The Selfish and The Selfless SPECIAL | JD Vance, Pope Francis, and the 10 Commandments
Summary
This special episode of Philosophy for Our Times delves into the core philosophical tension between selfish and selfless approaches to morality. It presents this conflict through several contemporary and historical lenses, beginning with the political and theological debate between J.D. Vance and Pope Francis over foreign aid, framed as a clash between agent-relative (prioritizing kin and community) and agent-neutral (impartial, utilitarian) moral theories. The episode explores the evolutionary origins of these competing intuitions, stemming from kin selection and reciprocal altruism.
The discussion then shifts to radical critiques of religious morality, featuring Slavoj Žižek’s argument for a ‘Christian atheism’ that dismantles the concept of God from within by portraying the divine as ‘stupid, indifferent, and evil’. This is illustrated through an analysis of the film The Rapture, where the protagonist’s refusal to love a cruel God is presented as the ultimate ethical act.
A central segment examines Friedrich Nietzsche’s nuanced and challenging views on altruism. The episode clarifies that Nietzsche rejected both pure psychological egoism and normative egoism. Instead, he argued that all actions contain some egoistic motive, and that the cultural valuation of selflessness can be a symptom of weakness, a ‘slave morality’ designed to curb the powerful. The episode cautions that his hierarchy, which reserves egoism for the ‘noble’ and imposes selflessness on the ‘weak’, risks ethical subjectivism and tyranny.
The final article re-evaluates the Tenth Commandment’s condemnation of jealousy. Distinguishing jealousy (a three-party emotion involving a rival and a dispenser of favors) from envy, the argument posits that jealousy can be a compound of righteous indignation, envy, and anger. In non-romantic contexts—like sibling rivalries or unfair treatment in workplaces—feeling jealous can be a rational and virtuous assertion of one’s right to fair and deserved treatment, challenging the blanket moral condemnation of the emotion.
Recommendations
Articles
- “J.D. Vance versus the Pope, the myth of moral absolutes” by Stephen D. Hales — This article, read in the episode, uses the political debate over foreign aid to explore the philosophical divide between agent-relative and agent-neutral moral theories and their evolutionary underpinnings.
- “Nietzsche and the Perils of Denying Yourself” by Guy Elgat — This article, discussed in the episode, examines Friedrich Nietzsche’s nuanced critique of altruism and selflessness, arguing he rejected pure egoism but saw the valuation of selflessness as potentially symptomatic of weakness.
- “Why the tenth commandment about jealousy is wrong” by Christian Christianson — This article, featured in the episode, challenges the traditional moral condemnation of jealousy, arguing that in contexts like sibling rivalries or workplace fairness, it can be a virtuous emotion rooted in a demand for deserved treatment.
Books
- Christian Atheism by Slavoj Žižek — Referenced in the episode, Žižek’s book argues for a materialism that dismantles the concept of God from within, proposing that true atheism is to claim God is ‘stupid, indifferent, and evil’ rather than to simply deny existence.
Films
- The Rapture (1991) — A film directed by Michael Tolkin, analyzed by Slavoj Žižek in the episode. The story of a woman who becomes a devout believer, experiences tragedy, and during the actual Rapture refuses to declare love for God, is used to illustrate the ‘authentic ethical act’ of rejecting a deity deemed unworthy.
People
- J.D. Vance — The U.S. Vice President, whose defense of foreign aid cuts based on a ‘Christian’ hierarchy of loves is used as a modern example of agent-relative morality.
- Pope Francis — Cited for his counter-argument to Vance, advocating for a morality based on the parable of the Good Samaritan, representing an agent-neutral, inclusive love.
- Friedrich Nietzsche — The 19th-century philosopher whose critique of altruism, distinction from his mentor Arthur Schopenhauer, and concept of ‘slave morality’ are central to the episode’s discussion.
- Slavoj Žižek — The contemporary philosopher whose radical ‘Christian atheism’ and analysis of the film The Rapture are presented as a method to undermine religious belief from within.
- Arthur Schopenhauer — Nietzsche’s former mentor, who believed moral worth depended on actions motivated by pure compassion, a view Nietzsche specifically argued against.
Topic Timeline
- 00:00:21 — Introduction to the Selfish vs. Selfless Theme — Host Ed introduces the special episode’s theme, outlining the range of topics: J.D. Vance and Pope Francis on foreign aid and Christian morality, the Nietzsche-Schopenhauer rivalry, the Ten Commandments, and Slavoj Žižek on God. He frames the episode as an exploration of morality in relation to Christianity, both modern and ancient.
- 00:01:47 — J.D. Vance vs. Pope Francis: The Myth of Moral Absolutes — The episode begins with an article by Stephen D. Hales, read by Harry. It sets up the debate: Vice President J.D. Vance defends cuts to foreign aid using a ‘Christian’ concept of loving in concentric circles (family, neighbor, country, then world). Pope Francis and others counter with the parable of the Good Samaritan, advocating a fraternity ‘open to all’. The article frames this as a deep philosophical schism between agent-relative and agent-neutral moral theories.
- 00:03:37 — Defining Agent-Neutral vs. Agent-Relative Morality — The article explains the core philosophical distinction. Agent-neutral theories (like utilitarianism) give everyone the same moral aim (e.g., maximize global happiness). Agent-relative theories (like egoism or Kantian deontology) assign duties based on personal interests or specific relationships. The debate between Vance and the Pope is presented as a clash between these two fundamental classes of moral theory.
- 00:06:16 — Evolutionary Origins of Moral Intuitions — The article explores why this moral conflict might be irresolvable, tracing it to distinct evolutionary forces. Agent-relative intuitions (favoring kin) arise from kin selection and Hamilton’s rule. Agent-neutral intuitions (cooperating with non-kin) are explained by game theory and the benefits of reciprocal altruism in repeated interactions, like the symbiotic relationship between the trochilous bird and the crocodile.
- 00:09:51 — Pragmatic Relativism as a Resolution — Faced with incompatible moral theories grounded in different instincts, the article suggests pragmatic relativism as a way forward. Instead of seeking one ‘true’ morality (error theory) or declaring all perspectives equally true, we should evaluate theories based on their practical utility and which provides the best ‘pragmatic fit’ for guiding action in our world, as illustrated by Abraham Lincoln’s call for ‘charity for all’.
- 00:12:54 — Slavoj Žižek: God is Stupid, Indifferent, and Evil — Dan reads an extract from Slavoj Žižek’s book Christian Atheism. Žižek argues that the most effective atheism is not to deny God’s existence, but to destroy the concept from within by portraying God as evil, stupid, and indifferent. This is more radical than simple denial because it undermines the very notion of divinity. He uses the film The Rapture as an example, where the heroine’s refusal to declare love for a cruel God, even as the Rapture happens, is presented as the authentic ethical act.
- 00:19:35 — Nietzsche on the Perils of Selflessness — Ed reads an article by Guy Elgat on Nietzsche’s critique of altruism. It distinguishes psychological egoism (the claim that we are always selfish) from normative egoism (the claim that we ought to be selfish). Nietzsche rejects both. His more subtle view is that no action is purely ‘un-egoistic’; all actions contain some self-interest. He further argues that the cultural praise of selflessness can be a sign of weakness, a way for those without their own life goals to flee from themselves, and part of a ‘slave morality’ that restrains the strong.
- 00:28:22 — Nietzsche’s Hierarchy: Who Has the Right to Egoism? — The article clarifies that Nietzsche is not a normative egoist for everyone. He believed only the ‘healthy, noble soul’ on the ‘ascending course of mankind’ has the natural right to egoism. For the weak, the ‘cult of selflessness’ should be imposed to maintain social order. The article ends by questioning the dangerous subjectivity of this hierarchy, noting it risks creating a world of ‘pompous blowhards’ or ‘murderous tyrants’ who simply select themselves as worthy.
