argumentative essay about jealousy

Essays About Jealousy: Top 11 Examples and Writing Prompts

Jealousy is an undesirable yet persistent feeling throughout our lives; if you want to write essays about jealousy, read the essay examples and writing prompts featured in our guide.

It is only human to envy what others have from time to time: their money, house, and relationships. However, there is only so far you can go until jealousy becomes toxic and detrimental to your well-being. We must control our jealousy, stop thinking of others’ fortune, and focus on ourselves. 

Despite its negative effects, jealousy is an intrinsic feeling in humanity, inspiring writers, artists, and directors throughout the centuries. This feeling is at the core of some of the most fantastic literature of all time: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Othello , William Golding’s Lord of the Flies , and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . 

You can start by reading these examples to write insightful essays about jealousy. 

1. Jealousy Is a Wasted Emotion by Joshua Fields Millburn

2. listen to what your jealousy is telling you by vivian nunez, 3. jealousy, envy are reflections of insecurity by john stathas, 4.  lenten reflection -how envy hurts us by james sano.

• 5. ​​Why I Refuse to Be Jealous of My Partners’ Exes by Nancy Einhart

Writing Prompts on Essays about Jealousy

1. what is jealousy , 2. what causes jealousy, 3. how jealousy can affect your mental health, 4. how can you control your jealousy, 5. jealousy in literature and popular culture, 6. your experience with jealousy.

“The easiest way to turn jealousy off is to stop questioning other people’s intentions. We often get jealous because we think a person meant one thing by their actions, when they meant something totally different. And the truth is that you’ll never know someone’s real intent, so it’s a waste of time to question it.

In his essay, Millburn writes about how to avoid jealousy and its adverse effects. It enforces standards in which we all try to be a certain way, free from individuality, and is terrible for people’s emotional health. But unlike most other emotions, we can “turn it off.” Millburn says we should stop being so critical of others’ intentions and give them the benefit of the doubt. 

“But I’ve slowly made peace with the fact that my jealousy will always be a part of me. I’ve started finding solace in this envy. Lately, for example, I’ve been feeling jealous of those who have childhood homes they can go back to. I wish my boyfriend and I and our dog could go see my mom and have her fold us into her home while we figured out the next steps of our lives.”

Nunez takes a different approach to jealousy in this essay; rather than trying to purge it, she writes that we should let it guide us as with all other emotions. We are only human, after all. According to her, jealousy is a reflection of our most vulnerable side, and we should not try to purge it if we want to be healthy. Nunez gives examples from her childhood in which ignoring her jealousy affected her badly.

“If envy is your problem, examine what is that all about.  What is missing in your life that causes you to envy something of another? What in you needs to be added or shored up? A healthy person does not allow envy to sully one’s soul.”

In a way echoing the statements of Nunez, Stathas discusses how jealousy reveals one’s fear, insecurity, and anxiety. However, he believes jealousy and envy can ruin your life if left unchecked. One possible solution is talking to the person inciting such jealousy and asking for reassurance; however, this is not for everyone, and it can be enough to focus on oneself merely. 

“It is interesting that other sins promise at least some sort of short-term returns to us, but envy offers none.  Envy can corrode our hearts, weaken our minds, and destroy our peace.  It only brings sadness and anger, and we lose our orientation towards Christ, who died of self for love of others.  Envy is the opposite of love, as true love is an unconditional willing of the good for another. ‘Love your neighbor, as yourself.’”

Sano writes his essay from a religious perspective, discussing jealousy in the context of the Bible and sin. Jealousy or envy is a toxic trait that makes us unhappy about others’ achievements and is considered a grave sin. Sano gives some examples of parables about envy and writes that if we learn to love others as we love ourselves, we can get rid of the envy in our hearts. 

5. ​​ Why I Refuse to Be Jealous of My Partners’ Exes by Nancy Einhart

“When I see people consumed by jealousy about their partners’ pasts, I feel bad for them. Jealously doesn’t make your relationship more stable or build trust in your relationship; in fact, it can erode trust in a poisonous way. So resolve to fight your jealous instinct, because your life will be fuller without it, and you might even make a friend along the way.”

