What Is Envy?

Quick Answer

Envy is an unpleasant emotion that arises when we perceive that another person possesses something good that we lack and want. It is a comparative emotion: it depends on measuring our situation against someone else's. Aristotle defined envy as pain at the good fortune of others; Kant described it as a reluctance to see our own well-being overshadowed by another's because we evaluate ourselves comparatively.

Envy has a bad reputation, and mostly deserves it. But it is also a deeply human emotion that raises important questions about desire, justice, competition, and self-worth.

What Is Envy?

Philosophers analyze envy as involving three elements: a subject who envies, a rival who has the good, and the good itself — a possession, quality, or achievement. Envy includes the judgment that the good is relevant to one's own identity or standing, the painful sense of lacking it, and a desire for it.

The crucial feature is comparison. Envy is not merely wanting what another has; it is being pained by the fact that they have it and one does not. This is why envy is so tied to status, competition, and the social mirror. The SEP entry on envy provides the standard analysis and surveys the debates that follow from it.

Historical Background

Envy has a long philosophical pedigree. Aristotle called it pain at the good fortune of others and discussed it in the Rhetoric alongside the other emotions that orators must understand. He treated envy as closely related to emulation — the desire to match another's achievement — but distinguished the two: emulation wants what the other has, while envy also resents that they have it.

Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, defined envy as the passion that views with malignant dislike the superiority of those who are entitled to it. For Smith, envy corrupts moral judgment because it distorts our perception of others' merits.

Spinoza treated envy as a form of hatred rooted in comparison: we hate the good fortune of those we see as like ourselves. Kant, in the Metaphysics of Morals, called envy a duty-opposed passion that aims, at least in wish, at destroying others' good fortune. The philosophical tradition is nearly unanimous that envy is vicious.

Key Arguments

The central contemporary debate concerns whether all envy is invidious. The SEP entry on envy distinguishes invidious envy — which involves the wish that the rival lose the good — from benign or emulative envy, which involves wanting the good for oneself without wanting to harm the rival. Some philosophers argue that emulative envy is not really envy at all; others, such as Sara Protasi, defend a richer taxonomy in which envy can be emulative, inert, or invidious depending on focus and perceived attainability.

A second debate concerns envy and justice. Egalitarian theories of justice have sometimes been accused of being motivated by envy, and Rawls took pains to argue that his theory of justice does not depend on it. Envy also matters for practical ethics: it corrodes gratitude, friendship, and cooperation, and it is one of the emotions most resistant to reflection because it hides from itself.

Contemporary Relevance

Envy is woven into social media, work life, and consumption. Understanding its structure helps us name it and examine its judgments: Is the comparison apt? Is the good genuinely relevant to my life? Is my pain tracking the disparity or my own lack? These questions are philosophical and educational. They are not a substitute for professional help when envy becomes destructive.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Envy".
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Emotion".
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Theories of Emotion".
• Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759; Clarendon Press, 1976).

Related Topics

Envy is constantly confused with jealousy, and the distinction matters. See What Is Jealousy? and Envy vs Jealousy for the comparison. The Jealousy topic hub and the Philosophy of Emotion hub place envy within the wider study of emotional life.