When Bad Things Happen to Other People

✍ Scribed by John Portmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 265
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The real title of this study might have been something much less appealing, like, Schadenfreude: It's Meaning, Experience and Social Ramification. Or, The Anatomy of Schadenfreude. That would have seriously limited its appeal to the average reader perhaps. (So it's just as well that the title parallels the recently very popular, but not so good, book called When Bad Things Happen to Good People.) But, the fact is, that really is the content of the book, and fascinating and delightful it is. The prose style is crystal and orderly, almost like a serious dissertation that went through a top-notch editor (although there is a typo here and there, but who's counting?). This emotion that has no proper English name is dissected not only in a variety of ways, but also at a variety of angles, revealing unexpected relationships between this pecadillo and our construct of justice. For example, Do we take pleasure in the justice that is served when one who "deserves" it gets his/her comeuppance? Or is it that we take pleasure in the knowledge that we were lucky enough to have been spared the same nasty spill of fate? Is Schadenfreude the same thing as malice? What about the element of anticipation? Even if we may not consciously wish any person any harm, but still find it somewhat pleasurable to discover that so-and-so was laid-off or demoted, are we guilty? Why is that some tiny little part of us "dies" when our friends succeed, and do better than we do? How is Schadenfreude different from envy, malice, jealousy, and resentment? Questions such as these and many more are carefully examined by cross-referencing Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and modern scholars of ethics, including John Rawls. Complex theme but Portman is a gentleman scholar, goes out of his way (albeit effortlessly) to make clear all his references.

✦ Table of Contents

Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Introduction The Sometimes Sweet Suffering of Others......Page 12
Key to Abbreviations......Page 23
Much Ado about Nothing?......Page 26
Explaining Schadenfreude......Page 48
The Meaning of Suffering......Page 70
Wicked Feelings......Page 98
Celebrating Suffering......Page 130
Punishment and Its Pleasure......Page 152
Cheering with the Angels......Page 168
Outlaw Emotions......Page 198
Conclusion The Moral Problem of Schadenfreude......Page 220
Notes......Page 230
Works Consulted......Page 244
Index......Page 258