In her essay, Einhart details possible reasons for her to be jealous and why she actively rejects jealousy in her life. Rather than being jealous of her partner’s relationships with his exes, she is grateful that these people made her partner into who he is today. She also recalls her divorced parents’ friendship with each others’ exes or new partners, as well as her friendship with her ex-boyfriend’s wife. Jealousy is a waste of time and energy that could better be directed toward strengthening a relationship. 

An excellent essay to write can talk about your thoughts on jealousy. First, define jealousy, then reflect on your experiences with this feeling and what it means to you- when have you been jealous before? How did it make you feel? You can also briefly touch on its causes and effects, but do not go too in-depth. Do not base your essay on the experiences of others; it should reflect your own experiences. 

From happy relationships to a new car to outstanding academic achievements- there are many possible causes of jealousy. Your essay can examine why people may be jealous and how they relate to one another. If you wish, give examples of instances in which others were jealous for reasons mentioned in your essay. 

Most of the time, jealousy is destructive to one’s mental health. Research on the adverse effects of jealousy: in what ways can jealousy hinder you? Write about how jealousy can affect your well-being and give concrete examples. Be sure to cite credible sources, as this topic has been the subject of much research. 

Since jealousy affects your mental health negatively, it is essential to be able to resist or at least control it. Your essay can advise readers on regulating jealousy or keeping it from consuming you. Read the essay examples above for different perspectives on jealousy and how to respond to it. 

As stated previously, jealousy is a theme in many famous works of literature. Choose a novel, play, movie, or television program in which jealousy plays an important role. Explain how jealousy is present and how it impacts the plot and characters. Cite quotes from your chosen work for a more solid evidence base in your essay. 

It is only human to feel jealous from time to time. Write about an experience where you were jealous of something or someone- do you regret it? Reflect on this experience, retell the story, and explain how you felt: what or who were you jealous of? Would you do anything differently now? Answer these questions for an engaging and inspiring essay.

Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays . If you’re still stuck, check out our available resource for essay writing topics .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Jealousy Essay- Causes, Effects and Handeling Techniques

In this Post, you will read an Persuasive Jealousy Essay. Its a human attribute. Also you will know its definition, causes, effects and handeling techniques.

So, lets understant Jealousy…

Table of Contents

Definition of Jealousy

Jealousy is defined as a complex emotion that includes feelings, from fear of abandonment to rage and humiliation. It hits people of all ages, sexes and sexual orientation, and most often wakes up when a person perceives a threat to a valuable relationship from a third party. The danger can be real or imagined.

Nobody likes to be jealous. However, jealousy is an unavoidable emotion that most of us experience. The problem with suspicion is not that it occurs occasionally, but what it does to us when we don’t catch it.

The experience of what happens when jealousy overpowers us or shapes the way we feel about ourselves and the world can be frightening. There must understand where the resentments come and how should deal it in a healthy , adaptive way in many areas of our lives like interpersonal relationships, through careers to personal goals.

Causes and Types of Jealousy

Studies have shown that larger jealousy correlates with smaller self-esteem. “Many of us are often ignorant of the rudimentary disgrace that lives in us because it routinely arrives at considering us self-critically. The shame in our past can strongly affect the extent to which we feel jealous and uncertain in the present.

Dr. Lisa Firestone, author of “Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice,” define, “critical inner voice” is a form of harmful speech. It consolidates destructive thoughts and feelings, forcing us to compare, evaluate, and judge ourselves (and often others) with high accuracy. This is one reason learning to deal with jealousy is such impacts.

This voice can fuel our sense of jealousy, filling our heads with critical and suspicious commentary. What are the compelling inner views tells us that our situation is often harder to bear itself?

Our partner’s rejection or betrayal is painful, but what often hurt us is all the terrible things that remember about ourselves after this event. “You are such a fool. Did you think you could be happy ? – You’ll finish yourself. You should never faith anyone again. “

To illustrate how this internal enemy feeds our negative feelings about jealousy, we’ll look closely at two types of envy: romantic resentment and competitive jealousy.

Although these two forms of jealousy often overlap. Considering them can help us better understand how they affect different areas of our lives and how to best cope with it.

