Envy is sometimes suggested as an underlying motive in the assessment of different economic allocations. In the theoretical literature on fair division, following Foley [Foley, D. (1967), Yale Economic Essays, 7, 45–98], the term “envy” refers to an intrapersonal comparison of different consumption bundles. By contrast, in its everyday use “envy” involves interpersonal comparisons of well-being. We present, discuss results from free-form bargaining experiments on fair division problems in which inter-and intrapersonal criteria can be distinguished. We find (...) that interpersonal comparisons play the dominant role. The effect of the intrapersonal criterion of envy freeness is limited to situations in which other fairness criteria are not applicable. (shrink)

This paper introduces a local version of envy-freeness and investigates its implications in a continuum agent economy with connected preferences. We show that the set of locally envy-free and Pareto efficient allocations coincides with the set of equal-income Walrasian allocations.

This paper proposes a concept of local strict envy-freeness (LS-envy-freeness), which is a local version of Zhou’s (1992) strict envy-freeness, and investigates its implications in large economies. In spite of the weakness of this concept, it works effectively by combining with efficiency. It is shown that an LS-envy-free and efficient allocation is a strict envy-free allocation. That is, efficiency expands the local version of strict envy-freeness into strict envy-freeness. (...) Therefore, the set of LS-envy-free and efficient allocations coincides with the set of equal-income Walrasian allocations. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to investigate a relationship between egalitarian equivalence and envy-freeness in a continuum-agent economy, where tastes vary continuously across individuals. Under efficiency, the two criteria of equity are not compatible, except in the knife-edge case. In particular, when individual utility functions are restricted to the class of Cobb–Douglas-type functions, there exists an efficient, egalitarian-equivalent, and envy-free allocation if and only if all individuals have the same taste over commodities.

Suppose you and I are dividing a cake between us. If you divide and I choose, then—under standard assumptions—the distribution will be not only fair, but also envy-free. That is, neither of us prefers the other slice. The question that interests me in this essay, however, is the relationship between envy and fairness. Specifically, is it merely a coincidence that the envy-free distribution is fair, or does envy-freeness capture something important about fairness? I argue that (...) envy-freeness does indeed capture something about fairness. Yet, envy-minimizing—the compromise approach—does not. I first show that fairness does not plausibly require envy-minimizing; I then offer an explanation. Namely, envy-minimizing depends on the assumption that all envy is normatively equivalent. This assumption, however, is false. To illustrate, I introduce two types of envy—personal envy and impersonal envy—and show that impersonal envy is normatively significant in a way that personal envy is not. Specifically, impersonal envy is compatible with the rules of mutual justifiability; personal envy is not. I then use this distinction to explain the relationship between fairness and envy-freeness. In the process, the essay provides guidance on the fair division of heterogeneous and non-divisible goods. (shrink)

We study envy-free allocations in a many-to-many matching model with contracts in which agents on one side of the market (doctors) are endowed with substitutable choice functions and agents on the other side of the market (hospitals) are endowed with responsive preferences. Envy-freeness is a weakening of stability that allows blocking contracts involving a hospital with a vacant position and a doctor that does not envy any of the doctors that the hospital currently employs. We show (...) that the set of envy-free allocations has a lattice structure. Furthermore, we define a Tarski operator on this lattice and use it to model a vacancy chain dynamic process by which, starting from any envy-free allocation, a stable one is reached. (shrink)