- 00:30:30 — Re-evaluating Jealousy: The Tenth Commandment is Wrong — Avi reads an article by Christian Christianson challenging the blanket condemnation of jealousy in the Tenth Commandment. It distinguishes jealousy (a three-party emotion involving a rival and a favor-giver) from envy (a two-party emotion). The author argues jealousy is often a compound emotion of righteous indignation, envy, and anger. In non-romantic contexts—like sibling rivalries or unfair treatment by a teacher—jealousy can be a rational, virtuous emotion, signaling a justified demand for deserved and fair treatment, and a lack of it may indicate a vice of excessive tolerance.
Episode Info
- Podcast: Philosophy For Our Times
- Author: IAI
- Category: Society & Culture Philosophy
- Published: 2025-06-27T08:00:00Z
- Duration: 00:45:09
References
- URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/91d0f4a0-585b-0134-cf69-7b84bf375f4c/episode/350714ca-491d-44ec-a73b-bd83d3e7cf14
- Episode UUID: 350714ca-491d-44ec-a73b-bd83d3e7cf14
Podcast Info
- Name: Philosophy For Our Times
- Type: episodic
- Site: https://art19.com/shows/philosophy-for-our-times
- UUID: 91d0f4a0-585b-0134-cf69-7b84bf375f4c
Transcript
[00:00:00] In any case, compassion is negative by being at least more painful than pleasant.
[00:00:08] Hello and welcome to Philosophy for Our Times, bringing you the world’s leading thinkers on
[00:00:14] today’s biggest ideas. It’s Ed here, and I’m happy to introduce yet another special episode,
[00:00:21] this time on selfish and selfless philosophies. So in this episode, you can expect a range of
[00:00:28] different subject matters, including J.D. Vance and his arguments, his meetings with the late
[00:00:34] Pope Francis. On top of that, we’ve got the rivalry between Friedrich Nietzsche and his
[00:00:39] former maestro, Arthur Schopenhauer, and how they both saw morality and perhaps slave morality and
[00:00:46] herd mentality through very different lenses. Then on top of that, there is an article about
[00:00:52] the Ten Commandments, which we will get to, and of course, Slavoj Žižek on why God might be
[00:00:58] quote, stupid, indifferent, and evil. Once again, quote, those are his opinions.
[00:01:05] So yeah, you can see that this is a slightly religiously themed episode. We’re going to be
[00:01:10] diving into morality and how that relates to Christianity, both in its modern incarnations,
[00:01:17] post-Vatican II, and its older incarnations with, as we said, the Ten Commandments and Moses and all
[00:01:28] of that. So let’s get into the first article, which will be read out by Harry, but it’s written
[00:01:31] by Stephen D. Hales, who is Professor of Philosophy at Bloomberg University of Pennsylvania.
[00:01:39] J.D. Vance versus the Pope, the myth of moral absolutes.
[00:01:47] The United States is busy slashing foreign aid, and Britain is following suit.
[00:01:52] Last year, US aid amounted to nearly $72 billion, comprising 1.2% of the federal budget.
[00:01:58] About half of this money went to disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, and to combat
[00:02:03] diseases like HIV, AIDS, and influenza. The rest went to economic development, peace,
[00:02:09] and security efforts, education, and things like that. Vice President J.D. Vance defended the cuts
[00:02:16] in a Fox News interview, saying,
[00:02:18] There’s this old-school concept, and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way,
[00:02:23] that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community,
[00:02:27] and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that,
[00:02:32] you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A bunch of other Christians, such as UK
[00:02:37] politician Rory Stewart, immediately jumped up to object that Vance sounded less like a Christian,
[00:02:43] and more like a tribal pagan. Vance retorted that Stewart needed to get straight about the correct
[00:02:49] Ordo Amoris, or Order of Loves. Then Pope Francis weighed in that the true Order of Amoris that must
[00:02:57] be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the
[00:03:02] Good Samaritan, Luke 10, 25, 37. That is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity
[00:03:10] open to all without exception. Now, let’s put theology aside. The United States is a pluralist
[00:03:16] society founded on principles of religious liberty, so any religious appeals justify
[00:03:20] public policy are prima facie inappropriate. However, the debate between Vance on one side
[00:03:26] and Pope Francis and Rory Stewart on the other does in fact represent a deep schism between the
[00:03:31] classes of moral theories, just in theological clothing. Agent-neutral versus agent-relative
[00:03:37] moral theories. Moral theories divide into agent-neutral and agent-relative. An agent-neutral
[00:03:43] moral theory is one according to which everyone has the same duties and moral aims, no matter what
[00:03:48] their personal interests or interpersonal relationships. Agent-relative moral theories
[00:03:53] deny this. Egoism is the poster child.
[00:03:56] For an agent-relative theory, my only moral duty is to advance my own interests, and your
[00:04:01] only moral duty is to advance yours. We have fundamentally different aims. Utilitarianism
[00:04:06] is the classic agent-neutral view. Each of us has the exact same duty, namely to produce
[00:04:11] as much global happiness as we can with each of our actions. We have the same aim. Immanuel
[00:04:17] Kant’s deontology is agent-relative. For Kant, we have specific moral obligations to
[00:04:22] others on the basis of our interpersonal relationships with them. For example, the
[00:04:26] idea of a legal system alone shows that we have a full responsibility to devise the
[00:04:29] effective谁 в этой ситуации подопечные условия, and we have the effect of doing
[00:04:32] everything that we can in order to achieve them. We also have a duty to provide a certain
[00:04:36] answer to the un 所以, в зависимости от натуральной ценности.
[00:04:37] I don’t owe people at large a free lunch, I owe you one. Also, I’ve made commitments
[00:04:42] of care to my family to provide for them, which generates real moral obligations to
[00:04:46] my family in particular. As a result, the ensuing convention of the field of the elements
[00:04:50] of ideology is actually parental-independentילив.
[00:04:51] Vance’s assertion, in the same Fox interview, that agent neutrality is some leftist inversion
[00:04:53] of true morality strangely ignores the resurgence of utilitarianism and that it’s likely that
[00:04:54] the value of the issue has not been understood too early.
[00:04:56] in the guise of effective altruism, or EA.
[00:04:59] EA is popular among libertarians and tech bros
[00:05:03] who are not your stereotypical left-wingers.
[00:05:06] However, Vance is certainly correct
[00:05:07] that most people have a powerful agent-relative intuition.
[00:05:10] As David Hume wrote in A Treatise of Human Nature,
[00:05:13] a man naturally loves his child better than his nephews,
[00:05:16] his nephews better than his cousins,
[00:05:18] his cousins better than strangers,
[00:05:20] where everything else is equal.
[00:05:21] Hence, arise our common measures of duty
[00:05:23] in preferring the one to the other.
[00:05:26] While Hume may be right,
[00:05:28] agent-neutral intuitions are also common.
[00:05:31] John Stuart Mill argued that the appeal of agent neutrality
[00:05:34] is seen in the ethics of Jesus of Nazareth,
[00:05:36] who advocated, love your neighbour as yourself.
[00:05:39] Mill interpreted this advice
[00:05:40] as between his own happiness and that of others.
[00:05:44] Utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial
[00:05:47] as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.
[00:05:50] Later, Henry Sidgwick claimed,
[00:05:53] it is self-evident that the good of any one person
[00:05:56] is no more from the point of view,
[00:05:58] if I may put it like this,
[00:06:00] of the universe than the good of any other.
[00:06:03] Each person is morally obliged to regard the good of anyone else
[00:06:07] as much as his own good.
