Envy

Why are you so obsessed with me!? In episode 111 of Overthink, Ellie and David untangle envy, jealousy, and admiration, in everything from Sigmund Freud to Regina George. They think through the role of envy in social media and status regulation alongside Sara Protasi's The Philosophy of Envy, and investigate the philosophical lineage of this maligned emotion. Does the barrage of others’ achievements on social media lead to ill-will or competitive self-improvement? Why do we seek to deny our own envies? And how might Freud's questionable theory of 'penis envy' betray the politics of how we assign and deflect desire?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed
Aristotle, Rhetoric
Basil of Caesarea, On Envy
Christine de Pizan, City of Ladies
Justin D'arms, Envy in the Philosophical Tradition
Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable”
Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One
Plato, Philebus
Plutarch, Moralia, “Of Envy and Hatred”
Sara Protasi, The Philosophy of Envy
Max Scheler, Ressentiment
Genesis 4, Exodus 20

Snow White (1937)
Mean Girls (2004)

Overthink epiosdes
60. Influencers
82. Regret
98. Reputation

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• 9:04 (Cont.) Envy

Transcript

David: 0:39

Hello, and welcome to Overthink.

Ellie: 0:42

The podcast where your favorite philosophy professors try and help you feel better about yourselves by showing you that your problems today have been, in some form or another, the topic of philosophical debates for centuries.

David: 0:54

I am David Peña Guzman.

Ellie: 0:56

And I am Ellie Anderson. David, who's your favorite Envy character? Weird phrase, but you know what I mean, right? Who's like a favorite character of yours from literature, movies, etc., Exemplifying Envy?

David: 1:13

From Disney, it would have to be the Queen in Snow White, who is envious of the youthful beauty of her stepdaughter. Although, fun fact, in the original tale, Snow White is the Queen's biological daughter, which makes her envy all that much more unsettling.

Ellie: 1:30

Oh my god, I didn't know that!

David: 1:31

Yeah.

Ellie: 1:32

Oh, that is fascinating. Come to think of it, there's a lot of older women characters in Disney movies who are figures of envy, right? you have not only the Queen from Snow White, but you have Ursula, you have Maleficent in The Sleeping Beauty, and all of these ones that are initially coming to mind for me, they're all envious of beauty. Because of course, that's all that women about.

David: 1:54

That's the only motivation. Women's psychology.

Ellie: 1:57

Beauty and love. Beauty and the love of men. That's it.

David: 2:01

And you also have a lot of envy of popularity, I would say, in recent media. I think about the movie Mean Girls, which is very much a story about envy. I just watched the recent remake, which is a musical. And, I identify with Regina. Deep down.

Ellie: 2:18

Okay, we're going to need you say more other that you just, want to be Renee Rapp.

David: 2:22

Deep down I just want to be the center of attention and control all social relations in my environment.

Ellie: 2:28

It's different to say that you wanna be Regina George and that you identify with Regina George, right? actually, I feel like this distinction gets at something we're going to thematize a lot in the episode, right? We envy those that we want to become like. But in your case, when you say you identify with Regina George, that suggests that you think you already have the qualities that she possesses, and therefore, you wouldn't envy her. Which is very different from most of the characters in the movie, because, most of the characters in the movie envy her.

David: 2:55

I aspirationally identify with her. I want to be her, but I know I am not. So it's more of an envy, I covet what she represents.

Ellie: 3:06

Yeah, because I mean in that movie you have so many moving goal posts of envy. You have the fact that Katie/Caddy does not initially envy Regina, but then when she sees where she stands in the social hierarchy and especially where her two new friends Janet and Damien stand relative to her. to her, that is, they're at the very bottom, and so is Katie, then their response, this envious response, a really classic envious response, is to try and take her down, to try and sabotage her, which is also in a different way what you see in all of the Disney movies that we mentioned, an attempt to sabotage the people that you envy, in some cases by actually taking what they have. Ursula takes the Little Mermaid's voice, and Katie takes Regina and George's top spot in the social hierarchy.

David: 3:55

Yeah, and there's also a reverse envy that happens in Mean Girls because Regina at some point comes to envy Katie for her kind of down to earth personality and the ease with which she moves and is quote unquote authentic in a way that she can never be. It's just that she expresses, I think, that envy through a complete attempt to control her identity and determine the terms on which she can relate to other people. And as I said, that's who I want to become.

Ellie: 4:24

Totally. And, oh my gosh. Nice. just another classic, tongue in cheek moment from David. It's I know you don't really believe that, but, on the actual point though, Envy is seen by many psychologists to be a regulator of social status. And, when we're thinking envy, especially depictions of envy in texts, the very first murder according to the Bible was because of envy. And this is a story of Cain and Abel, where Cain is the older brother, the oldest son of Adam and Eve, who murders his younger brother Abel because he is envious of the favor that Abel has received from God. And envy appears not only here in the Bible, but I would say it's also related to the 10th of the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not covet. And in researching this episode, I did bust out the Bible I've had since childhood. So here is the whole verse because I think it's interesting. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

David: 5:34

Oh wow, I did not know the full extent of the commandment, so it's very clearly a prohibition on wishing you had what somebody else possesses.

