A book newly acquired by the Thammasat University Library should be useful to students interested in philosophy, morality, and sociology.

The Philosophy of Envy is by Associate Professor Sara Protasi, who teaches philosophy at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, the United States of America.

The book may be downloaded for free by TU students from the Cambridge Core Collection database with TU-WiFi.

Even native speakers of the English language sometimes have trouble telling the difference between the words jealousy and envy.

According to one definition, being jealous means being afraid that someone else will take what we have, while envious means wanting something that someone else has.

In practical usage, both jealous and envious are often found in English to mean wanting to own something that someone else already has.

In common usage, when romantic emotions are being referred to, then the usual term is jealous, rather than envious.  So we might say:

Khun Busarakham found that Asnee was a jealous boyfriend.

In standard international English usage, we would not say:

Khun Busarakham found that Asnee was an envious boyfriend

if we mean that Asnee was worried that Khun Busarakham might not be faithful.

The difference between the two words is described in some guides to usage as follows:

Envy means discontented longing for someone else’s advantages. Jealousy means unpleasant suspicion, or apprehension of rivalship.

—Theodore M. Bernstein, The Careful Writer, 1965

There are three different ways in which jealous can be used. The most common is … where the meaning is “fearful of losing attention.” Another broad sense is “possessive” or “protective” … third usage is in the sense of “envious,” as of another person because of his or her belongings, abilities, or achievements.

—William and Mary Morris, Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (2nd ed.), 1985

Jealousy is properly restricted to contexts involving emotional rivalry; envy is used more broadly of resentful contemplation of a more fortunate person.

—Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed.), 2009

However, it is considered acceptable usage to say:

I am jealous of Khun Chalermwan’s good luck.

as another way of saying:

I am envious of Khun Chalermwan’s good luck.

Here are some definitions of envy by authors represented in the TU Library collection:

Envy is pain at the good fortune of others.

• Aristotle, Rhetoric, Bk II, Chapter 10)

Envy is a propensity to view the well-being of others with distress, even though it does not detract from one’s own. [It is] a reluctance to see our own well-being overshadowed by another’s because the standard we use to see how well off we are is not the intrinsic worth of our own well-being but how it compares with that of others. [Envy] aims, at least in terms of one’s wishes, at destroying others’ good fortune.

• Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals 6:459)

Envy is that passion which views with malignant dislike the superiority of those who are really entitled to all the superiority they possess.

• Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Associate Professor Protasi notes that envy

is condemned by all religious traditions, feared in all societies, repressed by most who feel it, and often kept a secret even to oneself. Because envy is a cross-cultural emotion we have good reasons to think that it serves an important function in human psychology, and yet it has a terrible reputation. This book aims to restore the truth about envy and argues that such a reputation is at least partially undeserved. Like other slandered negative emotions, such as contempt and disgust, which have already been rehabilitated in the philosophical and psychological literature, envy has a role to play in our lives and may be essential to our flourishing. Once we can see the bright side of envy, its benefits and its reasons, then we can also better deal with its darkest features, its harms and its deceptions.

My overarching argumentative strategy is to develop an original taxonomy of envy as an emotion. Once we know what envy is and how many kinds there are, we can look more fruitfully into how to deal with envy – how to cope with, inhibit, or encourage it – and into its value or disvalue. Thus the first two chapters are devoted to laying out the ontology – what envy is. The remaining three chapters develop the practical normativity of envy – what is good and bad about envy in three main domains: ethics, love, and politics. The Conclusion tackles the axiology that stems from envy – the value of enviable things, which are more than you might expect. Finally, an Appendix traces the history of envy.

She adds:

Envy is often confused with jealousy, because they are both rivalrous painful emotions, which are directed at a competitor and are concerned with a good. But envy is about the potential or actual lack of the good, while jealousy is about the potential or actual loss of the good. This distinction is not always clear cut, as a section devoted to ambiguous, hybrid, and transitional cases shows. In the end, envy is defined as an aversive response to a perceived inferiority or disadvantage vis-à-vis a similar other, with regard to a good that is relevant to the sense of identity of the envier…

Merriam-Webster’s first definition of “jealous’” is “hostile toward a rival or one believed to enjoy an advantage: ENVIOUS,” while the OED lists “envy” as a synonym of jealousy as its second meaning. Seminal works on envy in sociology and anthropology contain discussions lamenting the presumed synonymy of these English terms (Schoeck 1969, 71–2; Foster 1972, 167–8), which is presented as an unfortunate source of confusion for scholarly investigation. Social psychologists have since cast doubt on the synonymy claim, arguing that “jealousy” encompasses a range of meanings that include those of “envy,” but not vice versa (Silver and Sabini 1978). They have provided evidence that two emotions are phenomenologically experienced as distinct even by English speakers: envy is more likely to be characterized by feelings of inferiority and self-criticism, wishfulness and longing, and a motivation to self-improve; jealousy is more likely to be characterized by feelings of suspiciousness and distrust, rejection and hurt, hostility and anger at others, and fear of loss (Smith et al. 1988).

Furthermore, jealousy is almost always accompanied by some envy for the rival, but the opposite does not hold, and envy is characteristically associated with concern for public disapproval, while jealousy is associated with self-righteousness (Parrott and Smith 1993).

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)