This paper analyzes criteria of fair division of a set of indivisible items among people whose revealed preferences are limited to rankings of the items and for whom no side payments are allowed. The criteria include refinements of Pareto optimality and envy-freeness as well as dominance-freeness, evenness of shares, and two criteria based on equally-spaced surrogate utilities, referred to as maxsum and equimax. Maxsum maximizes a measure of aggregate utility or welfare, whereas equimax lexicographically maximizes persons' utilities (...) from smallest to largest. The paper analyzes conflicts among the criteria along with possibilities and pitfalls of achieving fair division in a variety of circumstances. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin’s argument for resource egalitarianism has as its centerpiece a thought experiment involving a group of shipwreck survivors washed ashore on an uninhabited island, who decide to divide up all of the resources on the island equally using a competitive auction. Unfortunately, Dworkin misunderstands how the auction mechanism works, and so misinterprets its significance for egalitarian political philosophy. First, he makes it seem as though there is a conceptual connection between the ‘envy-freeness’ standard and the auction, when (...) in fact there is none. Second, he fails to appreciate how idealized the conditions are that must be satisfied in order for his results to obtain. This leads him to draw practical conclusions from the thought experiment that do not follow, such as his claim that the principle of equality generates a presumption in favor of the market as a mechanism for the distribution of resources. The result is that Dworkin saddles resource egalitarianism with a set of commitments that are, in fact, inessential to that view. (shrink)

In the division problem with single-peaked preferences, an allocation rule is strategy-proof for same tops if no one can gain by reporting a false preference relation having the true peak. This new condition is so weak that it is implied by strategy-proofness and tops-only. We show that the uniform rule is the only rule satisfying this mild property under efficiency and envy-freeness. We then analyze how largely the preference domain can be extended with admitting a rule satisfying the (...) three axioms, and show that the single-plateaued domain is the unique such maximal domain. (shrink)

We report the results of a questionnaire study on the fair distribution of indivisible goods. We collected data from three different subject pools, first- and second- year students majoring in economics, law students, and advanced economics students with some background knowledge of fairness theories. The purpose of this study is to assess the empirical relevance of various fairness criteria such as inequality aversion, the utilitarian principle of maximizing the sum of individual payoffs, the Rawlsian “maximin” principle of maximizing the payoff (...) of the worst-off individual, and the criterion of envy-freeness (in the sense of Foley 1967). (shrink)

When I started reading Sara Protasi’s book, The Philosophy of Envy, I was excited to learn more about an emotion I thought I rarely experienced. In the opening pages, I found myself nodding along as Protasi quotes her mother saying: “I never feel envy, but I often feel jealousy!” (6). But envy, it turns out, is sneaky, often masking itself in the guise of other emotions, hiding just below the surface. What this meticulously argued book unveils is (...) both a nuanced taxonomy of different kinds of envy and the intimate relationship that envy has to all manner of other emotions, including jealousy, shame, resentment, despair, and love. I now recognize that not only am I more familiar with envy than I supposed, but I experience envy rather often. This got me thinking about other instances of envy that I experience which I have previously overlooked or perhaps mislabeled. Prompted by Protasi’s insightful handling of envy in its varied forms, one question kept coming back to me: can you envy yourself? (shrink)

While standard definitions of envy tend to focus on the coveted good or the envied rival, this paper describes envy by reflecting on the envious self and its feelings. The paper begins by describing envy and establishing its key features and objects. It presents envy as an emotion of self-assessment which necessarily involves a sense of powerlessness and a feeling of one’s own diminishing value as a person. The second section illustrates the link between envy (...) and the feeling of self-worth by exploring one of its most radical manifestations: the phenomenon of existential envy. (shrink)

Envy is, roughly, the disposition to desire that another lose a perceived good so that one can, by comparison, feel better about one’s self. The divisiveness of envy follows not just from one’s willing against the good of the other, but also from the other vices that spring from it. It is for this second reason that envy is a capital vice. This chapter begins by arguing for a definition of envy similar to that given by (...) Aquinas and then considers its relationship to other vices (e.g. jealousy, schadenfreude, and hate). At the heart of envy is a disposition to make relative comparisons which lead to a sense of inferiority. This is turn can lead a person to feel and act in ways destructive of community and the self. The present chapter also addresses recent work in both psychology and economics related to envy. (shrink)

The nature of envy has recently been the subject of a heated debate. Some researchers see envy as a complex, yet unitary construct that despite being hostile in nature can lead to both hostile and...

