When Good Things Happen to Bad People

In an earlier post (When Bad Things Happen to Good People?), I drew attention to the following passage in Aristotle’s Ethics:

Righteous indignation is intermediate between grudging ill will and malice, all of these having to do with pain and pleasure at things that happen to one’s neighbors: the person who tends towards righteous indignation is distressed at those who do well undeservedly, while the grudging person exceeds him, being distressed at anyone’s doing well, and the malicious person is so deficient when it comes to being distressed that he is even pleased (Nicomachean Ethics 2.8.1108b1-5, Rowe and Broadie translation).

[1108b] (1) ne/mesij de\ meso/thj fqo/nou kai\ e)pixairekaki/aj, ei)si\ de\ peri\ lu/phn kai\ h(donh\n ta\j e)pi\ toi=j sumbai/nousi toi=j pe/laj ginome/naj: o( me\n ga\r nemeshtiko\j lupei=tai e)pi\ toi=j a)naci/wj eu)= pra/ttousin, o( de\ fqonero\j u(perba/llwn tou=ton e)pi\ (5) pa=si lupei=tai, o( d' e)pixaire/kakoj tosou=ton e)llei/pei tou= lupei=sqai w(/ste kai\ xai/rein.

And I posed the open question: Pleased by what?

It’s a question about what this vice of epichairekakia amounts to. The common view, followed by Rowe and Broadie in their comments, is that it’s being “pleased by the bad things that happen to others generally”, which is really equivalent to being “distressed by the good things that happen to others generally”, and so the two extremes of the virtue of righteous indignation would amount to the same thing—which is a problem.

One commentator on this blog, John Henry, was bold enough to attempt an answer. I promised my own view of it, which is the following. (If you want to make an attempt at an answer, read the earlier post here before going on!)
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To see what Aristotle is getting at, simply change the order of the phrases in which he introduces the extremes, thus:

Righteous indignation is intermediate between grudging ill will and malice, all of these having to do with pain and pleasure at things that happen to one’s neighbors: the person with epichairekakia is so deficient when it comes to being distressed that he is even pleased, the person who tends towards righteous indignation is distressed at those who do well undeservedly, while the grudging person exceeds him, being distressed at anyone’s doing well, and (Nicomachean Ethics 2.8.1108b1-5, Rowe and Broadie translation).

It then becomes clear that Aristotle is interpreting the word, epichairekakia, to mean not “taking pleasure in the bad things that happen to people (generally)” but rather “taking pleasure in (moral) badness”—and this makes sense, because kakia means ‘vice’ or ‘wickedness’. And this outlook is more plausibly taken as an extreme of someone who is upset when anyone, even good persons, do well.

If we want an image of that sort of person, we need look no farther than Polus in the Gorgias, who is so far from feeling distress at Archelaus’ success, that he relishes describing all the gory details to Socrates.

I said that this understanding of epichairekakia sheds much light on how Aristotle regards the Doctrine of the Mean, and maybe in a later post I’ll say more about that.