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Authors: John Portmann

Tags: #Philosophy, #History, #Social Sciences, #Psychology, #Nonfiction

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According to Nietzsche, the pleasures of punishment are vicarious rather than direct, since in modern society it is the state which punishes, using the punitive machinery for its own purposes. Of course, the penal institutions of modern society deny their association with cruelty, but Nietzsche insists that beneath this hypocrisy these passions continue to exist. Particularly in the Second Essay of 
On the Geneaology of Morals,
 Nietzsche advances the claim that “pleasure in cruelty is not really extinct today; only given our greater delicacy, that pleasure has had to undergo a certain sublimation.” Pleasure gets so well disguised that it can ultimately pass muster before “even the tenderest hypocritical conscience.”

An examination of the sentiments typically expressed by reformers, by penal agents, and by different sectors of the public makes clear that the punishment of offenders can evoke a whole range of feelings from sympathy and compassion to anger and indignation. It makes little sense to reduce this diversity to a single sentiment. Nor does it seem useful to debate whether the predominant sentiment is high or low in some moral hierarchy, since a key aspect of emotional life is ambivalence, that is, the coexistence of contradictory impulses and emotions toward the same object. Psychological attitudes often meld high moral sentiment and selfish ulterior motives, so we should not expect that punitive emotions will prove simple or single-minded. David Garland has the last word here.

I want to emphasize that I do not deny the possibility that anyone might, in fact, take pleasure simply in knowing that a transgressor of some sort suffers. My skepticism about the likelihood that pleasure can be restrained in such a way derives from the psychological difficulty of controlling ourselves perfectly. Along with this skepticism goes admiration for the creativity with which people explain their drives and actions to themselves and others. Schopenhauer’s point lends itself to easy comparison with the much maligned principle of double effect in Roman Catholic theology. This famous principle justifies what amounts to an abortion procedure on a Catholic woman whose pregnancy is ectopic or whose uterus has been invaded by cancer according to the following logic: the death of the fetus at the hands of a physician is a foreseen but unintended consequence of the medical procedure through which the uterus is removed. The distinction between what is foreseen and what is intended accounts for the “double effect.” The physician removes the fetus without intending to kill it. The physician resists thinking about the inevitable death of the fetus just as we might resist thinking about our pleasure in knowing that a criminal has been sentenced to spend the rest of his or her life in prison. Roman Catholic physicians can claim that they are not performing an abortion just as persons who delight in the triumph of justice can claim that they do not feel 
Schadenfreude
. Nietzsche would scoff at either defense.

Soft on Sin?

Numerous writers have shared Nietzsche’s conviction that our penal code thinly veils old-fashioned revenge. While sympathizing with this conviction, I have acknowledged the conceptual possibility that we punish wrongdoers not to get back at them, but to deter them from future wrongdoing. Taking pleasure in the suffering of others is no more and no less morally acceptable than endorsing various systems of justice in the West. For at the heart of
Schadenfreude
lies the same question that lies at the heart of our endorsement of penal codes in the West: do we enjoy the suffering of another (as in revenge) or do we enjoy the confidence that this suffering will serve as a deterrent to future wrongdoing?

I have explored some of the disagreement over this question. If it were true that our system of justice amounted to sanitized revenge, then it seems that
Schadenfreude
would too. Then there would be no moral justification for 
Schadenfreude
, for there would be none for our system of justice. Just as some voters accuse politicians of being “soft on crime,” so some moralists might accuse those who tolerate
Schadenfreude
as being “soft on sin (or vice).” It might be thought that talk of self-esteem, social injustice, and even comedy can only 
sanitize Schadenfreude
, as opposed to 
justifying
 it morally. Some moralists will insist that it is impossible ever to excuse feeling good when bad things happen to other people; at most, we can only make ourselves feel better about our pleasure.

