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This chapter focuses on the miserly avaricious. It is argued that the miserly avaricious defeat their own purposes. The possession of money, which is supposed to be of such value to them does, on the contrary, lead to frustration. They live in a shrinking world and lose control over their lives, for they are at the mercy of their dominating desire. In all its forms, vicious envy spoils the good it covets. In this, as in other respects, the structural features of this vice resemble those of avarice. As in the case of avarice, the desired good is not the superficially obvious one, namely, others’ and one’s own possessions, respectively. The object of their desire is a more fundamental one, namely the self under a specific description.

The structural similarities between the different vices means that there will be overlaps between them, or that those in the grip of one of these vices should also naturally be exposed to another. One example is the relation between resentment and envy. The resentful and the envious share feelings of impotence and of hostility towards others. These are miserable feelings, and suffering them will reinforce both their sense of failure and their vengeful attitude towards the world. The avaricious, envious, proud, and resentful can all be said to be inordinate in their desire to have a certain position for themselves secured or maintained. Covetousness is a prominent component of lust and gluttony, and thus be that which links these to the other vices.

This chapter focuses on Satan's envy, a condition associated with vision. Satan's envy links vision to time, and to the finite goods of the world. His refusal to bow down before what he takes to be a temporal image of God corresponds to the later historical rejection of the incarnate Son by the incredulous and envious Jews—while his adversary, the zealous Abdiel, plays the role of a fearless Nicodemus before the Sanhedrin. Satan further argues backward, from the apparently secondary, temporal status of the Son, to assert that the Father, whom the Son visibly expresses, is equally secondary and a purely temporal power to be opposed by temporal force. In his envy, the devil invents worldly monarchy by misattributing it to God and wanting it for himself, inventing war in the process.

This chapter discusses the complicated relationship between perception and reality in development. It explores the role of emotions and subjective forces—especially envy—in arguing that just as social scientists and policy makers should not confuse circumstantial setbacks with failure in development, rising intolerance for inequality need not be seen as a sign of a crisis of capitalism, or of having to choose between growth or equality. Psychological effects, like the “tunnel effect,” are highly contingent, and one has to understand them carefully before jumping to big conclusions. After all, a strong tunnel effect, by making social injustice more visible, can have positive repercussions.

This chapter deals with Plutarch's ‘psychotherapeutic’ text On Curiosity, in which he strongly condemns the desire to discover other people's evils, which, he suggests, is omnipresent in the cities of the Roman Empire. In Plutarch's analysis, such malicious curiosity goes hand in hand with envy and malice: in order to win what they perceive to be a zero-sum game for reputation, people try to discover and spread scandal about others. Starting from this premiss, Plutarch demonstrates that the reader's tactics do not yield social esteem: curiosity often leads to danger, always to dishonour. By engaging in a subtle dialogue with various traditional readings of curiosity, Plutarch manages to guide the reader away from malicious curiosity, to promote himself and his own writings, and to avoid a possible rebound effect when criticizing others for criticizing others.

This chapter investigates the various scripts of invidia, the Latin term from which English “envy” is ultimately derived, though the Latin term is of much wider application. A system or “taxonomy” of scripts is described, and it is shown how the emotion — a form of distress felt when you see another person enjoy some sort of good — ranges from sheer malice to righteous indignation depending on whether or not the person experiencing the emotion is applying some principle of right or fairness. The chapter then shows how the different forms of the script commonly interacted in Roman social life.

This chapter continues the argument of the previous one by applying the discoveries made to one of Bishop's most sustained poems about her art: Crusoe in England. Melanie Klein's theories of attack and reparation in infant psychology, as applied to the making of art, are considered in the light of the hope that art might have a therapeutic role. The chapter concludes that in Bishop's case, this seems not to have been the case because the conditions for making art are themselves examples and exasperations of the problems in need of therapeutic care.

This chapter presents a conceptual framework suggesting antidotes to envy. In addition to outlining why envy is a problem to be coped with in the first place, it considers how envy might be reshaped into constructive achievement strivings and pro-social behaviors. For example, envy has a signal value that may produce useful information for the envying person, despite the unpleasant consequences that it also creates. The chapter draws on recent theory and research on the self as well as research from positive psychology, close relationships, and the psychology of religion and spirituality, to suggest ways that envy can ultimately result in positive rather than painful outcomes for the envying person.