Ellie: 5:44

Specifically your neighbor.

David: 5:46

Neighbors only, everybody else is excluded from the 10th commandment. But yeah, it's clearly about possession and unfortunately, wives and servants were considered possessions in antiquity, much like houses and oxen.

Ellie: 6:00

Exactly, yeah. And envy, of course, so we see it here in the Ten Commandments, we see it in Cain and Abel, and it has to do in the Ten Commandments with the possessions, including, unfortunately, the wives, but it's also in Christianity one of the so called seven deadly sins. And this is all to say that in Christianity, envy is definitely a bad thing. And we'll see today that this is the case in a lot of philosophical traditions. Though not all of them.

David: 6:32

Today, we are talking about envy.

Ellie: 6:35

Why has envy been seen as a mental poison and a sin?

David: 6:39

should we engage with our feelings of envy when comparing ourselves to other people?

Ellie: 6:44

And could there be something positive about the experience of envy?

David: 6:55

It's not only Christianity that vilifies envy. Treating envy as a vice to be avoided is common in most world religions. It's also found in Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism. And it's also there in many philosophies throughout history. Envy is very frequently seen as one of those things that we should just really, avoid altogether.

Ellie: 7:23

Absolutely. And there's a recent and very influential book by Sara Protasi called The Philosophy of Envy. And we'll be talking not only about Pertozzi's arguments in this book, but also we're going to be using in this part of the discussion on what is envy? historical approaches to envy in philosophy, a lot of research that we got from that book too. So thank you to Pertazzi for writing this book and we'll be, yeah, using a lot of research from it in our episode today. For starters, I just want to say though that Protasi writes of envy that it is condemned by all religious traditions, feared in all societies, repressed by most who feel it, and often kept a secret even to oneself. So that we hate envy. So much so that we don't even admit when we're feeling envious to ourselves.

David: 8:13

Yeah, oof, so the question is, what is envy? And why is it so maligned?

Ellie: 8:57

Yeah, and a good place to start with this is Protasi's description. on her view, envy is a response to a perceived inferiority. And this means that envy is the result of an upward social comparison. That is, comparing ourselves to others and feeling inferior to them. The old witch in Snow White sees Snow White's beauty and her kindness, her beauty, her attractiveness to men, and she ends up feeling envy as a result.

David: 9:26

mean, who isn't jealous of Snow White and her attractiveness to the men? but I would say So I feel envy, and one of the things that I am Envious of often and that would bring me close here to the evil queen is sometimes I'm envious of people who have very large groups of friends, like where there's like a whole clique or a cohort of friends and they all hang out together. And the group is like an autonomous unit that moves on its own independently of the individuals. I really, wish that I had that, and I don't. So yeah, here I am with my small group of friends struggling to fill a six person dinner reservation, and then all these other people that I see posting pictures on Instagram with dozens and dozens of people hanging out together and having their best lives. They're my Snow Whites.

Ellie: 10:21

I was just talking to a friend last night about how in DC and new York and so many other cities, people just have, the friend group. And in LA, it's so fragmented here, you just have all your weird, isolated friends. So I can get that. I can get behind that, David. I feel that way too. I have a lot of friends, luckily, thank you guys for being my friends, but yeah, there's not a lot. a group. And honestly, though, I have to say, I'm relieved that you admitted to being envious because as we noted, a lot of people, a lot of people don't admit to being envious. There's some research on this actually. And Protasi says, okay, even if some people admit to being envious, the point still stands that we don't like to admit envy on the whole. But I really thought you were just going to pull a David and be like, I don't know. I just don't feel envy. That would be such a you move.

David: 11:13

No, But actually denying that I feel envy could be seen as a classic David move to make. Although when I said that I don't experience regret in our regret episode, I presented it explicitly as a flaw. not as something to brag about.

Ellie: 11:32

There is no way you can say that you don't experience regret without that seeming like at least a humble brag, but I digress.

David: 11:41

Either way, my psychology aside, as you noted in the quote from Protasi, a lot of people do deny being envious and feeling envy, and they deny it to themselves, not just to other people. And there are a few reasons for this. For one, Feeling envious is not something that we like to admit to ourselves because it doesn't paint us in a particularly flattering light, right? Sometimes when we're envious of somebody, we choose to say something else, right? Oh, we don't get along. I don't really like them. We don't vibe together.

Ellie: 12:14

They're so annoying.

David: 12:15

Yeah, it's a displacement for sure.

Ellie: 12:17

The Anne Hathaway phenomenon, potentially.

