Envy and Suspicion
The dangers of these attitudes
The Summer 2025 issue of Yuval Levin’s journal, National Affairs, has many interesting essays. Two in particular I wish to discuss.
Envy
Steven F. Hayward and Linda L. Denno write,
Envy is a near-universal element of the human condition. For centuries, it has been the subject of philosophical contemplation, moral teaching, and cultural proscriptions. It is therefore striking that the last major interdisciplinary study of the subject — Helmut Schoeck's Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour — was released almost 60 years ago.
As far as I know, there really is no other book like Schoeck’s. No similar book preceded it, and no similar book followed it.
Hayward and Denno write,
Envy is not the same as admiration, and has no healthy or salutary effects on the envious. Rather, as has been well understood for millennia, envy quickly curdles into destructive jealousy and resentment.
…Social scientists' silence on envy is no mere oversight. Today, envy is the silent partner of radical egalitarianism, and is ubiquitously leveraged in the promotion of "social justice."
…It is worth reflecting on whether Christianity's successful attempt to place the burden of suppressing envy on the envious rather than the envied was a critical factor in the unparalleled prosperity that accompanied Christianity's dominance of Western civilization. Many ancient and primitive societies prior to the advent of Christianity, as well as primitive societies still existing in relatively modern times isolated from Christianity's influence, suppressed the kind of innovation, creativity, and work ethic that lead to material success in order to avoid envy's destructiveness.
They conclude,
Culturally, we must strive to recover an understanding of envy that shows it for what it is: a deadly wickedness. Politically, we must reaffirm, with our founding fathers, that human equality is truly found in human nature, rather than in human paychecks.
Suspicion
The work of the late Paul Ricœur, a French philosopher and a central figure in 20th-century hermeneutics, offers an invaluable guide for uncovering the intellectual foundations of suspicion. Ricœur coined the term "hermeneutics of suspicion" to describe an approach to interpretation championed by three of modernity's giants: Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. While differing in areas of interest and philosophical positions, Ricœur pointed out that they shared a "decision to look upon the whole of consciousness primarily as 'false consciousness.'" In short, each of these thinkers posited that our own consciousness was fooling us with illusions, and thus hiding from us our own true beliefs, motivations, and intentions.
Sonnenfeld argues that this suspicion has become too prevalent among academic historians. The suspicious intellectual writes as if everyone else is blind to their own motives, yet somehow that one intellectual sees truth. It is asymmetric insight elevated to a dominant heuristic. Hard-nosed philosophers have pointed out that if Marx really was correct, then Marxism itself is just part of the ideological superstructure of a capitalist society. Or that if Freud was correct, then his own work must be nothing other than an unconscious reflection of his own Oedipus Complex.
Nietzsche's convincing assault on morality as an objective and constant truth has done more than contribute to the school of moral relativism. His analysis of society purported to reveal its ingrained hypocrisy, the idea that moral discourse is in fact a thin veneer hiding a maneuver for power. This instilled a deep suspicion of all attempts to act or speak in the name of morality, but it has rarely generated critical self-assessment. Instead, it has taught many in the West to view those who claim to act from moral conviction at best with wry amusement (because they lack our sophisticated awareness of the absence of moral virtue), but more often with sneering skepticism.
Sonnenfeld says that historians should steer away from extreme suspicion of the motives of historical figures. He calls for “compassionate history,” which includes intellectual charity.
While charity encourages us to assume rational coherence and, as I have suggested, self-perceived righteousness, the principle of humanity instructs us to view people as coherent entities. In the context of history, this means that one should interpret historical persons and their actions as an integrated whole — not as a monochromatic tapestry, or one devoid of disharmony and contradiction, but as one unified tapestry nonetheless. Approaching a subject in this manner means that a negatively perceived statement cannot be enough to characterize a person or his view on a given question. At the same time, it stops us from sinking into the swamp of simpering, bottomless sympathy…Charitable does not mean gullible
The topic of suspicion made me think of Robin Hanson, whose body of work includes Showing that you care: The Evolution of Health Altruism and The Elephant in the Brain, co-authored with Kevin Simler. I engaged ChatGPT to compare and contrast Hanson and Simler with Paul Ricoeur. (Follow the link to see the entire conversation, as well as a better-formatted version of the excerpt below.)
Theme Ricoeur Hanson & Simler Purpose of suspicion A stage in a process A primary lens for uncovering toward understanding hidden motives View of human Mixed: layered, Largely self-interested motives conflicted, open to and strategically hidden growth Role of ideals Potentially authentic Mostly rationalizations - and worth recovering for signaling behavior Ethical outlook Hopeful, oriented toward Descriptive, amoral, meaning and trust indifferent to moral claims End goal Wisdom and reconciliation Understanding and prediction of behavior
It seems to me that in the current media environment, both envy and suspicion have become supercharged. We’re all steeped in resentment. We’re all conspiracy theorists. Can we get past that?
Arnold - Everything you say here is true and important. There are some additional words which may assist you. Envy is also called 'coveting' and is a main outgrowth of 'mimetic desire.' This links your observations both to the traditional framing of the decalogue but also Girard/Thiel. This gives you another set of social science texts to draw from. Envy can be linked with jealousy, but jealousy is actually ambiguous traditionally - and might be a virtue. One would need a history of usage. The genius of mimetic desire is to show how diversity fits to make envy both inevitable and so toxic.
It's great to compare it to admiration - and also fold in adoration. Keeping an eye on the positive helps balance reflection.
It dampens suspicion. There is a kind of satisfaction and complacency that sees no need for change; but always looking for problems is unhealthy. Finding people to celebrate and amplify - who are themselves looking for people to celebrate and amplify - giving them the honor due them and holding them accountable for their own potential by looking for the good fruit that comes from them - is the opposite of suspicion. It embodies hope and increases trust as we learn where to look for goodness.
The best target of suspicion is ourselves, not each other. As for what relationship we can have with people in history - we should be very wary of our parasocial relationships with nearly fictitious characters (from history, or celebrities, or literary fiction). We cannot interrogate those people (in that formal sense, not the law enforcement sense either) and we cannot build relationships with them, not like we can with our neighbors. Everything is mediated and nothing is authentic. The study of history and the reading of literature are both important and influential, but it is no substitute for a relationship and should not be an attempt at soothing loneliness, validating self-worth, exercising virtue, or many of the other important functions of actual personal relationships.
In my humanities graduate program I heard endlessly about the "hermeneutic of suspicion." There it was always to ask, "Who benefits from this text, this action, etc." (I used Ricoeur's fine work on metaphor in my dissertation.) But the question never asked is: "Who benefits from the constant application of the hermeneutic of suspicion?" At the time my answer was, the university professorate. It was a very handy tool to demonstrate one's moral and intellectual superiority with zero self-examination.