Envy involves the wish to have something that someone else has; jealousy involves the wish not to lose something that the subject has and someone else does not. Envy and jealousy would seem to involve a similar emotional attitude. Both are concerned with a change in what one has: either a wish to obtain or a fear of losing. This is not a negligible distinction, however. The wish not to lose something is notably different from the wish to (...) obtain something and this difference has significant implications. (shrink)

Previous research has yielded inconsistent findings concerning the relationship between envy and schadenfreude. Three studies examined whether the distinction between benign and malicious envy can resolve this inconsistency. We found that malicious envy is related to schadenfreude, while benign envy is not. This result held both in the Netherlands where benign and malicious envy are indicated by separate words (Study 1: Sample A, N = 139; Sample B, N = 150), and in the USA where (...) a single word is used to denote both types (Study 2, N = 180; Study 3, N = 349). Moreover, the effect of malicious envy on schadenfreude was independent of other antecedents of schadenfreude (such as feelings of inferiority, disliking the target person, anger, and perceived deservedness). These findings improve our understanding of the antecedents of schadenfreude and help reconcile seemingly contradictory findings on the relationship between envy and schadenfreude. (shrink)

Envy and Jealousy in Classical Athens examines the sensation, expression, and literary representation of envy and jealousy in Classical Athens.

This article offers a conceptual framework for discussing the role of envy within processes of transitional justice. Transitional justice importantly includes the transformation of intergroup dynamics of interaction in the aftermath of societal conflicts and upheavals. Such transformation aims to realise “interactive” justice in transitional justice by reshaping belief and value systems, and by moulding emotional responses between the involved parties. A nuanced understanding of the emotions at play in intergroup antagonistic dynamics of interaction is thus essential to transitional (...) justice. Among the many emotions that we could address in such scenarios, we target envy. Envy, in its various forms, features prominently in many societal conflicts and upheavals, and has, therefore, the potential to undermine or, conversely, support just intergroup interactions. However, the ambivalent role of this emotion has been scantly analysed in the philosophical literature on transitional justice. We make a start on filling this lacuna by developing a conceptual framework which is necessary to appreciate how envy and its varieties are epistemically and practically relevant to realising interactive justice in transitional justice processes. (shrink)

I examine the role played by the emotions of envy and resentment in interpersonal online dynamics during the COVID19 pandemic. I start by reviewing what we know about the interplay of social media use, social comparison and well-being, and by applying this knowledge to current circumstances. Then, I introduce some philosophical distinctions that complicate the already complex empirical evidence, differentiating, in particular, between envy and resentment, and between different kinds of envy. I argue that we can use (...) the knowledge of these distinctions to better cope with these painful, but sometimes productive and always informative, emotions. (shrink)

Envy has often been seen as a vice and the envied as its victims. I suggest that this plausible view has an important limitation: the envied sometimes actively try to provoke envy. They may, thus, be non-innocent victims. Having argued for this thesis, I draw some practical implications.

A common anti-egalitarian argument is that equality is motivated by envy, or the desire to placate envy. In order to avoid this charge, John Rawls explicitly banishes envy from his original position. This article argues that this is an inconsistent and untenable position for Rawls, as he treats envy as if it were a fact of human psychology and believes that principles of justice should be based on such facts. Therefore envy should be known about (...) in the original position. The consequences for Rawlsian theory—both substantive and methodological—are discussed. (shrink)

Envy and resentment are generally thought to be unpleasant and unethical emotions which ought to be condemned. I argue that both envy and resentment, in some important forms, are moral emotions connected with concern for justice, understood in terms of desert and entitlement. They enable us to recognise injustice, work as a spur to acting against it and connect us to others. Thus, we should accept these emotions as part of the ethical life.

The role played by continuous morphisms in propositional modal logic is investigated: it turns out that they are strictly related to filtrations and to suitable variants of the notion of a free algebra. We also employ continuous morphisms in incremental constructions of (standard) finitely generated free ????4-algebras.

Envy is almost universally condemned. But is its reputation warranted? Sara Protasi argues envy is multifaceted and sometimes even virtuous.