This chapter addresses the many variables influencing the situation facing the envied person. One set of influences involves the object of the envy: Does the envied person deserve their advantage; does the advantage have the “zero-sum” quality of being available to only one person? Another set of influences concerns the envied person's social strategies: Is the advantage flaunted or concealed?; are the feelings of the envious person assuaged or exacerbated? The reaction of the envied person may also be influenced by stable psychological dispositions, such as enviousness, fear of success, and attitudes toward status and competition. Finally, cultural values should influence responses to being envied. For example, the cultural importance of achievement and success should influence how much people experience the envy of others as positive and as conferring status. In addressing these issues, the chapter draws on three main resources. First, it draws on the now considerable information about the nature of envy that is reflected in the other chapters of this volume. Second, it draws on scholarship about ancient Greek writings about envy; a rich source of thought about the perspective of the person who is the target of envy, which can be compared to modern research and analyses. Third, it discusses findings from research on the emotional and relational consequences of success.

People have an affective response to others based on their perceived social category. This group-based affect is influenced by the target's perceived warmth and competence, and affects subsequent behavioral tendencies toward the target. One such group-based emotion is envy, an ambivalent reaction that entails both admiration and dislike to social targets. Envied targets elicit obligatory association but often also elicit active harm when social contexts allow it. This chapter discusses the mechanisms of this volatile ambivalent social emotion within the context of social psychological research and neuroscience. In addition, it addresses social psychological questions using both neuroscience and questionnaire data. First, the chapter describes envy as an ambivalent emotion, and then places it within the stereotype content model of intergroup emotions. It then examines its cognitive, neural, and behavioral concomitant.

Philosophers have often linked envy with schadenfreude, in the sense that an envied person's misfortune is assumed to be pleasing. Envy contains features (such as hostility) that independently create schadenfreude, and so it follows that envy itself should be set the groundwork for schadenfreude as well, if the envied person suffers. This chapter reviews recent research exploring this assumption. Despite robust theoretical reasons for predicting that an envied person's misfortune should be pleasing, the empirical evidence has been inconsistent. The chapter outlines a number of methodological challenges inherent in examining this issue. It suggests reasons for the inconsistent findings and describes a recent study in which these methodological challenges were addressed.

This chapter examines the relationship between righteous anger and envious resentment in Diderot's satire Le Neveu de Rameau. The issue is explored in terms of whether one's personal dignity and independence can be credibly asserted, or whether there is no escape from humiliating dependence. The chapter then argues that this is an issue not only for Rameau but for the philosopher as well, who is reluctant to acknowledge his dependence on others for the material of his thought. Should the moralist therefore be grateful to those who furnish him a stimulus to reflection, thereby allowing him to avert the danger of solipsism, just as the rich man should be not be angry at the fool who amuses and fleeces him, but grateful for the lessons he learns? Diderot's countermove is to highlight the sublimity of the mind's ability to contemplate the most intellectually disturbing or morally threatening features of his world, so that external dependence is outweighed by the genius's inner independence. Like the artistic genius, the philosopher transcends both anger and gratitude through aesthetic apprehension.

Chapter 4 shows further how Milton uses Ovidian forms to meditate on his own creativity. Like Ovid, Milton fills his work with characters who are doubles for himself. Through the figures of Satan, Sin, Phaethon, and Bellerophon, Milton suggests how the fall has wounded all creativity. Moreover, Milton imagines evil as a version of the poet's creative imitation, which has degenerated into sterile copying fuelled by the force of envy, the traditional enemy and self‐destructive double of all creativity. In the figure of Sin, Milton draws together Ovidian figures for self‐destruction from Narcissus and Scylla, as well as Envy and Minerva. Moreover, in the figure of the narrator, Milton shows how the desire to create is never fully separate from the desire to destroy.

Beginning with a discussion of Babeuf's Communist variant on the (failed) French Revolution, the chapter analyzes Marx as a “rooster” (a secular Joachite) whose prophecies of a world revolution in 1848 proved wrong (compared with Meyerbeer's response), but who spent the rest of his life trying to explain—as roosters so often do—how he was right about the scenario, but wrong about the timing. The chapter addresses the issue of Marx's denial of any millennial component to his thinking, his adoption of the politique du pire, and the broader problem of “secular millennialism,” including the problem of “envy” in the appeal of Communist promises.

There seems to be no end to moralizing about the vices, but there is too little appreciation of them as mere human foibles and an essential part of the “human circus.” There are also serious questions about whether some of the so-called deadly sins are sinful at all.