Envy in Language

Both in literature and in discussions with a number of people as to what they understand by envy I have been struck by the tendency to use the word ‘jealousy’ instead of ‘envy,’ the former no doubt being more tolerable to those who confess to it than the latter, which is an ignominious sentiment. The jealous man has been defeated in a struggle for power or in competition; he is not inferior in relation to the asset under contention as, by definition, the envious man is. Yet even the behavioural sciences often shirk the phenomenon of envy and of envious behaviour as though it were taboo, disguising the motive of envy with concepts such as ambivalence, aggression, tension, rivalry, jealousy and similar indirect descriptions.

The primary role of envy in human society and the comparatively unproblematical nature of common jealousy—or what is usually meant by the term—are apparent both from language and from proverbs.

Envy and jealousy in English

The Oxford English Dictionary[1] treats ‘envy’ and ‘envious’ as ‘jealousy’ and ‘jealous.’ About four columns are devoted to both terms.

‘Envy’ and ‘envious’ in modern English are derived from the Latin invidia and invidiosus, which have the same meanings. The verb ‘to envy’ corresponds to the Latin invidere. In Spanish, Portuguese and Italian there are similar derivatives from the Latin to denote the same states of mind.

Early English examples are: ‘There be others that be envious to see other in gretter degree thanne they.’ ‘No lawful meanes can carrie me Out of enuies reach.’ ‘It is much more shame to have envy at other for mony, clothing, or possessions.’

Definitions emphasize the feeling of hostility, spite and ill-will. According to these, envy is present when there is ‘mortification and ill-will occasioned by the contemplation of superior advantages.’ On the other hand, envy may simply mean that one wishes one might do the same as someone else. The first definition of envy as a verb is most specific: ‘To feel displeasure and ill-will at the superiority of (another person) in happiness, success, reputation, or the possession of anything desirable.’

It is also called envy when a person withholds a thing from someone else out of spite; further on we shall have to consider the phenomenon of avarice and its relationship to envy. Thus in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century it was said of the peacock that he so envied men their health that he would eat his own droppings (then used for medicinal purposes).

Incidentally, the modern English words of Latin origin for ‘envy’ and ‘envious’ have practically the same meaning as those in modern German deriving from ancient Germanic words, which express the same states of feeling and of mind.

‘Jealous’ and ‘jealousy’ are given detailed treatment by the Oxford English Dictionary. Obviously ‘jealous’ at first denoted simply an intense or highly excited emotional state, and then came to include a craving for the affection of someone else. Later it came to designate the fear of losing another person’s affections, just like ‘jealous’ in the modern sense. Sometimes ‘jealous’ has the sense of ‘envious,’ as in: ‘It is certain that they looked upon it with a jealous eye.’ Earlier there was also an English term ‘jealous glass,’ meaning the frosted glass used for ground-floor windows, analogous to the French jalousie. But the principal meaning of ‘jealousy’ remains the passionate endeavour to keep something that is one’s own by right. In complete contrast to the envious man, therefore, one may postulate a man of jealous disposition whose mind is at rest once he knows that he is free of rivals. In 1856 Emerson wrote: ‘The jealousy of every class to guard itself, is a testimony to the reality they have found in life.’ Where jealousy acquires undertones of mistrust or hatred, what is meant is generally the suspicion that somebody is seeking to take something from us which we have hitherto enjoyed in tranquillity. In some cases jealousy may even represent the pugnacity of the rightful defender holding his own against the envious miscreant.

More precisely, the jealous man can never normally become a spontaneous, primary aggressor. His hostile behaviour begins only when a rival appears on the scene to give him specific reason for anxiety. This rival may be genuinely striving for an asset, or he may be driven by envy. Everyone is familiar with the type, often described in fiction, who wants to seduce his friend’s fiancée, not because he wants to marry her, but only because he begrudges the other his happiness.

In contrast to the envious man, who usually knows exactly what provokes him, the jealous man is often in doubt as to the nature of his antagonist: whether he is a genuine, honourable rival on his own level or an envious man, ostensibly a rival but in fact intent merely on destruction. The envious man, on the other hand, may have hostile feelings towards a person who may actually be ignorant of his existence. Sociologically, therefore, envy and jealousy represent basically distinct social situations, for in jealousy two or more persons must confront each other in a relationship that is avowedly reciprocal.

