When Bad Things Happen to Other People by John Portmann

Does taking pleasure in the pain of another always represent malice? Or can this emotion reflect a thoughtful respect for justice? And what about humor, which often revolves around a "comeuppance" that those who laugh see as trivial (though the laughter's target may disagree)? These are the sorts of questions Portmann takes on in his nuanced analysis of schadenfreude. The subject has been debated by philosophers over the generations; Portmann engages with them, from Kant and Freud to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. He draws on literature, too, exploring the positions of Kafka and Dickens, Umberto Eco and Toni Morrison, and applies his normative notion of schadenfreude to current debates on subjects such as capital punishment, media violence, and the cult of celebrity. Portmann defends schadenfreude but urges attention to its basis in "power structures and social forces through which our characters both take shape and shape the lives of those around us." A demanding but productively provocative analysis