Relationship jealousy

The fundamental reality is to ease relationships when people don’t get too jealous. The more we can master our sense of resentment and distinguish it from our partner, the better. Remember that our jealousy often comes from uncertainty within ourselves.

The feeling we are condemned to cheating, hurting, or rejecting. Unless we can handle this feeling within ourselves, we will probably fall victim to feelings of jealousy, distrust, or uncertainty in any relationship, regardless of the circumstances.

Competitive jealousy

Although it may seem pointless or illogical, it is natural to want what others have and to feel competitive. However, the way we use these sentiments is essential for our grade of approval and happiness.

If we use these sentiments to assist our inner critic, demolish ourselves or others, this is a destructive pattern with demoralizing effects. However, if we do not let these feelings fall into the hands of our critical inner voice, we can use them to recognize what we want.

Some more reasons of Jealousy

These negative feelings about us come from early experiences in our lives. We often accept the feelings that our parents or important guardians had towards us or each other. Then, unconsciously, we recreate or react to the old, known dynamics in our relationships.

For example, if we felt rejected as children, we can easily see our partner as ignoring us. We can choose a partner who is more elusive or even engages in behaviors that would push our partner away.

However, regardless of our unique experience, we all have this internal critic to some extent. The area to which this fear effects, how threatened we would explore in a relationship. Like a sadistic trainer, our critical inner voice tells us not to trust or be too sensitive.

It reminds us we are unloved and we don’t feel like having an affair. This whisper plants the seeds of doubt, suspicion, and uncertainty. “Why does she work late?” “Why does she choose her friends before me?” “What does she even do when I’m away?” “Why does he pay so much attention to what he says?”

Those of us, well renowned with how jealousy works, understand that all too often these ideas will gradually sprout and bloom into much larger, more in-depth attacks on ourselves and/or our partner.

“She doesn’t want to be with you. There must be someone else. – He’s losing interest. I want to break free from you. – Who would listen to you? You are so boring.

Effects of Jealousy

It is okay, even healthy, to afford a competitive thought. It may feel good when we allow ourselves to feel temporarily without judgment or an action plan. However, if we think or turn this thought into self-criticism or an attack on another person, we will be hurt. If we feel overreaction or jealousy, we can do a few things.

Think about specific events that make you feel agitated. Is this a friend financially successful ? A former dating someone else? A colleague who speaks at meetings?

Ask yourself what critical internal voices appear. What thoughts evoke these jealous feelings? Do you use these feelings of jealousy to put off?

Do they make you feel insignificant, unsuccessful, incapable, etc.? Is there a pattern or motif in these thoughts that seem familiar?

Think about the more profound implications and beginnings of these thoughts: Do you feel some pressure to achieve a particular thing? Should you be something? What would this mean for you? Is this related to your past?

We can have more compassion for us and trial to hover judgments that lead us to insecurity.

How to deal with jealousy?

1. think about what is waking up.

Daniel Siegel applies the acronym SIFT to explain how we can move the impressions, feelings, images, and thoughts that arise when we think about specific problems in our lives. We should try to do it when we feel jealous.

We can think about what feelings, pictures, and thoughts arouse. Does the scenario release something old – a dynamic or long-term negative self-perception?

The more we can combine these emotions or exaggerated reactions with the past events that created them, the more we can feel in our jealous situation.

2. Calm down and remain vulnerable

No matter how jealous we are, we can recover and relax. It can do this first by acknowledging our strong sentiments with compassion. Remember that no issue how powerful seem, our feelings overtake in waves, the first building, and then falling.

It is possible to accept and recognize our jealousy without acting on others. We can learn tools to calm down before the reaction, for example, a walk or deep breaths.

It is much easier to calm down in this way when we refuse to indulge in the angry words of our internal critic. So it is necessary to learn how to do it. When we do this, we can defend ourselves and the people we care about, remain sensitive and open in our relationships.

3. Don’t react

Our critical inner voice advises us to take actions that can hurt us in the long run. When it makes us jealous, it can tell us to give up or stop pursuing what we want. This can lead to self-protection, blow up, or punish someone whom we hate.

If we’re in a relationship, it can tell us to be icy or hit our partner. When we do this, we create the dynamics fear. We can hurt and undermine our partners’ feelings for us and arouse their feelings of distrust.