Are demands for equality motivated by envy? Nietzsche, Freud, Hayek, and Nozick all thought so. Call this the Envy Objection. For egalitarians, the Envy Objection is meant to sting. Many egalitarians have tried to evade the Envy Objection.. But should egalitarians be worried about envy? In this paper, I argue that egalitarians should stop worrying and learn to love envy. I argue that the persistent unwillingness to embrace the Envy Objection is rooted in (...) a common misunderstanding of the nature of the charge, what it reveals, and what can be said in response to it. I develop what Bernard Williams might call a vindicatory genealogy of envy, thereby allowing us to see that envy, rather than undermining egalitarian intuitions, can in fact play a distinct justificatory role (when it is fitting), which undermines the Envy Objection. (shrink)

Would you rather your friends, family, and partners envy you, or admire you, when you flourish? Many people would prefer to be admired, and so we often strive to tame our envy. Recently, however, Sara Protasi offered an intriguing defence of “emulative envy” which apparently improves us and our relationships, and is compatible with love. I find her account unconvincing, and defend loving admiration in this article. In Section 2, I summarize Protasi's nuanced account of envy. (...) In Section 2, I argue that irrespective of how we analyze emotions in general we can argue that it is preferable to prioritize the cultivation of some emotions over others. In Section 4, I challenge Protasi's assumptions about the affinity between love and envy. My core argument is in Section 5 where I examine envy's impact on the envier, the envied, and relationships. Envy impedes an authentic relationship to the goods and goals in the envier's life, alienates the envied, and stifles joint-action. From all perspectives admiration typically fares better. After briefly considering the objection that admiration may impede love in Section 6, I conclude, in section seven, that admiration should be preferred to emulative envy in our intimate relationships. (shrink)

The moral status of emotions has recently become the focus of various philosophical investigations. Certain emotions that have traditionally been considered as negative, such as envy, jealousy, pleasure-in-others'-misfortune, and pride, have been defended. Some traditionally "negative" emotions have even been declared to be moral emotions. In this brief paper, I suggest two basic criteria according to which an emotion might be considered moral, and I then examine whether envy, anger, and resentment are moral emotions.

Envy of others' material possessions is a potent motivator of consumerism. This makes it a prudentially and morally hazardous emotional response. After outlining these hazards, I present an analysis of the emotion of envy. Envy, I argue, presents things in the following way: the envier lacks some good that her rival possesses; this difference between them is bad for the envier; this difference reflects poorly on the envier's worth; and this difference is undeserved. I then discuss the (...) conditions under which these presentations can be satisfied by differences in material possessions. My conclusion is that no difference in material possessions can simultaneously be all the ways envy presents it as being. Consequently, economic envy is systematically irrational: it is never a warranted response to the distribution of material wealth. Recognising this bolsters the prudential and moral case for reducing the degree to which we feel it and for resisting the inclinations it gives rise to when we do. (shrink)

Faith Envy explores the idea that both believers and nonbelievers envy those with more faith. Hermen Kroesbergen shows how philosophers Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and Weil, who each had their own kind of faith envy, can serve as guides to this phenomenon and the contemporary concept of faith.

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls discusses “the problem of envy”, namely the worry that the well-ordered society could be destabilized by envy. Martha Nussbaum has proposed, in Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, that love, in particular what she calls civic friendship, is the solution to this problem. Nussbaum’s suggestion is in accordance with the long-standing notion that love and envy are incompatible opposites, and that the virtue of love is an antidote to the (...) vice of envy. I argue that this idea is misguided, and that love and envy are opposite sides of the same coin: what Kant called “unsociable sociability”. Love and envy arise from the same psychological mechanisms and thrive in the same social and personal conditions; thus, it’s not possible to have one without the other. However, there are other solutions to the problem of envy, including favoring the arousal of emulative envy. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I present a novel taxonomy of envy, according to which there are four kinds of envy: emulative, inert, aggressive and spiteful envy. An inquiry into the varieties of envy is valuable not only to understand it as a psychological phenomenon, but also to shed light on the nature of its alleged viciousness. The first section introduces the intuition that there is more than one kind of envy, together with the anecdotal and linguistic (...) evidence that supports it. The second section proposes and explains in detail a definition of envy tout court. The third section presents a recurring distinction between behavioral tendencies of envy, which has been explained in two distinct ways, one mostly proposed by psychologists, the other discernible in the philosophical tradition. The fourth section argues that these models of explanation track two variables, whose interplay is responsible for the existence of the four envies. The fifth section illustrates four paradigmatic cases, and provides a detailed analysis of the phenomenology, motivational structure, and typical behavioral outputs of each. The paper ends with a brief discussion of the implications of the taxonomy for moral education. (shrink)

