Suffering and Schadenfreude in sport

ABSTRACT

We argue that some sports test athletes’ capacities to endure specific types of suffering, and in such cases the suffering is constitutive of the sport: the sporting contest would not be a good sporting contest if that capacity were not tested. We then argue that it is morally acceptable for athletes to experience pleasure (Schadenfreude) in response to the constitutive suffering of competitors insofar as that pleasure is compatible with pity or sympathy for non-constitutive suffering. We use the case of morally acceptable pleasure in the constitutive suffering of a competitor to clarify the sense of Schadenfreude. We defend a little recognised distinction of Aristotelian provenance between benign and malignant Schadenfreude, and, in contrast to the prevailing scholarly assessment, we show that Schadenfreude is not necessarily a passive emotion.

KEYWORDS:

• Suffering
• Schadenfreude
• envy
• ethics
• morality
• philosophy of emotions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Note that this question is distinct from the question of whether it is morally problematic to feel satisfaction in your own performance, in the success of your competitive efforts, of which your opponent’s difficulties (if you notice them at all) are seen only as indirect consequences. We assume that such self-directed satisfaction is morally acceptable in sporting contexts. Our question in this paper, however, is whether Schadenfreude, which involves a feeling of pleasure (Freude) that is essentially other-directed, and which in a sporting context (as we will characterize it) involves feeling pleasure in the suffering of one’s opponent as such, is morally acceptable.

2. That is, we take no position here, affirmative or negative, on whether fans may experience morally permissible forms of pleasure in the suffering of participants in athletic competitions, or on whether there may be morally permissible forms of pleasure in the incidental suffering of others in a sporting context. Our thesis is restricted to claiming that there are forms of morally permissible pleasure, felt by participants in athletic competitions, in the constitutive suffering of their fellow competitors.

3. In characterizing such suffering as constitutive, we view it as a necessary element of the test brought into existence by a sport’s constitutive rules. Thus, drawing upon the account in Torres (2000) of the relationship between rules and skills, we view capacities to endure constitutive suffering as themselves constitutive skills.

4. One virtue of this conceptual distinction between constitutive and incidental suffering is that it is compatible with some different accounts of the identity of sports.

5. A different conceptual distinction, which we do not employ here outside this note, indexes what one might call ‘situational suffering’ to the conditions of a particular contest rather than to the identity conditions of a sport. For example, it is not essential to a long distance running race that it take place in freezing weather, so suffering from freezing weather is not constitutive of competing in long distance running races. But if a specific race is held in freezing conditions, then it is necessary that one endure freezing conditions in order to compete in that race. This notion of situational suffering could thus be used to pick out any negative state that an athlete must cope with in order to compete in a particular athletic contest, including even negative states that the athlete’s competitors in the same contest do not need to cope with. ‘Situational suffering’ would still retain its sense here because these negative states contribute to the identity of the particular sporting contest (e.g., Michael Jordan’s ‘flu game’). We mention this notion of situational suffering here, however, only in order to contrast it with our notion of constitutive suffering in this paper, which refers to what is constitutive of the identity of a sport.

6. See, for example, Portmann (2000, 26–9), and Manca (2019, 227).

7. In all likelihood, the same goal motivates scholars to talk about Schadenfreude exclusively in terms of misfortune, but this language goes even further in implying that no one is responsible for the suffering in question.

8. Portmann also considers Schadenfreude arising from low self-esteem, the comical, and malice (31–44). One of Portmann’s central contentions is that malice or ill will is not a necessary condition of Schadenfreude, which is important because, on his view, only an instance in which malice motivates Schadenfreude ‘unequivocally calls for moral blame’ (42).

9. Portmann does not explicitly distinguish between the Schadenfroh having, on the one hand, a rational or justifiable belief that an instance of suffering is deserved, and, on the other, an irrational or unjustifiable belief, but it is quite clear that Portmann holds that only the former would be justificatory. See especially his comments on impartial judgements, 35–7.

10. Thus, not all experiences of Schadenfreude in relation to the constitutive suffering of another are morally acceptable. We could imagine, for example, someone experiencing malignant Schadenfreude or even malicious glee in relation to the constitutive suffering of another. The fact that a certain type of suffering is constitutive of a sport does not fully determine the nature of the Schadenfroh’s emotional response, and so the constitutive nature of the suffering does not without further ado absolve the Schadenfroh. We can illustrate the point with reference to a new scenario proposed by an anonymous reviewer, LC4, in which Liz ‘toys with Christie through gratuitously slowing down to let Christie overtake her, and then once more eases past her’ with no purpose other than to increase and take pleasure in Christie’s suffering. While the type of suffering that Christie experiences qualifies as constitutive suffering – it is essential to the sport in which they are competing, and without it the contest would not be a good contest – Liz’s actions and pleasure are morally objectionable. We suggest that this is because Liz’s pleasure is not appropriately attuned to the sporting situation. To be clear, we are not suggesting that Liz’s pleasure in Christie’s suffering is entirely indiscriminate, for she is distinguishing between licit and illicit ways of inflicting suffering on Christie. She is not trying to trip her, for example, but only trying to inflict as much constitutive suffering as possible. But Liz does not appear to be properly attuned to the sporting test in which she is engaged and the place of suffering in that test. Liz’s lack of attunement to the sporting situation is evident when she sabotages her own finishing time by slowing down so as to inflict more suffering on Christie. It seems implausible that Liz would also pity Christie’s incidental suffering while exhibiting such an overriding desire to inflict suffering on Christie, which in turn would suggest that Liz is experiencing malicious glee.

11. Of course, the Schadenfroh cannot experience pity (i.e. sympathy) for the sufferer at the same time and in the same respect as he experiences Schadenfreude, but this is not the objection. If it were, any emotion other than sympathy would be morally objectionable.

12. It is, of course, possible for a runner who takes pleasure in the constitutive suffering of an opponent and pushes the pace to increase that suffering to then feel further pleasure when that opponent suffers incidentally, but the subsequent lack of pity would suggest that the initial enjoyment was in fact an indiscriminate malicious glee – a pleasure in suffering for its own sake.