We may unwittingly encourage them to become more closed, less open to their feelings, thoughts, and actions, which then increases our feelings of suspicion and jealousy.

4. Look for your sense of security

The best it can do is control on feeling stable and secure within ourself. We must do the work to beat our internal jealous thoughts.

Criticize and believe that everything is excellent, even alone. We don’t need the love of a particular person to think that we’re loved. People are full of flaws and limitations, and no one can give us what we need 100 percent of the time.

That is why it is essential to practice compassion and learn how to oppose our internal critic. This does not mean closing people or cutting off what we want.

It means embracing our lives with all our heart while being convinced that we are strong enough to fail or lose. Regardless of everything, we can handle emerging emotions.

5. Stay competitive

Many people don’t agree with ​​competing, but it’s not about being the best, but about your personal goal to be the best. This means we feel ourselves and accept the qualities that will serve us in pursuing what we want.

If we wish to respect us, we must be attentive and thoughtful in our interactions. If we feel the consistent love of our partner, we must commit to engaging in love deeds every day. If we keep our desire to act honestly and follow our goals, we win the most crucial battle we face

6. Unload your sorrows

When something like jealousy takes control, it’s essential to find the right person to talk and a healthy way of expressing what we feel. People who support us positively and help to stop us from chewing or deeply immersed in our sorrows are friends with whom we want to talk about our jealousy.

We all have friends who are a little too tired when we talk about specific topics, and may not be the best friends to look for when we feel aroused and nervous. It should try to find people who will support us, staying on the right path, and being the people we want to be.

Giving up to these friends is fine as far as releasing our irrational thoughts and feelings while acknowledging that they are exaggerated and ridiculous. This process works when it frees us from feelings and allows us to go further and take reasonable actions. If you are jealous, it is wise to seek help from a therapist. It will help us understand our feelings and control them,

In a relationship, maintain open, honest communication with our partner. If we hope they will trust them and that they will have ours, we must listen to what they say without defending ourselves or giving judgment.

This open communication is not about releasing our uncertainty on our partner, but about enabling ourselves to be friendly and connected, even when we feel insecure or jealous. This helps our partner do the same.

You need some emotional maturity to deal with many feelings around jealousy. We need to face our critical internal voice and any uncertainties it generates. You also need the willpower to step back and resist our impulsive, jealous reactions.

However, when we support this power ourselves, we realize that we are much stronger than we think. By discovering how to deal with jealousy, we become more protected in us and our relationships.

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What Jealousy Is Trying to Tell You

Jealousy feels so unpleasant. but like any emotion, it gives us information..

Posted June 26, 2020 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

• Understanding Jealousy
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Jealousy involves fear with worrisome thoughts of a potential loss. Commonly, jealousy is an emotional reaction activated by the actual or anticipated interest in another person by someone we care about. When a third party threatens the bond that exists in a partnership, we may feel insecure, rejected, worried, angry, or self-doubting, among a host of other undesirable feelings.

The emotion of jealousy is a derivative of shame . It informs us of an obstacle to the connection between ourselves and a loved one, alerting us to a threat to the relationship. The potential disconnection experienced in jealousy often involves a social comparison. When you experience jealousy, you may assume that someone else is receiving the attention or adoration that you want for yourself. In some way, the other person appears more desirable.

This is the drama of shame and pride where diminishing pride dominates. As a result, you may employ one or more of the typical coping and defensive responses to the shame of jealousy, which can involve withdrawal, avoidance, attacking yourself, or attacking the other. [1]

A response to jealously that attacks others may result in aggressive and offensive behavior. You may want to hurt the person who is a jealous rival and behave in ways that will control the person whose bond you fear losing. Such approach inclinations may manifest in behaviors aimed at breaking up the threatening liaison or re-establishing the primary relationship. [2]

Becoming avoidant when you are jealous, for instance, may lead you to abuse alcohol or drugs to relieve your feelings. Through withdrawal, you may hope that the person you have a relationship with will notice and re-establish your bond. Attacking oneself may lead to all kinds of self-injurious behaviors. Although defensive responses to jealousy represent attempts to protect self-esteem and preserve bond that is perceived as broken, they can result in depression or loneliness .

