring declares, “Even involuntary sentiments and inclinations of the heart, which are morally indifferent as such, are important indications of the true state of our hearts.”20 Häring clearly does not take
Schadenfreude
to be morally indifferent, perhaps because he distinguishes carefully in 
The Law of Christ
 between rejoicing over the misfortunes of others and the simple taking of pleasure. According to Häring,

Men’s free will is called into action whenever good or evil impulses make themselves felt in his heart. If not confirmed by the will they remain mere tendencies or inclinations. Through the assent of the will they become true sentiments and dispositions of the heart. (
Christian Renewal,
 p. 144)

Taking pleasure in the suffering of the “proud enemies of God” would, for Häring, amount to a disposition—a morally acceptable one at that. Häring calls dispositions “infallible guides to man’s true state of heart” and asserts that, “unpremeditated and purposive sentiments, if they are deep and lasting, will most effectively contribute to ‘the treasury of the heart’ from where they predetermine the true possibilities for future motives and actions” (
Christian Renewal,
 p. 150).

Conduct issues from character, Häring instructs. Putting our emotional lives in order prepares us to act morally toward others. This is precisely what I take him to mean in 
The Christian Existentialist
, when he says, “It is an essential constituent of the Christian religion to tear down all walls of separation between peoples and cultures.”21 This work is particularly useful as a record of Häring’s interpretation of Vatican II. Häring tells us that the power of the Catholic Church “arises from the fact that [it] in our time of pluralism is freed from temporal commitments; that she considers with loving eyes and in the spirit of adoration everything that God works, even in those parts of Christianity separated from Rome” (
Christian Existentialist,
 p. 43). In 
Free and Faithful in Christ
 he calls for an ecumenical ministry to persons in mixed marriages and advises that spouses decide without anguish about the baptism and education of children in one or the other church according to the greater probability of ensuring a permanent commitment to some faith (II, pp. 276–333). This sympathy for the religiously different and their spiritual beliefs confounds the idea that Häring is a crusader or a spiritual imperialist.

In several works Häring displays a careful and sincere regard for the faithful of other religions, particularly Jews. At times it seems that the mere fact of participating earnestly in an organized religion is all that Häring hopes for others, though at other times his profound reverence for and allegiance to the Church of Rome almost suggest another goal (see the section “Zeal for Our Neighbor’s Salvation” (
Christian Renewal,
 pp. 233–257). In any event, embracing the love of God means hating evil, as Häring tells us: “Zeal for God’s kingdom may manifest itself in a variety of ways in keeping with the individual’s endowments. The predominant sentiments may be grief over the sins and evils of the world or hatred for the intrigues of the devil” (
Christian Renewal,
 pp. 148–149). Unlike St. Paul, who in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians refers to fellow believers who disagree with his version of the Christian message as agents of Satan, Häring never ties any religious creed to Satan (although he does call “total” pride “satanic” in
The Law of Christ
 [III, pp. 67–68]). It is, rather, the pride of those who deny God’s sovereignty that earns his disapproval:

In the event that man should fail to surrender himself to the loving designs of a personal God in a proud attempt to deny God’s sovereignty, his self-glorification reaches a frightening and an alarming degree. Such an egotistic attitude excludes an interior readiness and openness for the light of moral truths, especially if these run counter to man’s pride and sloth. (
Christian Renewal,
 p. 106)

The careful phrase “proud attempt” recalls the substance of the passage in which Häring approved of the suffering of the “proud enemies of God.” I take Häring to mean that celebrating extrinsic suffering is acceptable only (but not always) when the operative pleasure serves as a tribute to God and when the operative misfortune involves pride (the worst of the seven deadly sins).22 The question not satisfactorily answered is how to identify a proud enemy of God.