I have enlisted Nietzsche’s help in establishing a case for the moral acceptability of
Schadenfreude
. This move is complicated, for I have portrayed non-trivial
Schadenfreude
as a function of justice, and Nietzsche views justice as sanitized revenge. Following Nietzsche, it would be possible only to sanitize
Schadenfreude
and revenge, not to justify them. I have moved beyond sanitization.

SEVEN:
Cheering with the Angels

Does disaster befall a city unless the Lord has done it?

—Amos 3:6

STRANGE AS IT MIGHT FIRST SEEM, defending
Schadenfreude
benefits religious believers. Defending
Schadenfreude
as morally acceptable gives permission to believers to adhere to their moral convictions wholeheartedly. Believers need not deny to themselves or to others that they see the hand of God in human suffering. We may not like the idea that religious believers insist we deserve our suffering, but they may not like our convictions either. Getting along with others in the world requires a certain ability to avoid dwelling on the moral beliefs of the people around us.

Orthodox Jews share with various evangelical Protestant sects (called “postmillennialist”) the belief that the Messiah will only come to earth once we have put our world in order. These Jews believe that the Messiah will come only when all 
Jews
 (as opposed to all 
people
 for most of the postmillennialist Protestants) observe the commandments. These Jews suffer when they encounter other Jews who do not keep the commandments and may naturally yearn to find a way to induce errant Jews to abide by God’s laws. Similarly, some evangelical Protestants seek to help those whom they deem destined for hell in order to speed the return of Jesus. Interpreting suffering as a sign of divine dissatisfaction suggests itself as a ready way to persuade skeptical neighbors.

Defending 
Schadenfreude
, as we have seen, raises a problem. Thinkers such as Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Nietzsche have exhorted us to resist thinking of suffering in terms of cause and effect: much of our suffering, they insist, simply happens. If they are right, as I believe they are, then a believer’s impulse to explain suffering in terms of God’s will amounts to a bad idea, although not an immoral one.

Since the Enlightenment, many non-believers have sharply criticized believers as hypocrites. A prominent moralist, Judith Shklar, has gone so far as to call Christianity in particular a “vast engine of cultural dishonesty and humiliation” (
Ordinary Vices
, p. 39). Regardless of the ethical objections we might raise against Judaism or its offshoot Christianity, we should not simply dismiss religious belief as incoherent. The same leap of faith believers make to reach God underlies their conviction that they can see God’s hand in human suffering.

Religious beliefs of various sorts could survive without the idea that we can see God behind suffering. But believers will no doubt continue to think of suffering in terms of (human) cause and (divine) effect. These terms hold a moral appropriateness of their own.

To think of God as an agent who promptly punishes those who have sinned is to think of at least some suffering as a function of divine justice. This is only one way of looking at God, albeit an entirely understandable one. The moral difficulty with the belief that God causes (sinful) people to suffer is that self-deception about the desert of others remains a permanent possibility and consequently an obstacle to distinguishing
Schadenfreude
from hatred and envy.

A subset of the problem of theodicy, or why a just God allows evil in the world, is the problem of suffering, or why the good God allows the physical pain or mental afflictions of persons. The temptation to view the sufferings of others as a sign of divine disfavor continues to hold many Jews, Christians, and Muslims in its grip. All three Western forms of monotheism include an apocalyptic element that bestows value on current events. Western believers are conditioned to view present conflicts as images or prototypes of the final decisive battle between the forces of good and evil. This means that virtually any instance of extrinsic suffering may accommodate the aims of religious writers or believers, who may interpret strife in such a way as to safeguard and validate a particular belief system.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not the only religions to link suffering and pain to sin—the same tendency has surfaced in Native American and African religions as well. The social difficulty with the belief that God causes (sinful) people to suffer is that we are less likely to concern ourselves with the regulation of suffering here on earth.

On Seeing God in Suffering

The Hebrew Bible, especially in the Psalms, frequently refers to God’s infliction of suffering and its dramatic effect. The appropriateness of such suffering is not questioned: we understand that Israel deserves its suffering for having sinned, just as Israel’s enemies do. Suffering caused by God must surely be appropriate, for God is just. This certainty provides little guidance, however, as long as uncertainty about God’s involvement in any given instance of suffering lingers.