David: 12:20

Yeah. for another, we often conflate envy and jealousy in our everyday parlance. we might end up saying that we're jealous of somebody when what we actually mean is that we envy something that they possess.

Ellie: 12:37

Yes, the classic way to distinguish envy from jealousy, as our listeners might know, is that jealousy involves fear of losing something or someone that you have, while envy involves wishing you had something you don't have. For instance, you might be jealous if you feel like your best friend is gradually replacing you with a new best friend, whereas you're envious if that new candidate for best friend, say, is smarter than you or has an extremely cool job or travels the world.

David: 13:08

Yeah, so Ellie, if you make a new friend and, I feel like I'm losing you and I think they're smarter than me. I'm going to be both envious and jealous at the same time. but another way of capturing the difference between jealousy and envy is to say that jealousy typically involves three parties. It's a tripartite relationship. In this case, it would be you, your bestie, and the new candidate for friendship. Whereas envy normally is a two part relation. That also includes a third term, which is a thing or a trait. So for example, if I am envious of you for your intelligence, Ellie, there are not three parties. It's just me and you, plus the thing in question that I covet, the intelligence.

Ellie: 13:55

Yeah. So when we're thinking about jealousy as a three part relation, and envy as a two part relation, one thing I think about a lot with respect to jealousy versus envy is how much more envy relates to our identity, our sense of self, and especially who we want to become. And I think for me this means that envy is a lot more interesting than jealousy because I think envy pertains to seeing others not just as having something that we want but don't have, but actually being who we want to be but are not. And, we'll return later to the question of whether this can ever be a good thing. But for now, let's see why it has been seen as not a good thing by many philosophers. Envy, yeah, it's embarrassing to admit because it means that we're, like, focused on this other person whom we want to be like, but also, philosophers have said that there are really nefarious effects to envy, such that envy is a deadly sin.

David: 14:52

I mean, envy is unpleasant, right? It's a painful emotion. And Christine de Pizan, the medieval philosopher who wrote the book The City of Ladies that we talked about and had so much fun with during our episode on cities,

Ellie: 15:07

Oh, fun times.

David: 15:09

She focuses on that unpleasant quality and says that Envy is the only unpleasant sin. Like, all the other sins are a riot. They're fun, they're pleasurable, you want to do them in the moment. But envy is just unpleasant the whole way through. And of course, that is not enough to make envy morally wrong, right? Unpleasantness does not equal immorality. But a number of people have argued that it is in fact morally wrong. Plato, for instance, says that envy is a vice insofar as it gets in the way of us pursuing the good. he makes also an observation that becomes a recurrent theme in the history of philosophy when thinking about envy, and that is that envy is harmful above all to the person who feels it. So when I envy somebody, I'm hurting myself more than I am hurting them. And so in envy, we engage in a sort of self flagellation of feeling I'm not good enough because I don't have this thing. And that's a really terrible harm to perpetrate against ourselves. And we find a similar claim in the writings of the 4th century theologian, St. Basil of Caesarea, who says that envy is like an arrow that ricochets and hits the person who threw it.

Ellie: 16:37

While we're talking about these condemnations of envy, the 20th century phenomenologist Max Scheler has an interesting account of this. Scheler says that we usually think about envy as the combination of seeing another person with a good we covet and our own feeling of impotence at not having that good. But Scheler says that combination, seeing them with something we want, our own impotence at not having it, isn't in and of itself envy, but rather that combination only becomes envy if we start to hate the person who owns the goods we covet, because we see them as the cause of our not having that thing. This is like fascinating to me. In Scheler's sense, then. Envy is based in an error. I blame the person who has the job I envy for being the reason I don't have that job. The Wicked Witch blames Snow White for being the reason that she herself is not beautiful. But actually, the witch's ugliness and my not having the job has nothing to do with Snow White or the person who actually has the job. And so we hurt ourselves in misunderstanding why we don't have the goods we think we should have. And we also, Scheler thinks, have less motivation for actually trying to seek out what we want because we feel powerless in the face of not having it.

David: 17:52

This is really interesting because the idea that envy involves a misattribution of the cause of our unhappiness to somebody who has what we want is not how we typically think of envy, but I think it's spot on. And it reminds me a lot of Plutarch, who also thinks of envy as an unfitting response to a situation. Plutarch says that we don't envy those who have wronged us, or are wicked in some way. Typically, we focus on envying those who are fortunate, especially relative to us. We envy those who have something we don't have. But it's very weird to hate somebody who is fortunate just because they are fortunate. Because, as he puts it, no one is unjust in being fortunate. people don't choose to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth, so it's wrong to Hate them for having something that we don't have. For instance, let's say that you envy a friend who just bought a gorgeous house with money that they got from their parents. Hating them for having this house is just a wrong response, because they didn't do anything wrong. in the act of having the house. They might have the money to buy the house for reasons that are unjust given our history, like the unfair distribution of wealth across generations, but they didn't do anything wrong in having the house.

