Misery Loves Company

There is a genre of moral philosophy for which I have particular affection, in which a thinker subjects an aspect of ordinary life to rigorous scrutiny, revealing it to be more puzzling or more profound that is typically acknowledged.

There’s Daniela Dover on condemning others for wrongs of which one is guilty oneself: “the pot calling the pan burnt-arse.” There’s Dan Moller on promising to love someone “till death do us part”—knowing the statistics on divorce. And there is Julia Nefsky on the proverbial wisdom that “misery loves company.” (Additional readings in this vein are welcome: if you have one to suggest, please leave a comment!)

Nefsky states her puzzle as “a tension between two ideas”:

(1) that it seems fine, appropriate and not at all vicious, for someone going through a hard time to find it emotionally helpful to hear another person’s similar story, and

(2) that one should be pained or saddened by the hardship of another person.

We draw comfort when someone confides that they …