A defense of Häring relies on the idea that I should be cheered by Häring’s telling me that he is not celebrating my suffering, but rather the justice to which my suffering attests. Any disagreement I have with Häring’s vision of justice will only exacerbate the difficulty of accepting this defense. By accepting this defense, moreover, I implicitly prepare a moral justification for my emotional response to his suffering. In order to justify this way of thinking about suffering, we must show not only that the suffering does some good, but also that no available alternative would achieve as much or more good at a lower cost. Making an example of the guilty exalts justice over persons. By subsuming suffering under beliefs about justice, we exacerbate suffering.

For the Good of the World

The ordinary notion of good can convey at least two distinct concepts: that of well-being or welfare and the seemingly more esoteric notion of an intrinsically good state of affairs or things. Given this distinction, it is important for a form of ethics to make clear whether the notion of good to which it ties its ethical ideals is that of a good state of affairs (St. Thomas Aquinas, Häring), or that of being well-off by having things good (Nietzsche). For Nietzsche, who remained horrified at the ostensible purposelessness and inexorableness of human suffering, the intrinsically good state of affairs responsible for his rejection of Aquinas is a world as free of suffering as possible. For Häring, good consists in part of a world in which “proud enemies of God” are brought to a proper understanding and appreciation of God. Häring’s is a consequentialist view of suffering: the rightness or wrongness of suffering depends solely on its overall consequences.

The idea that one must be cruel to be kind implicit in Häring’s conception of good invites mention of historical instances or events in which persons taken to represent “the proud enemies of God” have actually been “crushed and humiliated” (for example, the Crusades, the Inquisition). In 1987 John Mahoney contended that “until very recently indeed in the making of moral theology, the attitudes and the enterprises of others were of little, if any, concern to Roman Catholic moralists, far less to the leaders in their community, unless to condemn them.”23 It is not difficult to see where this line of reasoning leads. Although Häring is careful not to defend
Schadenfreude
, his drawing of the line between
Schadenfreude
proper and the cognate rejoicing over the spectacle of divine justice leaves him open to a charge of legitimating religious intolerance and cruelty. I do not accuse Häring of either religious intolerance or cruelty; my aim has been to bring to light his nuanced notion of the appropriateness of suffering. We all suffer for the good of the world in Häring’s eyes: the suffering of the faithful lessens the sum total of humanity’s collective guilt, and the suffering of the “proud enemies of God” reforms infidels.

Häring argues convincingly for the role of character and the emotions in the moral life. Good people practice good works, he wants to say. This sounds perfectly fine until examples of good works appear. In 
Christian
 
Renewal in a Changing World
 Häring instructs us to correct our neighbors and to do so sympathetically:

On the whole, we should always try to take a positive attitude toward our neighbor’s difficulties. It reveals a deep understanding to penetrate to the real and hidden concern of our neighbor and to use this insight whenever we have to correct his erroneous ideas. (p. 241)

The most obvious problem with such thinking is that the person who finds him- or herself helped by Häring may not consider him- or herself in need or want of help. The presence of good motives alone cannot ensure that the actions or emotions of a person will be moral.

The task of articulating a religious notion of appropriate suffering returns us to a contest of wills. Catholicism differs little from many Protestant sects in its desire to assert its correctness. In a discussion of medieval social tension, Bernard Lewis argues that Christianity has shared this characteristic with Islam:

When Christians and Muslims called each other infidels, each understood what the other meant, and both meant more or less the same thing. In so doing, they revealed their essential similarity.24

Despite the terrible postwar examples of strife between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, between Jews and Muslims in Israel, between Christians and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, and a host of other examples, it can nonetheless be argued that most believers choose not to interfere in the lives of others. This does not mean, however, that they are indifferent to the “errors” of others. Tolerance does not eliminate the occurrence of
Schadenfreude
: it is certainly possible that tolerance will increase the frequency of
Schadenfreude.