Contemporary research offers a more compelling account on the complex emotion of envy than the traditional view of envy as simply something bad. This essay explains how Logic-Based Therapy can use this account to coach individuals struggling with negative species of envy. Given that jealousy and envy are often equated, the essay differentiates the two; explains the conditions that make the four species of envy possible; identifies cardinal fallacies associated with negative species of envy; (...) proposes counteractive virtues, and describes ways to help people struggling with negative species of envy acquire these virtues. (shrink)

This paper discusses limitarianism in light of three popular objections to the redistribution of extreme wealth: (i) that such redistribution legitimizes envy, which is a morally objectionable attitude; (ii) that it disincentivizes the wealthy to invest and work, leading to a diminished social product, and, thereby, making everyone worse-off; and (iii) that it undercuts the pursuit and achievement of human excellence by depriving successful people of resources through which they may otherwise excel. We argue that these objections fail to (...) undermine limitarianism. An elaborated defence against them, rather, reveals how the Standard Defence of limitarianism may be expanded and strengthened by relying explicitly on the importance of preventing a society of envy, avoiding harm to non-rich citizens, and ensuring that humans are given the opportunities to excel in ways that go beyond those that allow for the amassment of wealth. (shrink)

The important ‘no-envy’ fairness criterion has typically been attributed to Foley and sometimes to Tinbergen. We reveal that Jan Tinbergen introduced ‘no-envy’ as a fairness criterion in his article “Mathematiese Psychologie” published in 1930 in the Dutch journal Mens en Maatschappij and translated as “Mathematical Psychology” in 2021 in the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics. Our article accompanies the translation: we introduce Tinbergen’s 1930 formulation of the ‘no-envy’ criterion, compare it to other formulations, and comment on (...) its significance for the fairness literature in philosophy and economics. (shrink)

Within emotion theory, envy is generally portrayed as an antisocial emotion because the relation between the envier and the rival is thought to be purely antagonistic. This paper resists this view by arguing that envy presupposes a sense of us. First, we claim that hostile envy is triggered by the envier's sense of impotence combined with her perception that an equality principle has been violated. Second, we introduce the notion of â hetero-induced self-conscious emotionsâ by focusing on (...) the paradigmatic cases of being ashamed or proud of somebody else. We describe envy as a hetero-induced self-conscious emotion by arguing that the impotence felt by the subject grounds the emotion's self-reflexivity and that the rival impacts the subject's self-assessment because the rival is framed by the subject as an in-group member. Finally, we elaborate on the asset at stake in envy. We contend that this is esteem recognition: The envier covets the esteem that her reference group accords to the rival. Because, in envy, the subject conceives of herself as member of a group to which the other is also understood to belong, we conclude that envy is a social emotion insofar as it presupposes a sense of us. (shrink)

Clinical study of envy and jealousy in the psychotherapy situation indicates that these two states of mind are biopsychosocial response patterns involving the perceptual, cognitive, affective, and intentional mentalfunctions. These response patterns are evoked by perceptual events that inform the individual of one’s relative position vis-à-vis the requirements of one s life. Once these patterns can be discerned in the patient, the clinician is able to hear things in the psychotherapy situation not previously heard and understand, interpret, and work (...) through conflict in a new and useful way. In this paper psychotherapy paradigms and strategies are discussed from the new perspective afforded by the psychology of envy and jealousy. (shrink)