Ellie: 19:24

Yeah, and this idea that it's just the wrong response to somebody's good fortune might suggest why envy can be not only harmful for the envier, but also sometimes for the envied. And this takes us back to Protasi, because she says that envy is a response to a perceived inferiority, as we mentioned before, and she says that there are two ways that we can overcome this inferiority. Either we can bring ourselves up to their level, or we can pull them down to our level. And trying to pull the envied down to our level can involve harming them, right? It can involve sabotaging them, like in Mean Girls. Not that I feel like that much sympathy for Regina George, but actually, no! Girl got hit by a bus. Maybe we do feel really bad for her. And in fact, that's the end of the movie, is that people have sympathy for Regina George because she's already been pulled down. So the social status regulation function of envy has been achieved.

David: 20:21

Yeah, and in those cases, sometimes we feel this desire to take revenge on the person that we hate and steal the object that we covet, like maybe I want to steal that person's house.

Ellie: 20:33

Or you could pull a salt burn and over the course of years, slowly murder the entire family so that you can take over the gorgeous house.

David: 21:00

We've seen that envy is almost universally vilified in the philosophical tradition. But Protasi is actually a defender of the positive potential of envy. She believes that there is a form of envy out there that, rather than leading us to hate other people, drives us to reflect upon ourselves, to reflect upon our priorities and our desires, and then to come up with a plan of action to make those desires a reality. This type of envy is positive because it is morally clarifying and because it can prompt us to act. She calls it emulative envy. And my favorite example of this kind of envy that she talks about is the example of athletes. I, for example, as a tennis player, can envy a highly successful athlete like Djokovic. And rather than let that envy consume me, I can use it to motivate myself to train and to achieve my goals and hopefully become a little bit more like Djokovic.

Ellie: 22:07

I support you in that goal even though I don't know who that is. Sorry, that is on me. I'm not proud of that. But Protasi considers Aristotle a possible precursor for a more positive view of envy. To some extent, Aristotle is in line with the anti envy tradition that we've been discussing, including following on the heels of Plato. Aristotle says that envy is negative in the sense that it involves feeling pleasure at seeing the one we envy encounter misfortune and also that we try to prevent those we envy from having good things. And this negative account of envy tracks Aristotle's use of the standard Greek word for envy, pthonos. But Aristotle also has a more positive account of another concept, zelos, which is emulation, or emulative envy. When we see someone who has something we really want, we're bothered that we don't have that thing, and this might lead us to strive to get that thing for ourselves.

David: 23:07

Yeah, and we know that Greek terms are infamously difficult to translate into English, and Protasi concedes that some Aristotle scholars would raise their hand and say, look, xylos is technically not a form of envy, it's something else. But others think that it can be considered as a kind of envy, which would mean that envy isn't always bad. There are different kinds and some might actually be positive.

Ellie: 23:36

And I really like this theory, because it leads to a discussion of whether envy can make us do better in our lives. And perhaps unsurprisingly, I don't know, I'm trying to think if I've articulated this in different episodes, maybe Reputation or Influencers episode, I feel like envy can help us improve our lives. I think emulative envy can very much lead us to strive to do and be better.

David: 24:01

Ugh, no, I think envy is bad through and through. Think about all that research on how social media leads to depression, anxiety, and in general feeling really bad about ourselves. I think that a lot of this is because of that upward social comparison that is a fundamental ingredient of envy. We feel bad about ourselves because we see other people's highlight reels, we see their very large group of friends, we see all their achievements,

Ellie: 24:35

We see how they've been posting with their new BFF more than with us.

David: 24:38

yeah, with their new, smarter podcast co host that is replacing you, and so those things make us feel terrible. Now, I don't see social media comparison as having that emulative, positive potential. In fact, Protasi herself says that struggling to rejoice in the good fortune of our friends is actually amplified by social media.

Ellie: 25:05

Okay, I'm with you for sure on the fact that most of our social comparison on social media is bad, and it can very much scramble our brains. I am totally guilty of making really ill advised purchases that some influencer on Instagram is wearing, and I'm like, oh my god, she looks so cool, and then I buy that thing, and it's just It's like, why did I do that? My brain was scrambled. thank you, capitalism. Thank you, social media. But I do think that envying others can show us what we value and it can also give us a model to emulate. I think we just have to be really careful not to place the negative aspects of our envy on the other person. We know that envy is an unpleasant emotion to feel, right? And so if we feel that when we see, say, somebody who has a kind of life that we want to have. If we feel that, but we recognize that they are not the cause of it, right? We're not doing that like Scheler move, then it can catalyze us to become better ourselves. So let's be careful not to say hate someone for wanting what we have or hate ourselves for not having what they have. But sitting in that feeling of envy can lead to the generation of energy for accomplishing our own goals.