[00:06:09] For Mill and Sidgwick, you and yours count,
[00:06:12] but they don’t count extra.
[00:06:14] The evolution of moral intuitions.
[00:06:16] How can we resolve this conflict between agent-neutral
[00:06:18] and agent-relative theories?
[00:06:20] There’s a good reason to think in fact we can’t
[00:06:22] and that the dispute is irresolvable.
[00:06:24] We have fundamentally competing institutions,
[00:06:26] instincts to, one, treat everyone equally and impartially,
[00:06:29] and two, treat our family and tribe preferentially.
[00:06:32] These instincts arise from distinct evolutionary forces.
[00:06:36] Kinsellation is behind agent-relative intuitions.
[00:06:39] From a gene’s eye point of view,
[00:06:41] it is likelier to replicate and persist over time
[00:06:44] if the large meat robots that have helped it build
[00:06:47] act in a cooperative and altruistic way to each other.
[00:06:50] The more they do, the more likely the gene will continue
[00:06:53] into the future through reproduction.
[00:06:55] There’s no incentive.
[00:06:55] There’s no incentive from the gene perspective
[00:06:58] for cooperation with unrelated meat robots.
[00:07:00] They aren’t carrying the same gene.
[00:07:02] Underlying this idea of inclusive fitness is Hamilton’s rule.
[00:07:07] We can expect natural selection to favour a trait
[00:07:09] of helping others at some cost to the individual
[00:07:11] if Rb is greater than C,
[00:07:13] where R is the degree of genetic relatedness
[00:07:16] to the individual, B is the benefit to the recipient,
[00:07:18] and C is the cost to the individual.
[00:07:21] The more closely we are related,
[00:07:22] the more we’ll sacrifice for each other.
[00:07:24] Again, from the gene eyes, but not the individual.
[00:07:25] Again, from the gene eyes point of view,
[00:07:26] it doesn’t matter who propagates it,
[00:07:28] just as much as someone does.
[00:07:30] We don’t run around using our DNA sequencing
[00:07:32] to determine our relatives.
[00:07:34] So how is it done?
[00:07:35] Some species use scent or phenotype markers
[00:07:38] to pick out kin from non-kin.
[00:07:40] The innate human kin recognition system seems to be this.
[00:07:43] Kin are those with whom you are familiar from childhood.
[00:07:46] This explains why even unrelated children
[00:07:49] reared together feel no sexual attraction to each other
[00:07:51] when they mature.
[00:07:53] The subconscious incest taboo still makes sense,
[00:07:55] but it still flags the other as an out-of-bounds relative.
[00:07:57] The helping mechanism generated by kin selection
[00:08:00] is something like,
[00:08:01] provide help to those individuals
[00:08:03] with whom you interact frequently.
[00:08:05] Once that instinct is in place,
[00:08:07] the agent relative moral intuitions
[00:08:08] underlying Vance’s position and moral theories,
[00:08:11] like deontology, are not far behind.
[00:08:13] So what’s responsible for the agent neutral intuitions
[00:08:15] that underlie the Pope’s response?
[00:08:18] Kin selection might be driving us
[00:08:19] to help friends and relatives,
[00:08:20] but we often interact with creatures who are neither.
[00:08:22] In these cases, applying game-theoretically,
[00:08:25] to evolutionary design illustrates
[00:08:27] how natural selection would plump for organisms
[00:08:29] that are motivated to risk certain sacrifices
[00:08:31] to aid others, even when there is no guarantee
[00:08:34] of reciprocal help, and even when their interlocutors
[00:08:37] are unfamiliar non-kin.
[00:08:39] In his Histories, Harald has talked about the symbiosis
[00:08:42] between trochilous birds and crocodiles.
[00:08:45] While all other birds and beasts are reasonably afraid
[00:08:47] of being eaten by the crocodile,
[00:08:49] the trochilous bird has made a pact with the predator,
[00:08:52] despite not being kin.
[00:08:53] In exchange,
[00:08:54] by cleaning the leeches out of the crocodile’s mouth,
[00:08:57] the croc gets his teeth cleaned,
[00:08:58] and the trochilous gets a night’s leechy meal.
[00:09:01] Win-win.
[00:09:02] How come the crocodiles don’t defect from this arrangement
[00:09:04] and munch on the dental hygienist at the end of the cleaning?
[00:09:07] This is where the technical literature on strategic approaches
[00:09:10] to the prisoner’s dilemma comes in.
[00:09:12] The short answer is because their interaction is iterated and repeated.
[00:09:16] Ongoing relationships promote cooperative behaviour
[00:09:18] and give rise to reciprocal altruism.
[00:09:21] Frequent interactions from their agreement
[00:09:23] will make both crocodiles and trochilous birds
[00:09:24] worse off, leading to selection pressure
[00:09:26] in favour of cooperation.
[00:09:29] Again, once those instincts for help
[00:09:31] and mutual support are wired in,
[00:09:32] the foundations for ancient neutral moral theories are laid.
[00:09:35] Pragmatic relativism.
[00:09:37] So where do we go from here?
[00:09:39] We have incompatible classes of moral theories,
[00:09:42] prescribing very different duties and obligations,
[00:09:44] and their intuitive appeal is built
[00:09:46] by irreconcilably different evolutionary strategies.
[00:09:49] J L Mackey’s response is moral scepticism.
[00:09:51] Morality is nothing more than auditory information,
[00:09:53] butoded.
[00:09:54] than the story we make up as a result of the evolutionary encoding of certain instincts and
[00:09:59] has nothing to do with truth or reality. He was an error theorist about ethics. There are no moral
[00:10:03] properties in the world or objectively correct moral principles. An alternative approach is
[00:10:08] pragmatic relativism. The relativist idea is that not only are distinct ethical theories
[00:10:14] incommensurable with each other, but these theories are also true relative to the foundational
[00:10:19] intuitions that motivate them. Mackey would hold that both agent neutral and agent relative moral
[00:10:24] theories are mistaken, as both are grounded in erroneous metaphysics. Relativism turns that on
[00:10:30] its head, insisting that in fact both are true, simply true from the different points of view.
[00:10:36] Even if morality is relatively true in the sense just described, and multiple ethical theories are
[00:10:41] equally justifiable by reason, it may be that some theories are nevertheless more pragmatically
[00:10:46] useful in analogy to languages.
[00:10:49] English and Chinese may have the same semantic power, but English is better for typing on a keyboard.
[00:10:54] Mathematics for using Arabic numerals is not necessarily superior to Roman numerals,
[00:10:59] but is much more practical. What would make a moral theory practical?
[00:11:03] Morality exists specifically to be action-guiding. It’s hard to see why we should care about a moral
[00:11:08] theory so obtruse as it gives no guidance. If we have one theory that’s Byzantine, cumbersome,
[00:11:13] or hard to use, let’s toss it in favor of one that is equally plausible, but simpler and more
[00:11:18] elegant.
[00:11:19] Or even more comprehensive. To be clear, simpler does not mean simple-minded. We still need
[00:11:24] sophisticated and careful moral deliberation. Insofar as Vance v. The Pope represents the
[00:11:29] debate between agent-relative moral theories and agent-neutral ones, there is no theoretical
[00:11:34] solution. It’s up to us to decide whether to broaden our conception of kin to encompass all
[00:11:39] human beings, or to narrow it even more to just our tribe, race, or immediate family.
[00:11:45] Likewise, nations must decide to what extent their interests and those of other nations’ interests are
[00:11:49] at stake. As a matter of fact, the two nations stand in, within the prisoner’s dilemma with each
[00:11:52] other, and evaluate their interactions on that basis. Here is the vision that Abraham Lincoln
[00:11:56] stirringly laid out in his second inaugural address.
