Fortunes-of-others emotions and justice

Despite the resurgent interest in the emotions, not much attention has focused specifically on those emotions that relate to others' deserved or undeserved fortunes. In this essay, I explore such emotions, logically and morally, with special emphasis on indignation and Schadenfreude. I argue that, when Aristotle's treatment of this family of emotions is stripped of certain anomalies, it gives a logically satisfying and morally suggestive, if perhaps overly rigid, account of all the relevant emotions and their relations. I use those insights to challenge some recent accounts of Schadenfreude and to focus instead on pleasure at deserved bad fortune as satisfied indignation. Furthermore, I suggest that the proper experience of fortunes-of-others emotions lays the ground for justice as a personal virtue, a virtue which, in turn, is required for full-scale social justice.