Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 20:40:31 -0400 (AST)
Subject: Cohen and the continuum

Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 14:08:43 -0800
From: Vaughan Pratt <pratt@cs.stanford.edu>

Not sure if Cohen feels exactly as I do about the continuum, but
Stephen D. Edington in his

        http://ftp2.wpine.com/uu/sermons/envy.html

commenting on Cohen sure does.

>I guess I could end on that note [definition of envy], but I'll expand
>upon it just a bit.  To stay with Ms. Cohen's work for just a couple
>more minutes, she offers a vice to virtue continuum, in the manner to
>which I've already referred, with respect to envy. It runs from
>"Destructive" to "Positive" envy. As she sees it, "positive envy" is
>not an oxymoron.  The stops along the way, on Ms. Cohen's continuum,
>are: The Wish to Harm, Self-Hatred, Resentment, Covetousness,
>Admiration, and Emulation.  A very interesting configuration, let me
>run it by you again: The Wish to Harm, Self-Hatred, Resentment,
>Covetousness, Admiration, and Emulation. The wish to do harm and
>self-hatred, and then admiration and emulation are all a part of the
>same "envy continuum", with envy actually giving way to positive
>admiration and emulation at some point.
>
>Where one comes down on that continuum depends much more on who it is
>that is doing the viewing, rather than what is actually out there to be
>seen. Anais Nin, a novelist, essayist, long-time friend and some-time
>lover of Henry Miller, once noted:
>
>We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

The last line is my position exactly on where to come down on the
continuum.  :)

Vaughan Pratt