David: 26:22

Okay, so I have to tell you that I will be disagreeing with this from here on out. but before I say a little bit more about why I disagree, let's say something about why Protasi agrees with you. on this. She thinks that emulative envy is positive, it is useful, it is even virtuous, and it's a kind of envy that doesn't involve trying to take down the person that you envy. This is because emulative envy focuses on the good that you want to obtain, and it considers this good as something that is within your reach, right? If you take the right steps and if you put the right effort, you can get the coveted object. Let's say that I am really envious of my buddy with whom I play tennis on Friday mornings because he's better than me. Envy can lead me to up my game and to try to emulate that friend. And another argument that we might make, here I'm going beyond Protasi's account, about the existence of this positive strand of envy has to do with language. Now, in English, we just have the one word for envy. So everything gets bunched under the same category. But there are other languages where there are different terms, there are literally different words, for capturing what appear to be a positive form of envy and a negative form of envy. This is true of Dutch, this is true of Thai, and it is also true of Polish. For instance, there is this very famous survey that is cited a lot in the literature on envy that was conducted by researchers in the Netherlands that concluded that the average Dutch person has no problem differentiating between the two Dutch concepts, between the positive and the negative form of envy. And so the existence of these terms would be yet another reason to believe that there is a positive and a negative. It's just that in English, we miss the difference because of the limits of our language.

Ellie: 28:33

Yeah, and so let's be a little bit more specific about the character of emulative envy and why it might track this positive kind of envy. Protasi says that envy tracks two main variables, the obtainability of the good and the focus of concern. So the first, the obtainability of the good, has to do with how likely is it that I can actually get this for myself. And the focus of concern has to do with whether you're focusing on the envied good or on the envied rival. So you might think about this in terms of tennis, where when you're comparing yourself to your friend who's a slightly better player, you're asking yourself, is this actually a level of proficiency that I can attain? And then the second, this focus of concern, It has to do with whether you're focusing on your friend's proficiency at tennis or whether you're focusing on him, as a person, right? As rival. I think of social media, so I'm going to venture to guess this might be a little bit more relatable for some of our listeners because I'm thinking especially about influencers, which I mentioned briefly before. It's very easy when you're scrolling social media and you follow some of these influencers to focus on the envied good, oh my god, that purse, or wow, her skin is so clear. And Protasi thinks that when we focus on the envied good, then we're motivated to level the game. What do I want to do? I want to get that purse for myself, or I want to make my skin clearer than it is. But when you're focused on the envied rival, then you're motivated to level down, that is, bring them down to your level. And I think social media engages both of these foci of concern, but it really emphasizes the first one in a more direct fashion. The influencer economy is maybe almost entirely driven by focus on the envied good in which envied goods are considered to be obtainable, right? I want that purse. I want clear skin. And so I can buy my way there. Or at least I think I can. I had this recently with Hailey Bieber's skincare line, Rhode, where I was like, Oh my God, Hailey Bieber has such clear skin. And wow, those are some cool lip glosses. And then I bought, every color of lip gloss. Yes, I am a mid 30s professor, not a 20 year old, girly, but I did buy all of the Hailey Bieber Rhode lip tints. Are they called lip tints? I don't remember what they're called. And then I bought like some of the skincare products. And I was joking with a friend. I was like, yeah, I bought all these lip glosses and I still don't look like Hailey Bieber. And my friend was like, Not even Hailey Bieber looks like Hailey Bieber. I didn't quite know what she meant and so then I did a little bit of research and I saw how much plastic surgery Hailey Bieber has gotten and then I was like, oh okay, I will literally never look like her. I thought looking Hailey Bieber was an obtainable good by buying these lip glosses and her skincare but it turns out it is not an obtainable good.

David: 31:39

I actually disagree with you that social media focuses on the good. I think it actually focuses on the rival or the person. In many of these cases, what you're being sold is the image of Hailey Bieber, which is unreal, idealized, and a projection, which is why I do think of social media as largely perpetuating the negative kind of envy, which is the only kind of envy that I believe exists. But even if we were to shift the focus from the rival to the object and say that, no, really social media is trying to draw our attention to the object rather than to the person or the personality who's trying to sell it to us, or who possesses it, I think it makes a difference whether that object is actually attainable for us. And the reason that I say this has to do with a distinction that Protasi makes in her book between, the kind of emulative envy that we've been talking about that makes you want to emulate others, and what she calls inert envy. Now, inert envy happens when we covet something that somebody else has, but unfortunately, it is not in our power to get the thing, maybe for reasons that are completely outside of our control. And as a result, we can't ever get it, and so we enter into a state of depression and self loathing, from which it's really difficult to get out. And I know we're going to talk about this more in the bonus segment for this episode about this notion of inner envy, but I think that's really important that your feelings will be negative, even when you focus on the object, if you can't have it. Either way.

