When Bad Things Happen to Other People

The real title of this study might have been something much less appealing, like, Schadenfreude: It's Meaning, Experience and Social Ramification. Or, The Anatomy of Schadenfreude. That would have seriously limited its appeal to the average reader perhaps. (So it's just as well that the title parallels the recently very popular, but not so good, book called When Bad Things Happen to Good People.)But, the fact is, that really is the content of the book, and fascinating and delightful it is. The prose style is crystal and orderly, almost like a serious dissertation that went through a top-notch editor (although there is a typo here and there, but who's counting?). This emotion that has no proper English name is dissected not only in a variety of ways, but also at a variety of angles, revealing unexpected relationships between this pecadillo and our construct of justice. For example, Do we take pleasure in the justice that is served when one who "deserves" it gets his/her comeuppance? Or is it that we take pleasure in the knowledge that we were lucky enough to have been spared the same nasty spill of fate? Is Schadenfreude the same thing as malice? What about the element of anticipation? Even if we may not consciously wish any person any harm, but still find it somewhat pleasurable to discover that so-and-so was laid-off or demoted, are we guilty? Why is that some tiny little part of us "dies" when our friends succeed, and do better than we do?How is Schadenfreude different from envy, malice, jealousy, and resentment? Questions such as these and many more are carefully examined by cross-referencing Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and modern scholars of ethics, including John Rawls. Complex theme but Portman is a gentleman scholar, goes out of his way (albeit effortlessly) to make clear all his references.

Why do we (sometimes) delight in the suffering of our fellow humans? Should we fell ashamed of schadenfreude and other "outlaw emotions," as the author calls them? John Portmann has produced an elegant and readable meditation on the significance of the pleasure we take in the spectacle afforded by the misfortures of others. Portmann carefully distinguishes schadenfreude from garden variety malice in the course of his examination of what great philosophers and the world's major religions have to tell us about the subject. Throughout the book, the author comes across as brilliant and compassionate, but never dull or stuffy, even when he argues (in the conclusion) that the satisfactions of mercy can be every bit as great as those of revenge. When Bad Things Happen to Other People is an important contribution to the growing literature on human emotions.

As a law professor, I thought I knew everything about schadenfreude, but then I read John Portmann's fascinating book, and it made me think about the terrible things that happen to people who deserve to have even worse things happen to them in a completely new light. Why is it that we feel such satisfaction at the misfortunes of others? Portmann explains, in a wonderfully lucid and elegant style, the differences among the various senses in which we view the bad things that might happen, ranging from comedy through true tragedy. This book is a real crossover between scholarship and a delightful read.