The fully revised edition of the most comprehensive dictionary of American English, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, which appeared in 1961, devotes very little space to the terms ‘envy’ and ‘envious.’ Two examples of contemporary usage are cited: ‘the sterile and envious principle of artificial equality’ from Time magazine; and, ‘examining the tire with envious appreciation.’ ‘Envious’ is defined as a disgruntled emotional state arising from the possessions or achievements of another, a spiteful wish that the other should lose them. By contrast, the word ‘jealous’ is used when we observe or imagine with mistrust or dissatisfaction that someone is acquiring something which is really our due or which belongs to us.

Thus the decisive difference is evident: jealousy is only directed against a definite transfer of coveted assets or their removal elsewhere, never against the asset as such. Envy very often denies the asset itself. Further, ‘jealous’ may be used with no critical implications at all, as when John Galsworthy writes: ‘. . . conscious of their duty, and jealous of their honour.’

Webster’s examples of envy eliminate this fine distinction and give samples of contemporary English, or more especially and significantly of American English, according to which one says ‘I envy you’ when it should in fact be ‘I am jealous of your. . .’ Thus Hollis Alpert writes: ‘I have a wild envy of the man in the taxi with her,’ while V. S. Pritchett writes: ‘I often envy the writer who works in a university.’

The emphasis, in the definitions of ‘envy’ and ‘envying’ in Webster’s third edition, is laid on the desire to possess what belongs to the other, not to see it destroyed. Indeed, this shift in emphasis corresponds almost exactly to the present American view of envy. Thus an American advertisement is able to declare that one should buy this or that in order to be envied—that is to say, so that the other man should at once do his utmost to get the same thing, not, as in earlier cultures, that he should try to damage it out of spite.

Jealousy as compared with envy is defined by Webster principally as fear of unfaithfulness or rivalry, but the dictionary also mentions that ‘jealous’ can be used in the sense of ‘envious,’ as in: ‘Jealous because her coat isn’t as nice as yours.’ ‘Jealousy’ has rather the meaning of hostile rivalry, and we believe that, as opposed to genuine envy, it does not anticipate the downfall of the rival. Webster’s example of this is: ‘Intense local jealousies among existing villages.’

Envy and emulation

A masterly definition and description of envy is found in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, published in 1912. Therein, William L. Davidson, Professor of Logic at the University of Aberdeen, has this to say:

Envy is an emotion that is essentially both selfish and malevolent. It is aimed at persons, and implies dislike of one who possesses what the envious man himself covets or desires, and a wish to harm him. Grasping-ness for self and ill-will lie at the basis of it. There is in it also a consciousness of inferiority to the person envied, and a chafing under this consciousness. He who has got what I envy is felt by me to have the advantage of me, and I resent it. Consequently, I rejoice if he finds that his envied possession does not give him entire satisfaction—much more, if it actually entails on him dissatisfaction and pain: that simply reduces his superiority in my eyes, and ministers to my feelings of self-importance. As signifying in the envious man a want that is ungratified, and as pointing to a sense of impotence inasmuch as he lacks the sense of power which possession of the desired object would give him, envy is in itself a painful emotion, although it is associated with pleasure when misfortune is seen to befall the object of it.

The writer of the article also quotes Dryden:

Envy, that does with misery reside,

The joy and the revenge of ruin’d pride.

The article compares envy with jealousy. They have much in common yet represent completely different emotions. Jealousy differs from envy in being infinitely more spiteful, as well as more impassioned and less restrained. Jealousy arises out of an opinion as to what is one’s due; it is not purely a sense of inferiority, as is envy. For the jealous man, furthermore, there is a twofold source of irritation and uneasiness, since three people are involved: he is not engaged with one rival only, but with two (individuals or groups). If I am jealous of somebody this is because he has won someone else’s affections to which I think I have a right. Thus I hate not only the usurper but the person he has seduced.

Next, envy is compared with emulation, a term that has been equated with it. Americans, for example, prefer ‘envy’ to the obsolete use of ‘emulation,’ but are quite unaware of the shift in meaning. They have forgotten envy’s spiteful, destructive aspect.

The article rightly considers emulation to be very different from envy. He who emulates, who seeks to do what another has done, is neither self-seeking, spiteful, nor filled with hatred. Emulation requires a rival, a competitor, but the latter does not have to be seen as an enemy. He may even be a friend whose example stimulates our own powers and talents. Behaviour that reveals emulation is observable in many animals and is also apparent in the simple games of young children.

