and avoid pain. By the same token, we naturally want to give in to and prolong pleasurable emotions. 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 large sum of money, because they have worked very hard for many years in order to be able to win the prize. This does not mean that they will not value the money they happen upon. It also leaves open the possibility that they may take the smaller pleasure (like the larger) as evidence of living wisely, or of being good people.
John Forrester concluded a recent book on the subject of paying for consolation (through psychoanalysis) with this insight: “Perhaps that is what Freud’s discovery that infantile wishes are foreign to the logic of money—and the entire logic of debt, exchange, and reciprocity—amounted to: that our deepest wishes are for something that is as gratuitous, as full of grace, as happiness. The gift of something for nothing.”1 Schadenfreude is itself a gift of something for nothing. If Forrester’s intuition is correct, then the appeal of Schadenfreude runs very deep.
Forrester’s use of the word “grace” here begs mention of an institutionalized understanding of “something for nothing.” In his comprehensive study Catholicism , Richard P. McBrien states that the Catholic tradition has always insisted that the grace of God is given to us, not to make up for something lacking to us as human persons, but as a free gift that elevates us to a new and unmerited level of existence.2 The Fathers of the Church, from Irenaeus on, understood this participation in the life of God through Christ as a true divinization. The Latin Fathers, especially Augustine and Pope Leo the Great (d. 461), adopted this concept and made it the foundation of the whole theology of grace, as is particularly evident in Thomas Aquinas. Even today the notion of grace lies at the deepest center of Catholic theology.
The appeal of grace resembles the allure of lotteries. Only a few people win a lottery, but grace makes a winner of everyone. Barbara Goodwin has observed that opponents express moral disapproval of financial lotteries because the games let (some) people get something for (almost) nothing, simply by buying a ticket. The lottery is an anti-meritocratic device: as well as undermining the work ethic, it overturns our notions of moral worth. Goodwin has argued persuasively that lottery system writ large would thus undermine the moral basis of society.3 People deserve rewards if they work hard, it is often thought.
Augustine emphasized that grace is something personal, intrinsic, and above all a gratuitous gift of God, for if it were not gratuitous, it would no longer be grace. He viewed grace as something quite extraordinary, for little in life is free. Taking up the subject of grace centuries later, Paul Tournier observed, “the notion that everything has to be paid for is very deep-seated and active within us, as universal as it is unshakeable by logical argument.”4 Schadenfreude subverts this notion, just as the Catholic concept of grace does. If we want to give in to pleasurable emotions generally, we may want even more to surrender to a pleasurable emotion which, unlike the thrill of winning an Olympic gold medal, costs nothing.
Why persons should strive for the good if it involves sacrifice remains one of the central problems in moral psychology. Charity and justice concern the welfare of others and what is owed to them. Given that both charity and justice may require the virtuous person to sacrifice self-interest, each may appear a burden to the virtuous person and a benefit to others. Since at least the time of Plato, this perception has generated controversy. Suffice it to say that the traditional answer has been that virtuous behavior is rewarded by happiness. Virtuous
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 large sum of money, because they have worked very hard for many years in order to be able to win the prize. This does not mean that they will not value the money they happen upon. It also leaves open the possibility that they may take the smaller pleasure (like the larger) as evidence of living wisely, or of being good people.
John Forrester concluded a recent book on the subject of paying for consolation (through psychoanalysis) with this insight: “Perhaps that is what Freud’s discovery that infantile wishes are foreign to the logic of money—and the entire logic of debt, exchange, and reciprocity—amounted to: that our deepest wishes are for something that is as gratuitous, as full of grace, as happiness. The gift of something for nothing.”1 Schadenfreude is itself a gift of something for nothing. If Forrester’s intuition is correct, then the appeal of Schadenfreude runs very deep.
Forrester’s use of the word “grace” here begs mention of an institutionalized understanding of “something for nothing.” In his comprehensive study Catholicism , Richard P. McBrien states that the Catholic tradition has always insisted that the grace of God is given to us, not to make up for something lacking to us as human persons, but as a free gift that elevates us to a new and unmerited level of existence.2 The Fathers of the Church, from Irenaeus on, understood this participation in the life of God through Christ as a true divinization. The Latin Fathers, especially Augustine and Pope Leo the Great (d. 461), adopted this concept and made it the foundation of the whole theology of grace, as is particularly evident in Thomas Aquinas. Even today the notion of grace lies at the deepest center of Catholic theology.
The appeal of grace resembles the allure of lotteries. Only a few people win a lottery, but grace makes a winner of everyone. Barbara Goodwin has observed that opponents express moral disapproval of financial lotteries because the games let (some) people get something for (almost) nothing, simply by buying a ticket. The lottery is an anti-meritocratic device: as well as undermining the work ethic, it overturns our notions of moral worth. Goodwin has argued persuasively that lottery system writ large would thus undermine the moral basis of society.3 People deserve rewards if they work hard, it is often thought.
Augustine emphasized that grace is something personal, intrinsic, and above all a gratuitous gift of God, for if it were not gratuitous, it would no longer be grace. He viewed grace as something quite extraordinary, for little in life is free. Taking up the subject of grace centuries later, Paul Tournier observed, “the notion that everything has to be paid for is very deep-seated and active within us, as universal as it is unshakeable by logical argument.”4 Schadenfreude subverts this notion, just as the Catholic concept of grace does. If we want to give in to pleasurable emotions generally, we may want even more to surrender to a pleasurable emotion which, unlike the thrill of winning an Olympic gold medal, costs nothing.
Why persons should strive for the good if it involves sacrifice remains one of the central problems in moral psychology. Charity and justice concern the welfare of others and what is owed to them. Given that both charity and justice may require the virtuous person to sacrifice self-interest, each may appear a burden to the virtuous person and a benefit to others. Since at least the time of Plato, this perception has generated controversy. Suffice it to say that the traditional answer has been that virtuous behavior is rewarded by happiness. Virtuous
Similar Books
