[lit-ideas] Re: Schadenfreude

-- my third post today -- and now to bed!
 
epikhairekakia, joy over one's neighbour's misfortune, spite, malignity,  
Arist.EN1107a10, Ph.2.394, Plu.2.91b, etc.
epikhairekakeo, v. to rejoice at another's misfortune, allêlois  Phld.D. 1.11 
, cf. Ph.1.314.
epikhairekakos, n. a rejoicing over one's neighbour's misfortune,  
Anaxandr.59, Alex.51, Arist.EN1108b5, Ph.2.269, Gal.4.817.
 
Cfr. 
 
1920 F. HAMILTON Days before Yesterday p. 118 
The particular  sentiment described in German as ‘schadenfreude’ 
‘pleasure over  another's troubles’ 
makes but little appeal to the average Briton except  
where questions of age and of failing powers come into play." 


Hamilton's mention of 'pleasure' (and I add, 'pain') made me think, not so  
much of sadism, but of the 'sweet pain' of Dryden -- and the Aristippeans'  
problems with the conceptualisation of 'loopy' 
          
( "I once heard Urmson give a talk, and almost all  
I can  recall of it is that he pronounced  the
Greek  word for pain  "loopy."
Which may confirm the impression that I'm basically a slightly  less
sophisticated version of Celia Brook watching the great man  eat." 
(A witness)

From the life of Aristippus, online -- Diog. Laert.: -- it seems we had to  
wait for Sade to fully understand the innuendo of 'schadenfreude':
 
"Some say that Aristippus wrote six books of dissertations; but  others, the 
chief of whom is Sosicrates of Rhodes, affirm that he never wrote a  single 
thing. He used to define the chief good as a gentle motion tending to  
sensation. These men then who continued in the school of Aristippus, and were  
called 
Cyrenaics, adopted the following opinions. They said that there were two  
emotions of the mind, pleasure and pain; that the one, namely pleasure, was a  
moderate emotion; the other, namely pain, a rough one. And that no one pleasure 
 
was different from or more pleasant than another; and that pleasure was praised 
 by all animals, but pain avoided. They said also that pleasure belonged to 
the  body, and constituted its chief good, as Paraetius also tells us in his 
book on  Sects; but the pleasure which they call the chief good, is not that 
pleasure as  a state, which consists in the absence of all pain, and is a sort 
of 
 undisturbedness, which is what Epicurus admits as such. For the Cyrenaics 
think  that there is a distinction between the chief good and a life of 
happiness, for  that the chief good is a particular pleasure, but that 
happiness is a 
state  consisting of a number of particular pleasures, among which, both those 
which  are past, and those which are future, are both enumerated. And they 
consider  that particular pleasure is desirable for its own sake; but that 
happiness is  desirable not for its own sake, but for that of the particular 
pleasure. And  that the proof that pleasure is the chief good is that we are 
from 
our childhood  attracted to it without any deliberate choice of our own; and 
that when we have  obtained it, we do not seek anything further. And also that 
there is nothing  which we avoid so much as we do its opposite, which is pain. 
And they assert,  too, that pleasure is a good, even if it arises from the most 
unbecoming causes,  as Hippobotus tells us in his Treatise on Sects; for even 
if an action be ever  so absurd, still the pleasure which arises out of it is 
desirable, and a good.  Moreover, the banishment of pain, as it is called by 
Epicurus, appears to the  Cyrenaics not to be pleasure; for neither is the 
absence of pleasure pain, for  both pleasure and pain consist in motion; and 
neither the absence of pleasure  nor the absence of pain are motion. In fact, 
absence of pain is a condition like  that of a person asleep. They say also 
that 
it is possible that some persons may  not desire pleasure, owing to some 
perversity of mind; and that all the  pleasures and pains of the mind, do not 
all 
originate in pleasures and pains of  the body, for that pleasure often arises 
from the mere fact of the prosperity of  one's country, or from one's own; but 
they deny that pleasure is caused by  either the recollection or the 
anticipation of good fortune-though Epicurus  asserted that it was-for the 
motion of the 
mind is put an end to by time. They  say, too, that pleasure is not caused by 
simple seeing or hearing. Accordingly  we listen with pleasure to those who 
give a representation of lamentations. But  we are pained when we see men 
lamenting in reality. And they called the absence  of pleasure and of pain 
intermediate states; and asserted  that corporeal  pleasures were superior to 
mental 
ones, and corporeal sufferings worse than  mental ones. And they argued that it 
was on this principle that offenders were  punished with bodily pain; for 
they thought that to suffer pain was hard, but  that to be pleased was more in 
harmony with the nature of man, on which account  also they took more care of 
the body than of the mind. And although pleasure is  desirable for its own 
sake, 
still they admit that some of the efficient causes  of it are often 
troublesome, and as such opposite to pleasure; so that they  think that an 
assemblage 
of all the pleasures which produce happiness, is the  most difficult thing 
conceivable."
 
JLS
   Bordighera, etc.  

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