[00:11:59] With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right of God gives us to
[00:12:05] see the right, let us strive on, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace
[00:12:11] among ourselves and with all nations. That is an admirable goal, whichever theoretical approach we
[00:12:17] choose to get there. Both J.D. and I are on the same page of this. We are on the same page of this.
[00:12:18] We are on the same page of this. We are on the same page of this. We are on the same page of this.
[00:12:18] We are on the same page of this. We are on the same page of this. We are on the same page of this. We are on the same page of this.
[00:12:18] Both J.D. Vance and Pope Francis may benefit from the relativist perspective.
[00:12:23] The true dispute is not over the one true morality,
[00:12:26] but over which moral approach is the best pragmatic fit for our world,
[00:12:30] in the humble recognition that no one has a monopoly on truth.
[00:12:39] Alright, moving swiftly on, we’ve now got an article read out by Dan and written by Slavoj Žižek.
[00:12:46] God is stupid, indifferent, and evil.
[00:12:54] In this extract from Slavoj Žižek’s recent book, Christian Atheism, How to Be a Real Materialist,
[00:13:01] Žižek argues that the true formula of atheism requires destroying the very fiction of the God from within,
[00:13:07] rather than merely denying its existence.
[00:13:10] Žižek argues that the true formula of atheism requires destroying the very fiction of God from within,
[00:13:15] rather.
[00:13:16] What one should advocate is thus, the materialist procedure of the imminent self-undermining of a religious edifice.
[00:13:26] The claim that God is evil or stupid is not only much more unsettling than Peter Singer’s claim that ordinary people are evil,
[00:13:34] it is also much more unsettling than the claim that there is no God, since it destroys from within the very notion of divinity.
[00:13:41] To make this procedure clear, let’s take an example from a different domain.
[00:13:45] The song,
[00:13:45] The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,
[00:13:48] best known version by Joan Baez,
[00:13:50] is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist,
[00:13:55] a poor white southerner, during the last year of the American Civil War.
[00:14:00] It does not glorify slavery, the Confederacy, or Robert E. Lee.
[00:14:04] It rather tells the story of a poor, non-slaveholding southerner who tries to make sense of the loss of his brother and his livelihood.
[00:14:11] As such, as an attempt to render the experience of a poor white man,
[00:14:15] sympathetic to the Southern cause, but dismayed at the horror of his suffering for the interests of the rich slave-owners,
[00:14:22] it is much more effective in dismantling this cause than a direct abolitionist critique,
[00:14:26] in exactly the same way as endorsing a religion, but then demonstrating how its God is evil-slash-stupid,
[00:14:33] is much more effective than a direct atheist critique.
[00:14:36] In The Rapture, 1991, written and directed by Michael Tolkin,
[00:14:40] Mimi Rogers superbly plays Sharon, a young L.A. woman who works during the day,
[00:14:44] as a phone operator, endlessly repeating the same questions in a small chemical, among dozens of others,
[00:14:50] while in the evenings she engages in swinging orgies.
[00:14:53] Bored and dissatisfied at leading such an empty life,
[00:14:56] Sharon becomes a member of a sect, which preaches that the end of times and the rapture are imminent.
[00:15:02] Turning into a passionate believer, she begins to practice a new pious lifestyle,
[00:15:06] gets married to Randy, one of her previous swinging partners, and has a daughter Mary with him.
[00:15:11] Six years later, when Randy, now also a devotee,
[00:15:14] a devoted Christian, is shot to death by a madman,
[00:15:17] this senseless catastrophe makes her and her daughter even more convinced that the rapture is soon approaching.
[00:15:24] Sharon believes God told her to go with Mary to a nearby desert camping place
[00:15:29] and wait there until the two are taken into heaven, where they will be reunited with Randy.
[00:15:33] Foster, a well-meaning, non-believing patrol officer, takes care of them during their long wait when they run out of food.
[00:15:39] Mary gets impatient and proposes to her mother that they simply kill themselves in order to go to heaven,
[00:15:44] and join Randy immediately.
[00:15:46] After a couple of weeks, Sharon also loses patience, decides to do the unspeakable,
[00:15:51] and follows Mary’s advice to stop her suffering.
[00:15:53] However, after shooting Mary, she is unable to take her own life afterwards,
[00:15:58] knowing that suicides are not allowed into heaven.
[00:16:01] She confesses her acts to Foster, who arrests her and takes her to a local jail.
[00:16:05] Till this point, the story moves along realist lines, and one can easily imagine a possible atheist ending.
[00:16:11] Bitter and alone, deprived of her faith,
[00:16:14] Sharon realises the horror of what she had committed and is maybe saved by the good policeman.
[00:16:19] Here, however, events take a totally unexpected turn.
[00:16:22] In the jail cell, rapture happens.
[00:16:25] Literally, in all naivety, including bad special effects.
[00:16:29] First, deep into the night, Mary appears with two angels, and then,
[00:16:33] early in the morning, while Sharon sits in her cell,
[00:16:36] a loud trumpet blast is heard all around and announces a series of supernatural events.
[00:16:41] Prison bars fall down, concrete walls fall,
[00:16:44] people fall apart, etc.
[00:16:45] Escaping from the jail, Sharon and Foster drive out into the desert,
[00:16:49] where signs of rapture multiply,
[00:16:51] from dust storms up to the horsemen of the apocalypse running after and around the car.
[00:16:55] Next, Sharon and Foster are both raptured, transported to a purgatory-like landscape,
[00:17:00] where Mary approaches them from heaven and pleads with Sharon to accept God and declare that she loves God.
[00:17:05] By just doing this, she will be able to join Mary and Randy in heaven.
[00:17:09] Foster, although till now an atheist, quickly seizes the opportunity,
[00:17:14] says that he loves God and is allowed entrance into heaven.
[00:17:17] But Sharon refuses, saying that she cannot declare her love for a God
[00:17:21] who acted so cruelly towards her family for no reason at all.
[00:17:26] When Mary asks her if she knows for how long she’ll be confined to the purgatory,
[00:17:30] condemned to be there alone, Sharon replies, forever.
[00:17:34] Sharon’s resistance to God, her refusal to declare her love for him, is thus an authentic ethical act.
[00:17:41] It would be totally wrong to say that she rejects the false God,
[00:17:43] and that, in an authentically Christian version of the film, the true Christ should appear at the end,
[00:17:49] proclaim her a true believer, precisely because she refused to declare that she loves the false God.
[00:17:55] The true temptation to be resisted is thus to declare our love for a God who doesn’t deserve it, even if he is real.
[00:18:02] For a vulgar materialist, all this cannot appear as an empty mental experiment.
[00:18:07] However, for a true materialist, it is only in this way that we really renounce God.
[00:18:12] By way of renouncing him,
[00:18:13] not only in so far as he doesn’t really exist, but even if he is real.
[00:18:18] In short, the true formula of atheism is not, God does not exist, but, God does not only exist,
[00:18:25] he is also stupid, indifferent, and maybe outright evil.
[00:18:28] If we do not destroy the fiction of God from within,
[00:18:31] it is easy for this fiction to prolong its hold over us in the form of disavowal.
[00:18:36] I know there is no God, but he is nonetheless a noble and uplifting illusion.
[00:18:41] Lacan’s programmatic claim in Seminar X,
[00:18:43] that the atheist, as combatant, as revolutionary,
[00:18:47] is not one who denies God in his function of omnipotence,
[00:18:50] but one who affirms oneself as not serving any God,
[00:18:53] fits perfect this final gesture of the heroine in Rapture.
[00:18:57] Even when she directly confronts the divine dimension, she refuses to serve him.