Theodicy concerns innocent suffering, not guilty. Because theodicy must by definition include reference to God, it seeks to reconcile a belief in a good God with the fact of innocent suffering. Note that Buddhism, with no requirement of belief in a god, neither invites nor requires theodicies. Buddhism does not allow for the possibility of innocent suffering, but instead posits that a suffering person is repaying wrongdoing from a previous lifetime.

The presence of evil and innocent suffering in the world stands as the most widely raised objection to belief in God in Western and Eastern philosophy. Such an objection to the reasonableness of belief in God usually assumes one of two forms: according to the
deductive
or
logical
version, the presence of 
any
 evil in the world makes God’s existence unlikely; according to the 
probabilistic
 version, the 
extent
 of evil in the world makes God’s existence unlikely. Religious believers have responded to these objections by rationalizing suffering in various ways: as a trial designed to strengthen the faith of a believer (according to the Talmud suffering can be a process of purification—“afflictions of love” or 
yissurin shel ahn-vah
); as a redemptive opportunity to move closer to God (according to the Talmud all human suffering represents a means for intensifying our attachment to God); and as punishment for sin.

One could well argue that both the Jewish and Christian traditions have 
discouraged
 the temptation to view suffering as punishment for sin. In the Book of Job God ultimately refutes Job’s friends, who blindly uphold the belief in divine retribution. In the New Testament Christ explicitly instructs his disciples not to think of those who perished under the tower of Siloam as especially wicked (Luke 13:4). Moreover, Jews and Christians alike have long emphasized the redemptive value of suffering, even innocent suffering.

The simplistic equation of suffering with sin excludes the possibility of 
innocent suffering
, which is a real problem. Abraham and Job both reproached God for unjust suffering, and God conceded to Job the unsettling possibility of innocent suffering. The Book of Job’s unique effect is to have silenced God himself. Notably, it was over the question of appropriate suffering that God withdrew from direct conversation with human beings for the rest of the Hebrew Bible. As Jack Miles has noted:

God’s last words are those he speaks to Job, the human being who dares to challenge not his physical power but his moral authority. Within the Book of Job itself, God’s climactic and overwhelming reply seems to silence Job. But reading from the end of the Book of Job onward, we see that it is Job who has somehow silenced God. God never speaks again, and he is decreasingly spoken of. In the book of Esther—a book in which, as in the Book of Exodus, his chosen people faces a genocidal enemy—he is never so much as mentioned. In effect, the Jews surmount the threat without his help.1

An extraordinarily vast body of critical literature focuses on the Book of Job; it is a work to which Jewish (though not only Jewish) thinkers return again and again.

The reason why some Jews and Christians view suffering as divinely caused likely derives from a false analogy between the hereafter and the here and now. I will turn to that analogy shortly. For now, I want only to establish the point that the association of suffering with sin survives in popular belief. In American writer David Leavitt’s novella “The Term Paper Artist” a college student, who is a committed Mormon, confesses to the narrator in a private garden at UCLA:

Well, in the church we have this very clear-cut conception of sin. And so I always assumed that if I ever committed a really big sin, like we’re doing now...I don’t know, that there’d be a clap of thunder and God would strike me dead or something. Instead of which we’re sitting here in this courtyard and the sun’s shining. The grass is green.2

In a similar vein, Rabbi Harold Kushner explains that the impetus for his enormously popular work 
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
 came in part from “all those people whose love for God and devotion to Him led them to blame themselves for their suffering and persuade themselves that they deserved it.”3 Here Kushner puts into play the idea that persons can and do persuade themselves to adopt certain beliefs about desert and, consequently, suffering. This capacity to persuade ourselves, whether about our own desert or someone else’s, stands as the central issue underlying questions of the appropriateness of suffering. Thinking of suffering as divine punishment inclines us to feel guilty about our own suffering and righteous about the suffering of others.

BOOK: When Bad Things Happen to Other People
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