TY - CHAP

T1 - Envy, Racial Hatred, and Self-Deception

AU - Salice, Alessandro

AU - Montes Sánchez, Alba

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Envy is an unpleasant, culturally vilified, and self-threatening emotion that, in many circumstances, tends to mask itself. In other words, due to various factors, envy often exerts some psychological pressure towards self-deception. A domain where this pressure plays an important and underappreciated role is the political and, more concretely, the realm of racism and identity-based discrimination. Despite historical, empirical, and anecdotal evidence indicating that envy can lead to racial hatred, the link between these two emotions, and the role that self-deception plays in this link, remains under-investigated and poorly understood. This chapter aims at remedying this situation by offering an account of the link between envy and racial hatred. After reviewing the evidence available in support of this emotional link, we elaborate on an account of envy we developed in a previous work. We then explain how, why, and under which circumstances envy can transmute into racial hatred by claiming that this transformation process qualifies as an “emotional mechanism”. We conclude by arguing that the envy-racial hatred emotional mechanism is based on self-deception and, as such, is an immature coping mechanism set in motion by the subject to avoid a negative sense of self.

AB - Envy is an unpleasant, culturally vilified, and self-threatening emotion that, in many circumstances, tends to mask itself. In other words, due to various factors, envy often exerts some psychological pressure towards self-deception. A domain where this pressure plays an important and underappreciated role is the political and, more concretely, the realm of racism and identity-based discrimination. Despite historical, empirical, and anecdotal evidence indicating that envy can lead to racial hatred, the link between these two emotions, and the role that self-deception plays in this link, remains under-investigated and poorly understood. This chapter aims at remedying this situation by offering an account of the link between envy and racial hatred. After reviewing the evidence available in support of this emotional link, we elaborate on an account of envy we developed in a previous work. We then explain how, why, and under which circumstances envy can transmute into racial hatred by claiming that this transformation process qualifies as an “emotional mechanism”. We conclude by arguing that the envy-racial hatred emotional mechanism is based on self-deception and, as such, is an immature coping mechanism set in motion by the subject to avoid a negative sense of self.

U2 - 10.4324/9781003310945-12

DO - 10.4324/9781003310945-12

M3 - Book chapter

T3 - Routledge studies in contemporary philosophy

SP - 188

EP - 208

BT - Emotional Self-Knowledge

A2 - Montes Sánchez, Alba

A2 - Salice, Alessandro

PB - Routledge

CY - New York

T2 - Emotional Self-Knowledge

Y2 - 4 May 2022 through 6 May 2022

ER -