We take pleasure in the misfortune of some other people. The fancy German name for this pleasure is Schadenfreude. Tiffany Watt Smith has written a whole book on it. Naturally it is slim volume at a little over 150 pages since how much there can be there to say on this topic? But one starts to wonder pretty early on whether it would have been better as a blog post. Certainly there are many different kinds of misfortune, and many different kinds of relating to the persons who suffer it that make us feel entitled to feel pleasure at it. We are pleased when arrogant people get their comeuppance, when people who take stupid risks suffer the consequences so long as they are not too bad, and when our enemies are unlucky. But how much categorization do we want about this? The book has 8 main chapters with one word names: Accidents, Glory, Justice, The Smug, Love, Envy, Mutiny, Power. The categorization these chapters offer is hardly mutually exclusive, but they do manage to have distinctive themes.

What is distinctive about Schadenfreude is that is not admirable but it is a complex human emotion and it is very understandable. It is closely related to humor — the comedy of slapstick for example — and probably no other animals can experience it. There are various psychological explanations of why we experience it, covered in the Love chapter. As one would expect, there are theories from evolutionary psychology, social psychology, and depth psychology, and there isn’t much to decide between them. Indeed, the whole book goes quickly through ideas, holding them up for perusal and moving on. There are many little stories and some personal anecdotes of Schadenfreude and related phenomena, which get old very quickly. The book ends without any great revelation, and there is an Afterword in which Smith sums up her conclusions from her exploration, none of which will come as a surprise to any reader (e.g. Schadenfreude won’t define you).

I’m not sure who would want to actually read this book from beginning to end, but it might be the kind of book one gives to one’s friends with a knowing wink.

© 2018 Christian Perring

Christian Perring teaches in NYC.