God and 
Schadenfreude

In the ninth century Popes Leo IV and John VII promised eternal life to all those who lost their lives in battles against the Arabs or the Vikings. Two centuries later, crusaders heard a similar promise. Montaigne worried that religious institutions pose a threat to society by holding out hopes of divine reward for attitudes and actions which undermine social solidarity. His worry reverberates throughout Enlightenment thought. The historic controversy over Salmon Rushdie’s novel
The Satanic Verses
 notwithstanding, the idea of a modern-day crusade seems scarcely plausible. Nonetheless, some religious believers continue to evince great confidence in the determination of the desert of others and, as such, are likely to rationalize or justify their
Schadenfreude
through reference to God. This phrasing is perhaps unacceptable to believers, who may insist that they do not feel 
Schadenfreude
, but rather joy at the spectacle of divine justice.

Various forms of religious devotion, like various narratives of history, underscore the fluidity of notions of appropriate suffering. We call a religious zealot or a screaming soldier a fanatic; he provokes scorn, fear, and even revulsion in us. In those of his religion or national origin, however, he stirs admiration. We call heroic or virtuous acts undertaken for our advantage and fanatical those undertaken for someone else’s. While we may want to insist that our moral notions of appropriateness descend from the heavens above or spring from objective reason, we recognize that a conversion from one religion or political ideology to another can transform our views. Embarrassing reminders of what we used to believe, like unsettling stories of what others still believe, complicate the process of assuring ourselves that we are right this time about what someone else deserves.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, many Western believers, whatever their denomination, are not religious in any traditionalist sense. Their far looser, secularized notions of suffering and what other people deserve nonetheless come into focus against the background of many of the earlier conflicts of our culture, as between reason and faith, philosophy and theology, secular and sacred learning. For them or for traditionalists, assessment of the appropriateness of suffering will often turn on intuitions about what God wants.

The curious strategy by which Bernard Häring disavows 
Schadenfreude
—one that bears the influence of Aquinas—indicates how formidable is the perennial difficulty against which believers struggle to make sense of suffering. Although Häring succeeds in moving us beyond the temptation to link suffering to sin in a simplistic or overly confident way, his carefully qualified justification for rejoicing over another’s suffering returns us to the very problem of moral appropriateness with which we began.

EIGHT:
Outlaw Emotions

Revenge, envy, the impulse to detract, spite,
Schadenfreude
, and malice lead to 
ressentiment
 only if there occurs neither a moral self-conquest (such as
genuine
forgiveness in the case of revenge) nor an act or some other adequate expression of emotion, and if this restraint is caused by a pronounced awareness of impotence...
Ressentiment
 can only arise if these emotions are particularly powerful and yet must be suppressed.

—Max Scheler, 
Ressentiment

IF MORALLY ACCEPTABLE PLEASURE in the misfortunes of others is as common as I have made it out to be, why is it that we do not have a name for it? Why do we deny the experience, and how? Misogyny has a lot to do with answers to these questions. Striving to portray justice as blind, re-mote, and impersonal may mask a longing to make justice masculine. Various thinkers have sought to excise the emotional element deep within justice; such cutting away seems a necessary step to insisting that justice is not, in fact, disguised or sanitized revenge. Purifying justice of anything traditionally considered feminine comes at the cost of outright denial of
Schadenfreude
or identifying
Schadenfreude
with femininity.

In addition to a sustaining interest in the problem of human suffering, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche share credit for drawing philosophical attention to psychological disavowal. Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche appreciate, for different reasons, the social importance of disavowing
Schadenfreude
. The revulsion with which various commentators have condemned the emotion makes it easy to understand why people who feel it might disavow it.
Schadenfreude
belongs to the category Alison Jaggar calls “outlaw emotions”: those responses which are distinguished by their incompatibility with dominant perceptions and values in a community. Jaggar, like Annette Baier, Cheshire Calhoun, and others working within the field of feminist ethics, alerts us to the privileges our moral theories may extend to certain kinds of people (for example, male, Christian, white heterosexuals). In the late twentieth century, predominantly female thinkers have refined moral philosophy, or rather those who think about it. These philosophers have prompted us to attend out of habit to the motives of people who come up with theories about morality. Consequently, the way in which I have framed
Schadenfreude
requires some mention of Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s mutual contempt for women.