[00:19:02] If, in the film’s final moment, Sharon were to turn around, she would have seen Christ at her side.
[00:19:13] Okay, next up, I hope you’re not getting tired of my voice because I will be reading out the next article,
[00:19:21] which is written by Guy Elgat, who is lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
[00:19:28] Nietzsche and the Perils of Denying Yourself
[00:19:35] Selflessness as Weakness
[00:19:37] Should one be altruistic and act for the sake of others, even at a cost to oneself?
[00:19:43] Should one be altruistic and act for the sake of others, even at a cost to oneself?
[00:19:43] Should one’s actions be free of any egoistic motivations?
[00:19:48] Is selflessness a virtue one ought to strive for and cultivate?
[00:19:52] To many of us, the answer to such questions is so self-evident
[00:19:56] that even raising them would appear to be either a sign of moral obtuseness
[00:20:00] or an infantile attempt at provocation.
[00:20:02] For Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century immoralist German philosopher, however,
[00:20:07] the answer to these questions was by no means straightforward and unequivocal.
[00:20:11] Rather, he believed that altruism
[00:20:13] and selflessness are neither virtues to be unconditionally pursued and celebrated
[00:20:18] nor obligations grounded in absolute morality.
[00:20:21] Moreover, he thought that other regard
[00:20:25] is something to be practiced, if at all, with care and moderation.
[00:20:29] Indeed, in some cases, selflessness could pose a great danger
[00:20:33] or even be a sign of deep existential malaise.
[00:20:36] To approach Nietzsche’s challenging and unsettling views on this topic,
[00:20:40] it would be helpful to avail ourselves of a well-known distinction
[00:20:42] in philosophy, namely, that between psychological egoism and normative egoism.
[00:20:49] Psychological egoism, roughly put, is a view about human psychology
[00:20:53] which holds that as a matter of fact, human beings are such that all their actions,
[00:20:58] appearances to the contrary notwithstanding,
[00:21:00] are exclusively motivated by egoistic self-concern.
[00:21:04] Those who think differently, according to this view,
[00:21:07] are simply victims of self-deception, fearing to see their true visage in the mirror.
[00:21:12] They play hide-and-seek with themselves, never catching themselves in the act.
[00:21:16] Normative egoism, on the other hand, is not concerned with psychology,
[00:21:20] nor with what is the case, but, as its name suggests, with what ought to be the case.
[00:21:26] It holds that even though we might harbor within ourselves other-regarding feelings and concerns,
[00:21:31] we should struggle against the pull of these forces and become utter egoists,
[00:21:36] since we would be better off if we practiced self-love and asked,
[00:21:40] with respect to any course of action,
[00:21:42] what’s in it for me.
[00:21:44] As Nietzsche writes,
[00:21:45] under strict examination to the whole concept,
[00:21:48] un-egoistic action vanishes into thin air.
[00:21:51] Now, both of these views are quite radical,
[00:21:54] and to that extent, rather implausible.
[00:21:56] But it is important to see that Nietzsche rejects both of them.
[00:22:00] Take the claim of psychological egoism.
[00:22:02] Despite the impression that one might acquire upon reading Nietzsche’s middle-period texts,
[00:22:07] the period of his writing when he was most interested in these questions,
[00:22:11] Nietzsche is actually and very carefully arguing for a far more subtle position.
[00:22:16] Thus, in his 1878 work,
[00:22:18] All Too Human,
[00:22:20] Nietzsche, rather than arguing that we are all egoists through and through,
[00:22:24] sought to show that every action we perform is at least to some extent,
[00:22:28] but not necessarily exclusively,
[00:22:31] egoistically motivated.
[00:22:33] Consequently, for Nietzsche,
[00:22:35] every action is either utterly egoistically motivated,
[00:22:39] or is of mixed motivation,
[00:22:41] partly altruistic and partly egoistic.
[00:22:44] Thus, in section 57 of the aforementioned work,
[00:22:47] Nietzsche discusses the examples of the self-sacrificing soldier,
[00:22:51] or the mother who is willing to give her life for the sake of her child,
[00:22:54] clear cases of apparent selflessness,
[00:22:56] and he asks,
[00:22:58] Are these all un-egoistic states?
[00:23:01] Are these deeds of morality miracles because they are,
[00:23:04] in Arthur Schopenhauer’s words,
[00:23:06] impossible and yet real?
[00:23:08] It is not clear that in all these instances,
[00:23:10] man loves something of himself,
[00:23:12] an idea, a desire, an offspring,
[00:23:14] more than something else of himself,
[00:23:16] that he thus divides his nature
[00:23:18] and sacrifices one part of it to the other.
[00:23:21] The inclination for something
[00:23:25] is present in all the above-mentioned instances.
[00:23:29] To give into it, with all the consequences,
[00:23:32] is, in any event, not un-egoistic.
[00:23:36] Notice Nietzsche’s careful choice of words
[00:23:38] here.
[00:23:39] He’s not arguing that all these kinds of actions
[00:23:41] are purely and thoroughly egoistically motivated,
[00:23:44] as would the psychological egoist.
[00:23:46] Rather, he takes his psychological analysis of such deeds
[00:23:49] to show that they are not un-egoistic,
[00:23:52] that is, they are not free of egoistic motives.
[00:23:56] As Nietzsche writes in a later section,
[00:23:58] under strict examination,
[00:24:00] the whole concept of un-egoistic action
[00:24:03] vanishes into thin air.
[00:24:05] And he immediately adds that,
[00:24:06] No man has ever done anything
[00:24:08] that was done wholly for others
[00:24:10] and with no personal motivation whatsoever.
[00:24:13] Nietzsche’s view in this work, then,
[00:24:15] is not that the un-egoistic impulse in humans
[00:24:17] is non-existent,
[00:24:18] that is, that no germ of altruistic motivation
[00:24:21] is to be found in any action whatsoever.
[00:24:23] Quite the contrary.
[00:24:25] He explicitly claims in another section
[00:24:27] that this impulse is to be found operative
[00:24:29] in almost all human action.
[00:24:32] Being more psychologically realistic
[00:24:34] could enable us to lower
[00:24:35] our expectations from ourselves
[00:24:37] and thus alleviate such a sense of guilt.
[00:24:40] But why would Nietzsche wish to argue
[00:24:42] merely against the view that actions
[00:24:44] motivated purely by other regarding motivations are real?
[00:24:48] One answer is that this is precisely Schopenhauer’s view,
[00:24:51] for Schopenhauer argues in his important
[00:24:53] On the Basis of Morality, in 1839,
[00:24:56] that the moral worth of actions
[00:24:58] depends crucially on their being
[00:25:00] purely altruistically motivated,
[00:25:02] that is, motivated by pure compassion.
[00:25:04] And furthermore,
[00:25:06] believed that such actions are real.
[00:25:08] Given that human all too human
[00:25:10] was Nietzsche’s great declaration of independence
[00:25:12] from his erstwhile mentor,
[00:25:14] we should not find it surprising
[00:25:16] to see Nietzsche arguing specifically
[00:25:18] against Schopenhauer’s view.
[00:25:20] But Nietzsche’s analysis has an interest
[00:25:22] that goes beyond mere philosophical parasite.
[00:25:24] He also could be read as claiming
[00:25:26] that the oh-so-common moral enjoinder
[00:25:28] to be selfless, by giving the appearance
[00:25:30] that such a thing is really possible,
[00:25:32] engenders a psychological
[00:25:34] falsification and thus contributes
[00:25:36] to our lack of self-knowledge.
[00:25:38] Furthermore, as long as we are held captive
[00:25:40] by the view that complete selflessness
[00:25:42] is possible, we might recurrently
[00:25:44] suffer from guilt at our failure
[00:25:46] to ever achieve it.
