Pip’s suffering. The kind of thrill Dickens points to in this example of Trabb’s boy is also a kind of relief, then, not Schadenfreude . This passage illustrates a nexus between boredom and pleasure. The passage is also valuable in that it raises the question of what it is to find pleasure at someone else’s expense.
Pleasure which comes at the expense of others can help to distinguish Schadenfreude from sadism, revenge, and malice, which share an active intention or desire to harm another and each of which requires personal 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 ourselves have been taken in.”20 This particular brand of malice, well captured 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.
Annette Baier and others who analyze integrity have shown that expected 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 example, 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 precludes 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 understands 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 another 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
Pleasure which comes at the expense of others can help to distinguish Schadenfreude from sadism, revenge, and malice, which share an active intention or desire to harm another and each of which requires personal 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 ourselves have been taken in.”20 This particular brand of malice, well captured 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.
Annette Baier and others who analyze integrity have shown that expected 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 example, 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 precludes 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 understands 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 another 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
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