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problem of moral luck proper. Schopenhauer s account of suffering, in
many ways remarkably insightful and useful, anticipates contemporary
philosophical discussions of moral luck. These discussions sensitize us to
the circumstances of a great deal of human suffering.
Schadenfreude is itself a kind of moral luck. Kant and Schopenhauer
Wicked Feelings 85
both misunderstand Schadenfreude as something persons work to obtain.
In his Lectures on Ethics Kant asserts, Malice is the third kind of vi-
ciousness which is of the devil. It consists in taking a direct pleasure in the
misfortunes of others. Men prone to this vice will seek, for instance, to
make mischief between husband and wife, or between friends, and then
enjoy the mishap they have produced (p. 219). And in The Metaphysics
of Morals Kant identifies the desire for revenge as the sweetest form of
Schadenfreude. 9 Kant claims of Schadenfreude that when it goes so far
as to help bring about evil or wickedness it makes hatred of men visible.
Immediately after denouncing Schadenfreude in On the Basis of Morality,
Schopenhauer claims that envy and the malicious joy at another s misfor-
tune are in themselves merely theoretical; in practice they become malice
and cruelty (pp. 135 136). Tying it to the realm of intention, Schopen-
hauer, like Kant before him, views Schadenfreude as preliminary to, and
sometimes constitutive of, acting, as opposed to a result of being acted
upon.
Schopenhauer explains that the pains and sufferings of others are for
malice and cruelty an end in themselves, and their attainment is the plea-
sure of Schadenfreude. For this reason, malice and cruelty constitute a
greater degree (as opposed to a different kind) of moral depravity than
does envy. Schopenhauer concludes that just as Schadenfreude is only the-
oretical cruelty, so cruelty is Schadenfreude put into practice; the diseased
disposition prone to Schadenfreude will become manifest as cruelty as
soon as an opportunity presents itself.
Schopenhauer does not ultimately portray suffering with much nuance
or subtlety. Childish pranks and inconsequential acts of social rebellion
appear the first step on a slippery path to heinous deeds. The sentimental
and hyperbolic style of his remarks corresponds to a loaded, univocal, and
question-begging description of suffering. That description colors the
eventual condemnation of Schadenfreude. Because Schopenhauer fails to
acknowledge any explicitly unanticipated or unintended sort of pleasure,
we may find surprising Alasdair MacIntyre s observation in A Short His-
tory of Ethics that, Schopenhauer observed, as perhaps no previous
philosopher or psychologist had done, the gratuitous character of
malice. 10 MacIntyre seems to mean by gratuitous that which is done
86 When Bad Things Happen to Other People
simply for its own sake, as opposed to the consequence(s) of an act.
Schopenhauer does miss the gratuitousness of malice, if by gratuitous-
ness we mean not earned or paid for.
The Relevance of Schopenhauer Today
Schopenhauer s position on capital punishment makes it difficult for him
to present a coherent condemnation of Schadenfreude by virtue of the po-
sition he takes regarding punishment. He seems to believe that in commit-
ting an offense, the offender forfeits the right not to be made to suffer. To
render punishment compatible with justice, though, it is not enough to re-
strict punishment to those who deserve it. It is necessary to restrict the
kind of suffering to the sort which a given offense is taken to deserve. Just
as justice not only requires a principle of desert and a principle of propor-
tionality between the seriousness of the offense and the punishment de-
served, so too does the evaluation of Schadenfreude involve both desert
and proportionality.
Schopenhauer dismisses proportionality as irrelevant to a discussion of
Schadenfreude because he insists that any emotional response to suffering
is a dispositional, not episodic, matter. Those who enjoy the punishment
of a criminal or laugh at even the slightest of misfortunes are guilty. It
might be thought that Schopenhauer is an easy target here and that a
simple counterexample could be invoked to defeat his position (for an evil
deed may be done by someone who is not diabolical, but merely weak or
misguided). But Schopenhauer merits study in part because his view en-
dures as an unstated assumption of a good deal of the moral theory writ-
ten in English. The Schadenfreude question for Schopenhauer is not
merely one of degree, for he meant to condemn every kind of pleasure
stemming from another s suffering. No doubt many of us will squirm in
the face of such a condemnation. Schopenhauer s is a serious claim not to
be lightly rejected.
Endorsement of this claim unites a broad cross-section of believers and
non-believers. According to John Atwell, Schopenhauer provides us,
therefore, with a wholly nonreligious account of the misery of life, proba-
bly the only one in the history of Western thought. 11 With striking clar-
Wicked Feelings 87
ity, Schopenhauer presages an explicitly Christian condemnation of
Schadenfreude. In his essay Emotions Among the Virtues In the Christ-
ian Life Robert C. Roberts claims in terms reminiscent of Schopenhauer
that cruel hope or joy is morally corrupt 12 and subsequently dis-
cusses hope for the death of a rival and joy in another s misfortune as vi-
cious and vices. Like Schopenhauer before him, he never considers
such common phenomena as the nasty reactions of children at play or the
violent aspects of physical comedy. Schopenhauer s failure can profitably
be discussed in the context of two of Roberts s own examples.
The first Roberts passage to reflect Schopenhauer s shortcomings fea-
tures the word Schadenfreude. It is to be found in an article entitled
What is Wrong With Wicked Feelings?
What in a morality might support its belief that some cases of
envy, Schadenfreude, pride, hatred, resentment, self-righteousness,
contempt, anger, etc., are wicked in themselves, and not only deriv-
atively from actions or other consequences? Only by a fairly con-
crete analysis of such feelings can one begin to uncover the
assumptions behind the judgment that they are wicked.13
Calling for a fairly concrete analysis of such feelings, Roberts ends the
essay without having considered whether Schadenfreude might be any-
thing other than wicked.
Roberts s example takes shape around the competitiveness between
two friends who are academic colleagues. Here it is, in brief: when Mike is
promoted to an Ivy League school and offered a contract by Cambridge
University Press, Roger is envious. Roberts suggests that Roger s envy
may beget malicious wishes, specifically, the hope that Mike will be ac-
cused of plagiarism and subsequently fired. Roberts calls Roger s feelings
unjust because Mike s success has diminished Roger s self-esteem.
Roberts s discussion misses the same distinction between different
kinds of suffering that Schopenhauer s does. As a result, it comes off
sounding self-righteous.14 True, he doesn t explicitly call Roger s feelings
wicked, but he does include the example in an article entitled What is
Wrong With Wicked Feelings? It is worthwhile to note that we can feel
88 When Bad Things Happen to Other People
Schadenfreude quite apart from envy and that Roger s admittedly mali-
cious desire does not qualify as Schadenfreude, as one can no more feel
Schadenfreude before a misfortune occurs than one can laugh at a joke
before it is made.
Like most emotions, Schadenfreude looks backward. For the pleasure
which defines Schadenfreude to arise, the suffering it celebrates must al-
ready have run its course or at least begun. The same is true for pity and
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