[00:25:48] Being more psychologically realistic
[00:25:50] could enable us to lower our expectations
[00:25:52] from ourselves and thus alleviate
[00:25:54] such a sense of guilt.
[00:25:56] Nietzsche’s criticism does not end here, however.
[00:25:58] In Nietzsche’s eyes,
[00:26:00] the very valuation of altruism
[00:26:02] is in itself suspicious,
[00:26:04] and a symptom of some kind of weakness
[00:26:06] or sickness.
[00:26:08] To regard selflessness and altruism as good,
[00:26:10] and thus to try as much as one can
[00:26:12] to help one’s neighbour,
[00:26:14] is a sign that one has no why
[00:26:16] or wherefore in one’s life,
[00:26:18] that one has no aim or goal
[00:26:20] of one’s own.
[00:26:22] As Nietzsche puts it,
[00:26:24] the value judgment here is at bottom.
[00:26:26] I am not worth much.
[00:26:28] The person who thus suffers from his own impotence
[00:26:30] and the absence of great affirmative feelings
[00:26:32] and power cannot stand his own company
[00:26:34] and wishes to flee from oneself
[00:26:36] and into the other.
[00:26:38] Altruistic action thus provides the means of escape.
[00:26:40] You flee to your neighbour
[00:26:42] from yourselves and would like to make a virtue
[00:26:44] of that. But I see through your
[00:26:46] selflessness. Thus
[00:26:48] spoke Zarathustra.
[00:26:50] Pushing his suspicions even further,
[00:26:52] Nietzsche speculates that the valuation
[00:26:54] originally placed on altruism,
[00:26:56] insofar as it encourages acting for others
[00:26:58] instead of oneself, is an expression
[00:27:00] of what he calls
[00:27:02] morality. The morality of the many
[00:27:04] and the weak, the function of which
[00:27:06] is to preserve the community and, at the same
[00:27:08] time, to cut the noble
[00:27:10] individual, the person of great
[00:27:12] tasks and goals, down
[00:27:14] to size. It is precisely
[00:27:16] the slave revolt of Christian morality,
[00:27:18] with its high valuation of
[00:27:20] love of one’s neighbour, that ought to
[00:27:22] bring down the powerful and self-confident
[00:27:24] masters and make the latter suffer
[00:27:26] from self-lacerating guilt
[00:27:28] and consequently toe the line.
[00:27:30] On the other hand,
[00:27:32] Nietzsche claims, if one feels one’s
[00:27:34] danger and aberration in disinterested
[00:27:36] and selfless actions,
[00:27:38] one does not belong to the herd.
[00:27:40] Indeed, acting for the sake of the other,
[00:27:42] and in particular, when the desire
[00:27:44] to so help is stirred by the emotion of pity,
[00:27:46] is a seduction,
[00:27:48] a siren call that threatens to lead
[00:27:50] the person of great tasks
[00:27:52] into shipwreck.
[00:27:54] As Nietzsche himself confesses,
[00:27:56] there are a hundred decent and praiseworthy
[00:27:58] ways of losing my own way,
[00:28:00] and they are truly highly moral.
[00:28:02] Indeed, those who now preach
[00:28:04] the morality of pity even take the
[00:28:06] view that precisely this, and only
[00:28:08] this, is moral.
[00:28:10] To lose one’s own way
[00:28:12] in order to come to the assistance of a neighbour.
[00:28:14] Crucially, however,
[00:28:16] all of this should not be misunderstood
[00:28:18] as a defence of, and as an attempt to
[00:28:20] promote, normative egoism.
[00:28:22] This is because Nietzsche,
[00:28:24] in contrast to the normative egoists
[00:28:26] such as Ayn Rand,
[00:28:28] was explicitly not of the view
[00:28:30] that everyone, regardless of who
[00:28:32] they are and what they are, should practice
[00:28:34] self-love. Rather, his view
[00:28:36] was that one first had to possess the right
[00:28:38] to egoism, and this, so he
[00:28:40] thought, depended on whether one represented
[00:28:42] the ascending course of mankind
[00:28:44] or not.
[00:28:46] It is only the healthy, noble soul,
[00:28:48] full of future and promise, to whom
[00:28:50] egoism belongs by nature.
[00:28:52] A person such as this
[00:28:54] possesses the unshakable faith that
[00:28:56] to a being such as himself, other beings
[00:28:58] must be subordinate by nature,
[00:29:00] and have to sacrifice themselves.
[00:29:02] In contrast, the cult of selflessness
[00:29:04] must be practised among,
[00:29:06] indeed imposed upon, those
[00:29:08] who are of little value, lest they
[00:29:10] stand in the way of those who are well
[00:29:12] constituted, or disturb the
[00:29:14] peace of the class to which they properly
[00:29:16] belong, with feelings of envy,
[00:29:18] rivalry, or resentment.
[00:29:20] No, selflessness
[00:29:22] is not for everyone. It is only
[00:29:24] proper to the weak.
[00:29:26] But who is master,
[00:29:28] and who is slave? Who represents
[00:29:30] ascending life, and who is
[00:29:32] sick, and decaying? And who
[00:29:34] is to say what criteria should be adopted
[00:29:36] to determine the answers to such questions?
[00:29:38] And on what grounds?
[00:29:40] Indeed, who
[00:29:42] is to say who is to say?
[00:29:44] Absent of clear and cogent
[00:29:46] answers to such questions, the
[00:29:48] risk is run that in the end it will be
[00:29:50] those who feel reverence for themselves
[00:29:52] who will select themselves
[00:29:54] as worthy of egoism.
[00:29:56] This is not merely a recipe
[00:29:58] for ethical subjectivism,
[00:30:00] but for a world overpopulated
[00:30:02] with pompous blowhards
[00:30:04] at best, or murderous
[00:30:06] tyrants at worst.
[00:30:12] Okay, last
[00:30:14] but not least, we have Avi
[00:30:16] reading out an article on the Ten
[00:30:18] Commandments, written
[00:30:20] by Christian Christianson,
[00:30:22] who is Professor of Character Education
[00:30:24] and Virtue Ethics
[00:30:26] at the University of Birmingham.
[00:30:28] Why the tenth commandment
[00:30:30] about jealousy is wrong.
[00:30:32] The virtuous side to jealousy.
[00:30:38] Since the tenth commandment
[00:30:40] was inscribed in stone over
[00:30:42] 3000 years ago,
[00:30:44] we have assumed jealousy
[00:30:46] is always a vice.
[00:30:48] But according to Christian
[00:30:50] Christianson, this clear cut
[00:30:52] assumption masks the true
[00:30:54] complexities of jealousy.
[00:30:56] We need to first understand
[00:30:58] the nature of jealousy as an emotion
[00:31:00] and its relation to
[00:31:02] other emotions like envy.
[00:31:04] Negative emotions?
[00:31:06] Psychologists typically
[00:31:08] divide emotions into
[00:31:10] positive versus negative.
[00:31:12] Or, more technically framed,
[00:31:14] as positively
[00:31:16] or negatively balanced.
[00:31:18] This is just a fancy way of saying
[00:31:20] that emotions feel either
[00:31:22] pleasant or painful.
[00:31:24] That said, theorists
[00:31:26] dating back to Aristotle
[00:31:28] have pointed out that most,
[00:31:30] if not all emotions,
[00:31:32] have a mixed valence.
[00:31:34] In any case, compassion is
[00:31:36] negative in this sense
[00:31:38] by being at least more
[00:31:40] painful than pleasant.
[00:31:42] And schadenfreude
[00:31:44] is positive by being at
[00:31:46] least more pleasant than painful.