Again, the article draws a distinction between ambition and emulation. While ambition may be laudable, it may also degenerate into a ruthlessness leading ultimately to methods of harming a rival very similar to those of the envious man. Emulation may turn into envy as when, for instance, shortly before the end of the race a runner realizes that he will not be able to outpace the winner and so tries to trip him up. The article cites the following distinction drawn by Joseph Butler in one of his sermons (Sermon 1, note 20):

‘Emulation is merely the desire and hope of equality with, or superiority over others, with whom we compare ourselves. . . . To desire the attainment of this equality or superiority by the particular means of others being brought down to our own level, or below it, is, I think, the distinct notion of envy.’[2] John Gay (1669–1745), philosopher and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, gives a brilliant analysis of the phenomenon of envy in his study of the fundamental principles of virtue or morality.[3] He regards envy as a diabolical passion and concurs with Locke in believing it possible for some people to be completely devoid of it. Moreover, Gay rightly observes that most people, were they to give the matter some consideration, would remember the first time they ever felt themselves to be under the influence of envious emotions. This he sees as being especially important, since the ability to remember the first active experience of envy indicates the series of fundamental motives that leave their stamp on the personality. Because the most important experiences of envy cannot easily be forgotten, Gay believes, those people who think they have never been affected by it are probably right. He could not, of course, have been aware of such a factor as repression.

To begin with, Gay keeps to the common definition of envy as the anguish that besets us when we observe the prosperity of others; but this he at once qualifies with the statement that it is not the prosperity of all and sundry but of specific persons. What persons? As soon as we look around us to discover who it is we might envy we will, Gay maintains, find the source of this passion: the objects of envy invariably prove to be persons who had formerly been the envious man’s rivals. Gay rightly comments on the importance of social proximity in envy. It is usually directed only towards persons with whom it has been possible to compete. But to restrict envy to genuine and factual rivalry is to go too far, for it blurs its distinction from jealousy. There is no doubt that envy may occur where competition has been only imagined, or even where it is inconceivable. What is decisive, however, as we shall see repeatedly, is the envious man’s conviction that the envied man’s prosperity, his success and his income are somehow to blame for the subject’s deprivation, for the lack that he feels. Now if the capacity for envy derives from the experience of sibling jealousy, this aspect of envy becomes explicable; for within a family the favouring of one child (even if this be purely imaginary) will necessarily involve discrimination against the other (or will arouse a sense of injury).

According to Adam Smith, envy, malice and resentment are the only passions which could bring someone to injure another’s person or reputation, yet few people succumb frequently to these passions and the worst scoundrels only on occasion. And even if one does give way to such feelings, little is gained. Therefore, Smith opines, in most human beings envy is restrained by rational reflection.[4]

The evidence for Smith’s confident assumption is, of course, the fact that it would not be possible to imagine any kind of orderly co-existence if the prevailing society had not succeeded in largely suppressing mutual envy.

Causal delusion in envy

Scheler is responsible for a very important conceptual clarification. He sees envy, in the ordinary sense of the word, as the product of the feeling of impotence

which inhibits the striving after a possession that belongs to another. The tension between such striving and such impotence only leads to envy, however, when it is discharged into an act of hatred or vindictive behaviour towards the owner of the possession; when, that is, owing to a delusion, the other with his possession is experienced as the cause of our painful failure to have the possession. This delusion, whereby what is in fact our impotence to obtain the possession appears to us as a positive force ‘opposing’ our striving, has the effect of somewhat reducing the initial tension. Genuine envy is no more possible without the particular experience of such impotence than it is without the causal delusion.

Now it is significant that, as we shall show, many primitive peoples (e.g., the Dobuans and the Navaho Indians), as well as some village communities in more developed societies (e.g., in Central America), bring about the kind of causal delusion described by Scheler, not unconsciously or subconsciously like our contemporaries in modern societies, but with intent: my neighbour’s harvest can only have turned out better than mine because he has somehow succeeded in reducing mine by black magic. It is this view of the world, the magic thinking of the primitive man within us—also discernibly at work in many other forms of superstitious compulsive behaviour—which provides the dynamic of envy in modern, enlightened society.

Scheler declares explicitly:

Mere displeasure at the fact that another possesses the thing which I covet does not constitute envy; it is, indeed, a motive for acquiring in some way the desired object or a similar one, e.g., by working for it, by buying it, by force or by theft. Only when the attempt to obtain it by these means has failed, giving rise to the consciousness of impotence, does envy arise.[5]

 From:

ENVY A Theory of Social Behaviour

by Helmut Schoeck