Jealousy can blind us. A perceived threat to a relationship can induce anxiety that leads to insecurity, making us sensitive to negative emotional cues and affecting how we see the world. [3] Moreover, uncertainty about a relationship and the fear of shame can lead to an obsessive preoccupation with its status. If there is not enough psychological safety in a relationship, or if you have experienced childhood loss or abandonment that interferes with your sense of safety, you may have a hard time working through an experience of shame-based jealousy.

Many situations where feelings of jealousy are triggered may have little to do with someone else's qualities or the interest a partner may have in another person. Instead, they may have more to do with one’s own self-perception that becomes amplified by a partner's behavior around a third party. Since jealousy involves a comparison, the person who experiences the emotion is left thinking they do not measure up.

Emotions evolved to inform us. Experiencing the toxicity of jealousy provides a rare opportunity to learn. We can ask ourselves some questions, rather than become hindered by our response to the emotion. For example, are you perceiving that you lack some quality that you would like to develop for yourself? Are you experiencing jealousy because you want something more from your relationship than the relationship can provide? How do you perceive yourself and what you are doing in your life compared to others?

Jealousy offers us an opportunity to look within, consider what we want for ourselves, reflect on how we want to be treated by others, and give thought to what we are going to do about the information.

Facebook image: Diego Cervo/Shutterstock

[1] Nathanson, D. (1992). Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self . New York: Norton.

[2] Harris, C. (2003). A review of sex differences in sexual jealousy, including self-report data, psychophysiological responses, interpersonal violence, and morbid jealousy. Personality and Social Psychology Review , 7, 102–128.

[3] Most, S., Laurencau, J., Graber, E., Belcher, A., & Smith, C. (2010). Blind Jealousy? Romantic insecurity increases emotion-induced failures of visual perceptions. Emotion , 10, 250-256.

Mary C. Lamia , Ph.D. , is a clinical psychologist in Marin County, California.

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Jealousy Revisited: Recent Philosophical Work on a Maligned Emotion

• Open access
• Published: 18 December 2015
• Volume 19 , pages 741–754, ( 2016 )

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• Kristján Kristjánsson 1  

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Taking as its starting point a previous work by the author which reviewed early philosophical sources on jealousy and proposed both a conceptual and moral account of this much-maligned emotion, the present article reviews the relevant philosophical literature from the last decade or so. Most noticeable is how scarce those sources still are. Special attention is given, however, to a new conceptual model proposed by Purshouse and Fredericks which rejects the standard architectonic of jealousy as a three-party compound emotion. While the essential contours of the new model are rejected, Fredericks is shown to offer some powerful misgivings about putative instrumentalist defences of jealousy. In addition to this new model, a number of other recent writings about jealousy – historical, conceptual and moral – are subjected to critical scrutiny in this overview article.

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1 Introduction

Despite the recent proliferation of writings about the conceptual and moral contours of various common emotions, jealousy has failed to excite enduring interest in philosophical circles. Yet, in the last decade or so, three volumes have appeared, written by philosophers, exploring jealousy and its associated emotion of envy in an historical – namely, ancient Greek – context (Konstan and Rutter 2003 ; Konstan 2006 : esp. chaps. 5 and 11; Sanders 2014 ). A recent Google Scholar search indicates that two monographs on the conceptual and moral contours of jealousy have appeared post-2000: one written by the present author a while ago (Kristjánsson 2002 ), the other just published (Toohey 2014 ). Moreover, at least one book chapter (Roberts 2003 : chap. 3.9), one thorough journal article (Purshouse 2004 ) and one significant PhD thesis (Fredericks 2012 ) have contributed to the sporadic philosophical discourse. I explore those contributions at various junctures below.