[00:31:48] Yet when I tell
[00:31:50] first year students that compassion
[00:31:52] is considered a negative
[00:31:54] emotion and schadenfreude
[00:31:56] a positive emotion,
[00:31:58] they bulk. Because this
[00:32:00] specification clashes with our
[00:32:02] everyday understanding where
[00:32:04] the words negative and positive
[00:32:06] are used to denote moral evaluation
[00:32:08] rather than
[00:32:10] phenomenological valence.
[00:32:12] Surely, the students will
[00:32:14] correctly observe, compassion
[00:32:16] is positive in the moral sense,
[00:32:18] even a full-blown human virtue,
[00:32:20] whereas schadenfreude
[00:32:22] is negative, a human vice.
[00:32:24] More commonly,
[00:32:26] these two senses of negatively
[00:32:28] versus positively coincide,
[00:32:30] such as in the cases of envy
[00:32:32] and jealousy, which are both
[00:32:34] negatively valenced, i.e.
[00:32:36] feel bad overall, and
[00:32:38] typically considered morally negative,
[00:32:40] i.e. morally unjustifiable.
[00:32:42] Even prototypical
[00:32:44] vices. Common
[00:32:46] institutions may not always be right,
[00:32:48] however, so it is worth
[00:32:50] subjecting this particular moral
[00:32:52] intuition to scrutiny.
[00:32:54] This short article focuses
[00:32:56] on jealousy, but we need to
[00:32:58] say something first about the envy-jealousy
[00:33:00] pair. Envy
[00:33:02] and jealousy as emotions.
[00:33:04] An emotion is a complex
[00:33:06] psychological phenomenon
[00:33:08] that involves perception, cognition,
[00:33:10] thought, feeling,
[00:33:12] and behavioural tendency.
[00:33:14] For example, when Amy
[00:33:16] experiences jealousy towards her
[00:33:18] sibling Betty because Amy
[00:33:20] considers their father Chris
[00:33:22] to favour Betty over Amy,
[00:33:24] Amy sees
[00:33:26] what is happening in a certain
[00:33:28] way, harbours a thought
[00:33:30] about this being wrong,
[00:33:32] feels physically
[00:33:34] and or psychologically bad,
[00:33:36] and is inclined
[00:33:38] to take some action in response,
[00:33:40] i.e. complain
[00:33:42] to another parent or to a friend.
[00:33:44] What distinguishes between
[00:33:46] emotions is predominantly
[00:33:48] the cognitive component.
[00:33:50] Different negatively valenced
[00:33:52] emotions may feel bad
[00:33:54] in pretty much the same way and call for
[00:33:56] similar responses, i.e.
[00:33:58] expressing grievance.
[00:34:00] Envy and jealousy are both
[00:34:02] rivalrous emotions.
[00:34:04] They involve upward social
[00:34:06] comparisons in which one
[00:34:08] construes another person
[00:34:10] as a rival for some
[00:34:12] object, person, advantage, or
[00:34:14] quality. They are also
[00:34:16] self-comparative in the sense of comparing
[00:34:18] one’s situation unfavourably
[00:34:20] with that of a perceived
[00:34:22] rival. Finally,
[00:34:24] envy and jealousy are called
[00:34:26] hostile emotions.
[00:34:28] Hostile must be
[00:34:30] understood in a non-moral sense.
[00:34:32] Anger,
[00:34:34] analogously, is a
[00:34:36] hostile emotion, although it may
[00:34:38] arguably often be
[00:34:40] morally justified.
[00:34:42] Hostile simply means
[00:34:44] that the emotions involve
[00:34:46] an overall negative
[00:34:48] evaluation of the rival’s
[00:34:50] perceived superiority
[00:34:52] vis-à-vis oneself,
[00:34:54] and a desire to reduce
[00:34:56] the gap to the rival.
[00:34:58] This is pretty much where the
[00:35:00] similarity between envy and jealousy
[00:35:02] lies, however. Envy
[00:35:04] thus involves two people
[00:35:06] and some possession of which
[00:35:08] one person envies the other.
[00:35:10] The possession in question can be
[00:35:12] an object, status, etc.
[00:35:14] In contrast,
[00:35:16] jealousy involves three
[00:35:18] people. One person
[00:35:20] is jealous of a rival
[00:35:22] because of a favour he believes his rival
[00:35:24] has received, or is set to
[00:35:26] receive, from a third party.
[00:35:28] The technical term
[00:35:30] of a favour stands for anything from
[00:35:32] material goods to professional opportunities,
[00:35:34] to attention and affection.
[00:35:36] Othello is jealous of
[00:35:38] Cassio because of the affection that
[00:35:40] he believes, incorrectly,
[00:35:42] Desdemona bestowed upon Cassio.
[00:35:44] Sometimes the primary
[00:35:46] focus of the jealousy
[00:35:48] is the rival,
[00:35:50] sometimes the person dolling out
[00:35:52] favours. This is not
[00:35:54] the only structural difference between
[00:35:56] envy and jealousy, however.
[00:35:58] Most emotion theories
[00:36:00] consider jealousy to be
[00:36:02] a compound or composite
[00:36:04] emotion in which a number of
[00:36:06] less complex emotions have coalesced
[00:36:08] into an
[00:36:10] inseparably experienced whole
[00:36:12] rather than just co-occurring.
[00:36:14] It is, however,
[00:36:16] when unpacking the underlying
[00:36:18] emotions in the proposed jealousy
[00:36:20] compound that serious
[00:36:22] dissonance emerges.
[00:36:24] My own conceptual view of jealousy
[00:36:26] is that the relevant
[00:36:28] compound-making emotions are
[00:36:30] envy, righteous indignation,
[00:36:32] and anger.
[00:36:34] In Othello’s jealousy,
[00:36:36] then, he is
[00:36:38] righteously indignant that Cassio,
[00:36:40] rather than himself,
[00:36:42] is getting the perceived relative favouring
[00:36:44] from Desdemona.
[00:36:46] Othello envies Cassio
[00:36:48] and wants to move Desdemona’s
[00:36:50] attention from Cassio back
[00:36:52] to himself. Moreover,
[00:36:54] Othello is angry
[00:36:56] at Desdemona for her
[00:36:58] unfair differential
[00:37:00] treatment. It may be
[00:37:02] odd to see envy listed
[00:37:04] here as one of the emotions underlying
[00:37:06] the jealousy compound, but
[00:37:08] the idea would be that the attention
[00:37:10] the rival is getting
[00:37:12] creates envy.
[00:37:14] This is, however, just
[00:37:16] one conceptualisation among
[00:37:18] many of the punitive
[00:37:20] composite nature
[00:37:22] of jealousy. Other candidates
[00:37:24] for the relevant compound emotions range
[00:37:26] from disappointment, anxiety,
[00:37:28] and frustration to suspicion
[00:37:30] fear, sadness,
[00:37:32] and embarrassment.
[00:37:34] And envy is often seen as completely
[00:37:36] distinct from jealousy,
[00:37:38] rather than as one of its composite
[00:37:40] simple emotions. From
[00:37:42] analysis to evaluation,
[00:37:44] is jealousy then a vice?