Ellie: 33:28

Yeah, even though I stand by my position that the Influencer economy is driven by a focus on the good rather than on the envied rival. I actually just really don't think you would have the influencer economy if it was mainly focused on the envied rival. so I respect your disagreement, but I definitely stand by my position. I don't think though that means that there's no focus on the envied rival, right? I said that the primary focus in the influencer economy, or maybe just on social media in general is the envied good, but I do think the envied rival is like very much still present. And this idea of, okay, when the good is not obtainable, we might find ourselves getting into this inert envy that involves self loathing might constitute an explanation for why people are so unhappy with social media, right? And why social media catalyzes a frenzy of consumerism of trying to obtain goods, but this frenzy of consumerism never actually satisfies us because we find that even when we attain the good, we're still not the envied rival. And so this then leads to further envy and self loathing.

David: 34:34

So the desire is never fulfilled, and I think that is a consequence of the of envy inevitably. And so this is where I ultimately disagree with you and with Protasi about the reality of this so called positive form of envy. For me, what she talks about as positive envy is just the fact that not envy at all. It's something else altogether for which we already have a word in the English language, right? It's adoration or admiration of somebody else and their lifestyle and their possessions. And if we go back to that debate about language that I mentioned a little bit ago, how people say, Oh, look in Thai and in Polish and in Dutch, there are different words for these different kinds of envy, I think we can turn that argument on its head and actually use it to lead to the conclusion that there is only negative envy. Because the very fact that these other languages have two completely different terms for the emotions in question suggests that they don't see it as the same thing. It's not as if in Dutch they're saying good envy or bad envy, they're saying one thing and another. And so what is sometimes translated into English as positive envy, that's just the result of our choice of translation. We could very easily translate the Dutch term for quote unquote positive envy as admiration, because on my view, good envy is just that. It's admiration. Why complicate things by combining a positive term like emulative with a negative term like envy?

Ellie: 36:18

So this is something that Protasi has thoughts about. She has, responses to precisely this point that emulative envy should actually just be called admiration. So for one, in her book, she does address the fact that numerous languages, including Italian and Spanish, don't have two fully different words for negative and positive envy, But moreover, she has philosophical reasons why she doesn't think that envy and admiration are the same thing, even if we're just limiting envy to emulative envy. For one, envy is painful, whereas admiration is not. But for another, there's a different kind of focus of self and competitiveness in envy that we don't get in admiration. So admiration is focused on the other, whereas envy is focused on both self and other. Envy is comparative, whereas admiration is affiliative. And she also thinks that admiration, and she has, I think, at least one study to back this up, that admiration motivates long term improvement, whereas envy motivates short term improvement. I want to buy that lip gloss, skincare product, purse. Whereas if I admire somebody, oh my gosh, I admire Naomi Klein, then I want to write something that's even, a shadow of something as good as Naomi Klein has written. That's not something I can do overnight. That's something that's going to take a long time.

David: 37:45

Yeah, but in that case, most of the examples that we have used for positive envy, like my envy of Djokovic, the tennis player, wouldn't be envy because it's very long term, so that would be closer to admiration.

Ellie: 37:58

Only, no, only if it, leads you to improve, right? It could be that your, envy of Djokovic is envy. It's just like that kind of envy that's not going to lead to short term or long term improvement. And in the case of your tennis friend, that does seem like the envy that would lead to short term improvement if you feel like attaining his level of proficiency is within your grasp.

David: 38:18

Okay, so the reason that I still want to maintain this claim that there is no such thing as positive envy comes from another philosopher of envy by the name of Justin D'Arms, who argues that, yeah, in fact, one of the difficulties with thinking about envy is that it's really close to things like admiration, desire, emulation, even. And the lines between these concepts get really murky. But he argues that envy really should be reserved for the negative emotion because it is rooted in that sense of inferiority, resentment, and spite. So let's think about the various ways in which we could define this. When I want something, that's not envy, that's just desire. When I want something and suffer because I don't have it, highlighting that negative, unpleasant quality that you just alluded to Ellie, that's still not envy, that's just longing. I long for things that I don't have and I suffer as a result. Envy, for D'Arms, really is when I want something, I suffer because I don't have it, and I am pissed that other people have it and I would prefer, all things considered, that they didn't have it, even if that didn't mean that I would then suddenly have it. So it really is not a benign feeling and any time you give it a positive twist, you actually turn it into something for which we already have better terms.

Ellie: 39:52

Even though I agree with Protasi on this idea of emulative envy having positive potential and I agree that it is different than admiration, and when I say I agree like I read her distinction between admiration and envy and I was convinced, but there is also a really interesting articulation from Scheler who thinks envy is all bad, but that there's one really terrible form of envy that should be avoided in particular. So I think, David, even if you and I disagree on whether there can be positive forms of envy. We do agree that there are some bad forms of envy, and I think we'll probably agree that this one is particularly bad, which is existential envy. Existential envy is the idea that I can't forgive you for what you are and for the fact that I am not you. So this kind of envy, I know, no, I know, right? It takes us to the very roots of our being, really, and it makes us so deeply resentful of not being the person we want to be. It's really more about our identity than about possessing or lacking goods. And luckily, Scheler says, this is a relatively rare form of envy. But I want to conclude this discussion about comparison on social media by asking you, is that the case in the present day? Because I worry a little bit, especially based on what we've said, that social media comparison might make existential envy more common than it was when Scheler was writing a hundred years ago.