This paper is a continuation of [27], where we provide the background and the basic tools for studying the structural properties of classes of models over languages without equality. In the context of such languages, it is natural to make distinction between two kinds of classes, the so-called abstract classes, which correspond to those closed under isomorphic copies in the presence of equality, and the reduced classes, i.e., those obtained by factoring structures by their largest congruences. The generic problem described (...) in [27] is to investigate under what conditions this reduction process does not alter the metatheory of a class. Here we focus our attention on a concrete aspect of this generic problem that we import from universal algebra, namely the existence and description of free models. As in [27], we can find here again the basic notion of protoalgebraicity, which was originally introduced in [7] as the weakest condition to guarantee that the reduction process behaves reasonably well from an algebraic point of view. Our concern, however, takes us to handle a further notion, that of semialgebraicity, which corresponds to the notion of equivalential logic of [18]; semialgebraicity turns out to be the property which ensures that freeness is fully preserved by the reduction process. (shrink)

In important respects measurement practices underlay both the Second Scientific Revolution and the Second Industrial Revolution. Such practices, using increasingly accurate and precise instruments, both turned laboratories into factories for the production of exact measurement and also made factories the sites of laboratory-type and laboratory-quality measurement. Those who had learnt the protocols of precise, instrumentational measurement in university science and engineering classrooms, used those instruments and their skills to monitor and control industrial production, exchange technical data within and among firms (...) and formulate and implement technical standardization in industry. That these instruments measured not natural phenomena but technological ones made them no different in kind from what are more conventionally regarded as scientific instruments. Some indeed were simply instruments developed for scientific investigation and adapted for industrial use while others were created specifically for particular industrial applications. But more than the purely technical was going on in the use of those instruments. In addition to their function of producing knowledge they were also, in industrial production, instruments of hegemony – hegemony which, as Gramsci reminds us, begins in the factory. Among the lesser known of these devices is the freeness tester, used in production to control the manufacture of pulp and also in industrial research laboratories for the investigation of the pulping process. The Canadian Standard Freeness Tester (CSFT), developed at a Canadian government research facility on the campus of McGill University in the 1920s, quickly became a standard instrument in the pulp mills of North America and gained wide acceptance in other countries; it remains in use to this day. An understanding of its creation and function can provide a useful case study of the general observations discussed above. (shrink)

Aristotle does not explain why ordinary citizens who lack the virtue of justice nevertheless praise justice and the law. Indignation, defined as pain at the undeserved gains of others, is a promising candidate in the list of means regarding virtues and passions in Book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics. However, as many scholars have noted, Aristotle’s description of indignation as a mean is flawed. Moreover, indignation is the only characteristic in the list that disappears from the inquiry thereafter. I argue (...) that Aristotle obliquely criticizes indignation for aligning envy, a base passion, with conventional justice. Aristotle’s subtle critique reveals that envy motivates ‘the many’ to support justice, an unsavory conclusion which he does not highlight. (shrink)

Envy and blame are two concepts that add social preferences to the economic behavior model of homo economicus. These have already been studied in general distributional issues as well as in the Edgeworth box. Building on this, these social preferences are examined specifically in the work-leisure model and applied to the example of a UBI. Here it is shown that envy is rather triggered by different endowments of individuals and blame only by different preferences. In the discussion about (...) a UBI, this insight provides clarity about the normative basis of arguments against “free riders”. In terms of constitutional economics, envy can be combated through equality of opportunity, while blame can be contained through paternalism, at the expense of freedom of action. (shrink)

I argue that fitting envy plays a special role in safeguarding our happiness and flourishing. After presenting my theory of envy and its fittingness conditions, I contrast Kant’s view that envy is always unfitting with D’Arms and Jacobson’s defense of fitting envy as an evolutionarily-shaped response to a deep and wide human concern, that is, relative positioning. However, D’Arms and Jacobson don’t go far enough. First, I expand on their analysis of positional goodness, distinguishing between an (...) epistemic claim, according to which we use implicit or explicit comparison to know what position we occupy in a continuum of goodness, and thus to form judgments of goodness, and a metaphysical one, according to which much human goodness depends on implicit or explicit rankings and positionality. Second, I argue that fitting envy is not only intrinsically valuable qua fitting response to authentic goodness, but can be epistemically, morally and prudentially valuable. (shrink)