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expenditure of energy and time. How might Schadenfreude be confused
with revenge and malice? When, to their mutual horror, Mr. Lammle and
his new wife, Sophronia, realize in Dickens s Our Mutual Friend that each
has married the other for a fortune that does not in fact exist, the newly-
weds vow to avenge themselves on the world. Says Mr. Lammle: . . . we
owe all other people the grudge of wishing them to be taken in, as we our-
selves have been taken in. 20 This particular brand of malice, well cap-
tured by the German Mißgunst, is only one of several; Schadenfreude
differs from malice in its passivity. Any glee yielded by the fruition of the
Lammles hope (and activity) is malicious pleasure. Schadenfreude should
not be considered malicious pleasure, for the reason that it usually does
not involve expectation, much less agency.
Intentions differ from hopes, desires, and expectations. Various
philosophers have remarked on the utter randomness of expectations and
wants compared with the selectivity of intentions. To intend something is
not at all the same as to hope for something. This fact is important for
moral evaluation, for it is primarily by a person s intentions that we judge
his moral disposition. That someone has done something unintentionally
bears on our estimate of his virtue. Intentions also hinge on timing. We
judge more harshly lies that are crafted in advance than those which are
told without forethought.
Much Ado about Nothing? 23
Annette Baier and others who analyze integrity have shown that ex-
pected or desired states of affairs differ from intended states of affairs in
that the former are not necessarily linked to states of my affairs. I can
want and expect my friend Andrew to make the Olympic swimming team
without thereby wanting or expecting anything for myself. My intentions,
by contrast, generally involve my own future. If I begin to work toward
Andrew s success, I intend something about Andrew. And if I intend to
help Andrew, he will bear upon my future in some way. Even intentions
for others imply intentions for oneself.
Schadenfreude could be considered intentional only if it amounted to
the resolve to be happy about another s misfortune. We might, for exam-
ple, say of an arrogant person, I ll be glad when Camille gets her due.
This attitude is not malicious, though, for it does not automatically mean
that we expect something for ourselves. We may sincerely believe that the
lesson in question will benefit Camille, even as it supposedly attests to
the invisible hand of justice ( what goes around, comes around ). Our
hoping, properly speaking, that something would happen to teach her a
lesson (who knows what it would take) neither necessitates nor pre-
cludes Schadenfreude as an eventual response.
Of course, the same might be said of passive cruelty; for this reason,
Schadenfreude needs to be set firmly apart from cruelty. In Contingency,
Irony, and Solidarity Richard Rorty embraced Judith Shklar s definition of
cruelty as the worst thing we do. 21 In Ordinary Vices Shklar under-
stands as cruelty the willful infliction of physical pain on a weaker being
in order to cause anguish and fear. 22 It is a wrong done entirely to an-
other creature. A parent who physically reprimands his or her son only
ambiguously qualifies as cruel, and a German who refused to aid a Jew
under National Socialism does not appear to qualify at all. So there is a
problem with Shklar s active definition of cruelty. Passive cruelty did not
figure into her conception of moral cruelty either, which she took to be
deliberate and persistent humiliation, so that the victim can eventually
trust neither himself nor anyone else (Ordinary Vices, p. 37). Five years
later, Shklar filled out her influential account of cruelty by linking it to
evil: . . . evil is cruelty and the fear it inspires, and the very fear of fear
itself. 23 Cruelty is intrinsically evil, despite the fact that it can be instru-
mentally good (as in One must be cruel to be kind ). Even passive
24 When Bad Things Happen to Other People
cruelty is intentional. Schadenfreude differs from passive cruelty in the
role that beliefs about desert play in the different kinds of pleasure.
Spinoza called rejoicing in the loss or misfortune of other people one
of the classic symptoms of envy.24 Spinoza had malicious glee in mind, not
Schadenfreude. Kafka may have disliked or disrepected his sister, but he
didn t envy her. Nonetheless, it remains that Spinoza joins a chorus of
thinkers who raise moral doubts about taking pleasure in the misfortunes
of others. This is a good time to ask whether there is any point to trying to
defend this despised pleasure.
Yes, there is. We will feel better about ourselves if we recognize not
only that people everywhere suffer, but also that people everywhere ap-
preciate others suffering. Human beings may have any number of natural
propensities (to envy, to deceit, to aggression) that we do well to change
or control. Schadenfreude differs importantly from intrinsically bad
propensities in its roots in basically harmless comedy (and in justice,
which I pursue in Part Two). In comedy we flirt with all sorts of moral
transgressions. We either stop short of condoning moral transgressions or
challenge the seriousness of them. Schadenfreude, like comedy, verges on
cruelty but stops short of it. A look at the structure of the emotion illus-
trates the flirtatiousness underlying some Schadenfreude (as in Kauf-
mann s understanding and in Lodge s example). Flittering between good
and evil, Schadenfreude tests how playful and how complicated we
will allow ourselves to be.
Two
Explaining Schadenfreude
EMOTIONS LIKE REGRET, DISAPPOINTMENT, AND SHAME CAUSE US PAIN.
It might be thought that painful emotions are justified because we are bad
people or because we have made a mistake. Wiser people, we may think,
manage to avoid grief and shame. An advisor may tell us that we are
wrong to dwell on the disappointment of having narrowly missed a spot
on the Olympic team; we should instead focus on having become the sort
of extraordinary athlete who could reasonably hope to qualify for the
Olympic team. We can change our view of things, the advisor may tell us,
and enjoy life more.
We can also agree that there are different kinds of pleasure the kind
that comes from winning an Olympic gold medal, the kind that comes
from watching a good movie, and the kind that comes from exacting re-
venge, for example. Agreement on this point might lead naturally to an ef-
fort to establish a moral pecking order of pleasures: we might try to argue
that some pleasures are morally superior to others, as John Stuart Mill
does in On Liberty. Then we might try to define a person s moral worth
in terms of the pleasure he or she feels. Especially if we believe God plays
an active role in our lives, we might think that people who feel morally ac-
ceptable pleasure regularly must deserve their happy existences.
Emotions such as fulfillment, success, and pride cause us pleasure. It
might be thought that pleasurable emotions are justified because we are
good people or because we are living wisely. We want to take pleasurable
emotions as evidence of our having done something right. Even when our
pleasurable emotions arise from situations over which we have no con-
trol, such as a lottery, we rejoice.
No one will deny that we tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain. By the
26 When Bad Things Happen to Other People
same token, we naturally want to give in to and prolong pleasurable emo-
tions. Why not allow ourselves the holiday Schadenfreude proclaims?
Something for Nothing
We value pleasurable emotions differently. To a number of people, the
thrill of winning a Nobel prize means more than the thrill of finding a
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