David: 41:15

given what you already know about my views about social media, you might not be surprised to think that, yeah, I do think social media leads us to hate, those who have what we don't have, and more importantly, now in connection to this Schelerian concept of existential envy, makes us hate the image of ourselves that we see reflected back to us and therefore makes us hate the very root of our being. No Overthink episode on envy would be complete without covering what is arguably the single most famous envy concept in the history of ideas, which is Sigmund Freud's concept of penis envy. For the father of psychoanalysis, this controversial concept refers to a stage in women's psychosexual development, where young girls become aware for the first time of not having a penis. And as a result, develop an intense envy of their father that dominates their psychology well into adulthood.

Ellie: 42:50

I've gotta be honest David. I dislike Freud and, yeah, not a fan of this concept. In fact, when we were thinking about what to discuss, I was like, David, do we have to discuss Freud? I wanted to talk a little bit about Mudita, which is sympathetic joy in the Buddhist tradition. Maybe we'll save that for the bonus episode. It's considered the opposite of envy in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. But David, you did insist. And then I was like, okay, yeah, maybe you're right. So I don't want to throw shade, but I will just put my cards on the table from the beginning as like not a fan of Freud's theory of penis envy. But I respect your insistence on it. You were like, this is too overthink-y to avoid. so let's get into it.

David: 43:35

first of all don't Chris sent me as the guy who's about to defend Freud's theory of penis envy.

Ellie: 43:42

I'm not, I'm presenting you as the guy who wanted to talk about Freud's theory of envy, which you have to own!

David: 43:47

I definitely want to talk about it and I also think it's bullshit, and we'll get into the reasons why. But before we do that, we have to lay out the basics a little bit, then we can tear into it. Freud first mentions penis envy in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality from 1905, but really develops the concept over a long period of time. There are some really interesting remarks about it in the 1905 essay, also in a 1908 essay entitled On the Sexual Theories of Children, and then a much later essay from 1925 called Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes. Now in all these works, he tells a story of female development according to which young girls between three and six years of age become aware of the anatomical differences between the sexes, become aware of the superiority of the penis relative to the vagina, and come to desire a penis of their very own. Needless to say, the girl eventually realizes that she cannot have a penis, will never have a penis, and thus develops a psychological complex rooted in this frustrated desire. And that complex is what Freud dubs penis envy.

Ellie: 45:10

Let me just say right here that, as listeners may not be surprised to find out, nothing in child psychology since Freud actually bears this out. I think Freud had a lot of interesting things to say, I just do not think this is one of them. Many feminist psychoanalysts and psychologists have pointed out that this is nothing more than a theoretical construct on Freud's part based in his premises about child development rather than observations of child behavior.

David: 45:33

totally right about that. And in Freud's universe, this complex is very powerful, even if it's not rooted in observations of child development, because he thinks that it explains women's behavior into adulthood, including all sorts of things, according to Freud. He thinks that this is the best way to explain why women dislike their mothers, because early in childhood, due to penis envy, they perceive the mother, who also doesn't have a penis, as the cause for their own penislessness. And so they come to hate the mother for this inherited lack that they attribute to the mother. it also explains, yes, I know, it also explains according to Freud, women's desire for a baby and also their love of what he calls castrated men. So women later in life come to like defeated men, largely because they're like, if I don't have a penis and if I'm gonna be with a man, then I better be with a man that doesn't really have a penis either.

Ellie: 46:43

Okay, David. I was like, this is not really strengthening your case that this is something should be talking about. In fact, I'm thinking I was too generous before. I was like, I get it. it is very overthinky. I'm like, is it? Yeah, no. This is like where the buck stops for me. Although, as the child of a closeted dad, Freud would just say that this is my Oedipus complex. I can't confront the women's love for effete men because too close to home for me. Formerly closeted dad, I think that goes without saying. Not still. Okay. Just nead to clear that.

David: 47:16

No, I think Freud would say that when you were looking for a podcast partner, you probably looked around for the most feminized and emasculated soy boy that you could find in your friend circle, which is how you found me, yours truly, as your podcast

Ellie: 47:32

cohost. Oh my God. David, you, might gay, but have you, guys seen David's muscles? You are, this is not a soy boy we're talking about. I not against a soy boy. I don't really entirely know what means, but as far as I understand it, totally fine. but yeah, it's, not, but yeah, it's not you.

David: 47:50

Ellie, that is literally the most offensive thing that you have ever said to me, that I am not a soy boy.

Ellie: 47:56

Then maybe you need to stop going to the gym!