[00:37:46] As there is much more disagreement
[00:37:48] about the conceptual contours
[00:37:50] of jealousy than simple
[00:37:52] envy, I have no space
[00:37:54] to delve here into the pros and cons
[00:37:56] of different specifications and will
[00:37:58] just stick to my own view,
[00:38:00] which is shared more or less by various other
[00:38:02] theorists. If jealousy
[00:38:04] is a complex
[00:38:06] compound emotion made
[00:38:08] up of, say, righteous
[00:38:10] indignation, envy, and anger,
[00:38:12] what does that tell us about the question of whether
[00:38:14] jealousy is always negative
[00:38:16] in a moral sense, and even
[00:38:18] a typical human vice, as
[00:38:20] is commonly assumed? For those
[00:38:22] who’d be inclined to swim against
[00:38:24] the stream and defend the moral
[00:38:26] credentials of jealousy, the
[00:38:28] obvious first port of call
[00:38:30] will be Aristotle’s
[00:38:32] famous justification
[00:38:34] of proper anger as
[00:38:36] a golden mean state
[00:38:38] between the
[00:38:40] extremes
[00:38:42] of irascibility
[00:38:44] and
[00:38:46] inerascibility
[00:38:48] deficiency.
[00:38:50] Aristotle
[00:38:52] basically argues that if you
[00:38:54] make yourself all honey,
[00:38:56] the flies will devour you,
[00:38:58] and that you need to retain the capacity
[00:39:00] to experience the negatively
[00:39:02] balanced emotion of anger at the proper
[00:39:04] times in order to retain your integrity
[00:39:06] and self-respect. Could we
[00:39:08] argue something similar for jealousy?
[00:39:10] We stumble upon a serious
[00:39:12] obstacle here, however.
[00:39:14] If jealousy includes righteous
[00:39:16] indignation, i.e.
[00:39:18] pain at someone’s undeserved
[00:39:20] good fortune, then a
[00:39:22] moral justification of
[00:39:24] jealousy seems to be ruled out
[00:39:26] in cases of romantic
[00:39:28] or sexual jealousy,
[00:39:30] because for something to be morally
[00:39:32] justifiable, it first has
[00:39:34] to be rational.
[00:39:36] But it is irrational to consider
[00:39:38] oneself to deserve the love of
[00:39:40] any romantic partner.
[00:39:42] To be sure, one can be filled
[00:39:44] with simple anger and simple
[00:39:46] envy if a spouse breaks her
[00:39:48] marriage vows and takes off with somebody
[00:39:50] else, but if these simple emotions
[00:39:52] are mixed with a sense of righteous
[00:39:54] indignation to form the compound
[00:39:56] emotion of jealousy, then
[00:39:58] that emotion seems strictly
[00:40:00] speaking to be irrational
[00:40:02] and fail to pass muster
[00:40:04] as virtuous.
[00:40:06] To clarify, it is not so much
[00:40:08] the general emotion of
[00:40:10] rational indignation that is
[00:40:12] irrational here, but rather the
[00:40:14] specific instantiation of it
[00:40:16] as indignation
[00:40:18] over someone getting the love
[00:40:20] from my previous romantic
[00:40:22] partner that I deserve more
[00:40:24] because romantic love
[00:40:26] is not something that can be earned
[00:40:28] and deserved in the strict sense.
[00:40:30] Unfortunately, the great
[00:40:32] majority of studies of jealousy
[00:40:34] has, until recently,
[00:40:36] been confined to the romantic
[00:40:38] or sexual forms, as in the above
[00:40:40] example of Othello. And some
[00:40:42] psychologists even seem
[00:40:44] to use jealousy as
[00:40:46] a synonym of sexual jealousy.
[00:40:48] However, the tide is
[00:40:50] turning, and recent years have seen more
[00:40:52] research on sibling and
[00:40:54] workplace-classroom jealousies.
[00:40:56] Those fall neatly within
[00:40:58] the above-suggested structure of jealousy
[00:41:00] except that the
[00:41:02] favour in question is not romantic
[00:41:04] but rather parental attention
[00:41:06] or the desired non-differential treatment
[00:41:08] by a parent slash boss
[00:41:10] slash teacher. And the
[00:41:12] rival is not a competitor for romantic
[00:41:14] love, but rather for other
[00:41:16] forms of attention. Consider, for
[00:41:18] example, the case of a student who
[00:41:20] is jealous of classmates because of
[00:41:22] perceived unfair differential treatment
[00:41:28] To fully understand
[00:41:30] jealousy, not least its
[00:41:32] developmental underpinnings in early
[00:41:34] sibling jealousies,
[00:41:36] it is important to study
[00:41:38] its non-romantic forms also.
[00:41:40] This broader
[00:41:42] understanding of jealousy is crucial
[00:41:44] for tackling the question of whether
[00:41:46] jealousy is always a vice.
[00:41:48] For once, we begin
[00:41:50] to think of sibling or
[00:41:52] workplace slash classroom jealousies,
[00:41:54] we enter a much more
[00:41:56] promising Aristotelian
[00:41:58] territory. A child does
[00:42:00] not deserve as much love and attention
[00:42:02] from parents as any of her siblings.
[00:42:04] A student or an employee
[00:42:06] deserves non-differential
[00:42:08] treatment from her teacher or boss.
[00:42:10] If it is really the case
[00:42:12] that a person has been deprived
[00:42:14] of a favour that she rightly
[00:42:16] deserves, she is entitled
[00:42:18] to feeling bad. More
[00:42:20] specifically, not being inclined
[00:42:22] to suffer and utter a moral
[00:42:24] grievance when a teacher or boss
[00:42:26] undeservedly favours another person
[00:42:28] over you. Not being inclined
[00:42:30] to resent this favouring and to
[00:42:32] remove the favour from the other
[00:42:34] party is the sign
[00:42:36] of a lack of assertiveness and
[00:42:38] self-respect. Such a
[00:42:40] cringing spirit of tolerance
[00:42:42] even, not to mention a
[00:42:44] lack of sensitivity to injustice,
[00:42:46] that it can only be
[00:42:48] deemed a
[00:42:50] vice. Now,
[00:42:52] ordinary readers
[00:42:54] may not find this claim startling,
[00:42:56] but the received wisdom among
[00:42:58] philosophers and psychologists
[00:43:00] is still that all jealousy
[00:43:02] includes a claim to
[00:43:04] exclusivity and ownership
[00:43:06] of another person’s favours,
[00:43:08] and that any such claim
[00:43:10] is antisocial and hence
[00:43:12] morally bad. Hence the view
[00:43:14] I am representing here
[00:43:16] is a heterodox one.
[00:43:18] Notice that nothing
[00:43:20] in my justification entails
[00:43:22] that jealousy is most
[00:43:24] often felt in a virtuous way.
[00:43:26] Indeed, given
[00:43:28] the prevalence of irrational
[00:43:30] sexual jealousy and
[00:43:32] of excessive forms of
[00:43:34] sibling or friendship jealousies
[00:43:36] of which world literature
[00:43:38] is full, there is
[00:43:40] every reason to believe that
[00:43:42] experiences of virtuous
[00:43:44] jealousy are by comparison rare.
[00:43:46] Even when an experience of jealousy
[00:43:48] can count as rational,
[00:43:50] there are often other
[00:43:52] complicating factors in this situation
[00:43:54] which should steer a
[00:43:56] person of harmonious
[00:43:58] overall virtue away from being
[00:44:00] jealous. In any case,
[00:44:02] I must make it abundantly clear
[00:44:04] that any punitive justification
[00:44:06] of jealousy as morally
[00:44:08] valuable can only
[00:44:10] be of appropriate
[00:44:12] jealousy constructively
[00:44:14] expressed.
[00:44:18] Right, well that is all for
[00:44:20] this week. I really hope you enjoyed
[00:44:22] our special episode. We love making
[00:44:24] these. They’re such good fun to edit,
[00:44:26] to compile everything together. It’s a
[00:44:28] real team effort here at the
[00:44:30] IAI, so we’d love to hear your thoughts
[00:44:32] on it, if there’s things that you liked,
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[00:44:40] end of next month, at the end of July.
[00:44:42] And these happen at the end of every
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