David: 47:58

Soy boy has nothing to do with physicality. it does have something to do with but it really has to do with being a man who doesn't embody the culturally dominant ideal of masculinity and doesn't just exude strength and power. Really, that is not me.

Ellie: 48:18

Your sexuality is telling me one thing, your muscles are telling me another. No, I'm kidding. We can go so deeply into...

David: 48:27

My personality is gay, my body is homophobic.

Ellie: 48:33

No, we could have a whole amazing discussion about aesthetic ideals and masculinity in gay male culture as well. I don't mean to say that the sheer presence of muscles is not gay, but I do think it is against maybe the Freudian concept of the effete castrated man. Anyway,

David: 48:52

Yeah, anyway. I wanted to present the basics of Freud's theory of penis envy because I really want us to tear into it. in case this is not clear already, we collectively believe the concept is absurd.

Ellie: 49:07

Just only one of us thinks it's worth talking

David: 49:09

Oh yeah, I think it's so fun to talk about. And, I want us to get into the reasons why it's absurd, not just in a commonsensical way, but also by the premises of Freud's own intellectual apparatus. So let's talk about some limitations of the concept. One critique that has been made of penis envy is that Freud equivocates on what causes the penis to exert this almost gravitational pull over the psyche of a young girl. At times, Freud says that it is the symbolic significance of the penis. In short, the girl knows that the father has a lot more power and authority in the nuclear family. And so the child, the girl in particular, mistakenly attributes that difference in power to the difference in anatomy between mom and dad that she recently came to understand. But at other times, Freud really leans in on the biological, organic side of things. This happens in the 1925 essay, for example, where he straight up says that the reason the girl is mesmerized by the penis is because the penis as a hanging chunk of flesh is just like objectively amazing. It's protruding and it's big and it imposes itself in space. And so the most obvious critique of this is that it is straight up phallocentric, right? It just centers the phallus and endows it with this almost mythical power for no reason.

Ellie: 50:52

Yeah. Yeah. And the feminist theorist, Luce Irigaray has a really interesting account of this where she's just basically like, why, would we necessarily be obsessed with that hanging trunk of flesh as opposed to say the lips of the vulva? And I also think in addition to that question of like why the penis as this focus. And why I think about the vagina or vulva as a sheer lack, okay, sure it doesn't like protrude down like a penis does, but it's also it's got its own characteristics that we could also focus on. I'll leave i it to Irigaray for more on that. I think I also have video on her work, but, on this specifically. But I also think that children just aren't nearly as obsessed by naked genitals as Freud seems to believe.

David: 51:36

No, and so we might ask why is it that men's anatomy has this power, but also we should ask why Freud believes that it has this power only for young girls, because, one could say that maybe the little boy in the nuclear family should also have penis envy. Little boys have little dicks, I don't know how to put it, and so you could imagine very easily a version of psychoanalysis that introduces a smallness complex in young boys ages three to six, but he doesn't do that.

Ellie: 52:12

Okay, so maybe we should develop that theory, David.

David: 52:16

Yeah, I'm down. And in our theory, all boys would go around wanting to castrate their fathers because they have a Medea complex. If I don't have a gigantic penis, nobody can. Snip snip, dad.

Ellie: 52:31

Operative qualifier being gigantic penis compared to dad, right? our theory could go in the other direction, actually, where instead of boys having penis envy, all kids develop penis, disdain. instead of being amazed by the penis, they're like disappointed by how little it is and try to excise it. And the boys hate themselves for having it, and the girls are like, so lucky you don't have it.

David: 52:55

I love that even more than the male Medea complex. But I do think panning out to the topic of envy, more generally, that we learn something very interesting about the politics of this emotion from this detour into psychoanalysis. It's just that we learn something other than maybe what Freud would want us to learn. And what I think we learn from this is the danger of envy attribution. if you do not understand somebody else's constellation of desire, you're likely going to be very wrong about what they want, and therefore about what they envy, and that will distort your perception. of them all together. And in the case of Freud, I think we really see how, deeply this distortion cuts and how it morphs his interpretation of women's psychology. Because in a 1937 essay called Analysis Terminable And Interminable, he actually says that penis envy is so fundamental to women's development that it is literally unanalyzable. Like even psychoanalysis cannot make it go away.

Ellie: 54:10

Oh my god, it's like his claim about the dark continent of women's sexuality. This is, yeah, this is why I have struggles with Freud. Again, it's not that I think he's not worth considering at all, it's just like, when people are standing for it, I'm like, we can, grant that most of the stuff that the guy said was wrong, even if not all of it was, and even if structurally there's some really fascinating things there. But I think, when it comes to his discussions of women's sexuality, or in this case, women's psychology, He seems to see women exactly as he sees women's bodies, right? As just a lack or as negative space.

David: 54:46

Maybe this was Freud's way of leveling down women because deep down our theory is correct and he was just suffering from vulva envy.