More attention has, historically, been paid to jealousy within the social sciences, although even there, complaints are still made about jealousy being ‘one of the least studied emotions in the field of affective science’ (Panksepp 2013 : 101). That complaint notwithstanding, discussions of jealousy within psychology seem to have become more nuanced of late than they were for most of the 20th century when the prevailing discourse was preoccupied with sexual jealousy, arguably the least philosophically complex and morally interesting form of jealousy (as explained in the following section). Although the equation of jealousy with sexual jealousy persists in some psychological circles (see e.g. the 2008 volume edited by Wurmser and Jarass), the recent Handbook of jealousy , edited by Hart and Legerstee ( 2013 ), focuses on developmental aspects of the emotion as they appear, for instance, in the context of sibling jealousy: a considerably richer line of inquiry. The psychological literature on jealousy deserves a review of its own – not least by way of philosophical critique – but I focus in this article on philosophical sources and propose to devote a separate article to the psychological literature (Kristjánsson K 2016 A philosophical critique of a psychological study of emotion: The case of jealousy (paper under construction)). Perhaps yet another article would need to be written about jealousy from a neurological perspective, as it is known to appear in diverse forms of dementia and other cerebral disease. Disciplinary pigeon-holing of this sort is not ideal, as we have learnt in recent years that research on particular emotions is most likely to progress when philosophers and scientists engage one another in dialogue and provide grist for each other’s mills (see e.g. the forthcoming edited volume by Carr 2016 , on gratitude). However, I am forced into the philosophical corner here for reasons of space.

The specific aim of this article is thus to review critically the recent literature on jealousy in philosophy. Having explored the 20th century discourse in an earlier work (Kristjánsson 2002 ), I limit the purview here mostly to outputs published 2002 or later. For expository purposes, I use my earlier work as a springboard of the discussion, as I hope it will be helpful for readers to see how more recent writing compare and contrast with tentative conclusions reached about jealousy over a decade ago. Before turning to the most recent writings, it is instructive, however, to provide some philosophical and historical backdrops.

2 The Philosophical Background

In my previous work on jealousy (Kristjánsson 2002 : chap. 5), I set out to elucidate responses to three distinct questions: of (1) what jealousy is (or can most serviceably be understood to be); (2) when, if ever, and then to what extent it can be deemed a rational reaction; and (3) when, if ever, and then to what extent it can be deemed morally justifiable .

I proposed a characterisation of jealousy in response to question (1) that – while requiring considerable regimentation and tightening of ordinary language – was meant to respect, as far as possible, the intuitions of discriminating, critically minded English speakers; hence not serving as a mere stipulation of meaning. This conceptualisation took as its point of departure two common conceptions from the philosophical literature, harking back to Dan Farrell’s ( 1980 ) agenda-setting article: that jealousy is necessarily a painful three-party emotion, and that it is a compound emotion, made up of other, more ‘basic’ (in a logical, if not necessarily a psychological, sense) emotions. In compound emotions, the more basic emotions are not only experienced simultaneously but rather feed into one another and make up a unique whole. Developing those conceptions further led to a characterisation of jealousy as a unique composite of envy, anger and righteous indignation.

In jealousy, according to this proposed characterisation, A is jealous of B because of a favour that A conceives B to have received or be about to receive from a third party, C. More specifically, A envies B and wants to take the relevant favour away from B. However, A envies B for a special reason, namely that A thinks A deserves the favour as much or more than B; hence A is righteously indignant (in Aristotle’s standard sense of indignation as pain at undeserved good fortune) that B, rather than A, is getting this favour (exclusively or supplementarily) from C. Moreover, A is angry at C for C’s unjustified differential treatment or favouritism. In logical terms, this means that jealousy has a quadratic structure; it necessarily incorporates four variables. A is jealous of B because of x with respect to C – where A (the jealous person) is the subject of the emotion; x (the perceived undeserved favouring of B over A by C) is its general object ; B (the ‘rival’ or ‘interloper’) is its specific target ; and C (A’s desired benefactor of the favour) is its source .

This characterisation indicates that jealousy belongs to a category of conceptually and psychologically complex self-conscious emotions which include oneself (or, more theoretically speaking, one’s own ‘self’) as an intentional and attitudinal object (cf. Kristjánsson 2010a : chap. 4). I leave out of consideration here the interesting possibility that jealousy can be felt vicariously, on behalf of someone else – even a large social group – considered to be on the receiving end of C’s differential treatment. I assume that in such cases, A identifies fully enough with the perceived victims for them to form part of A’s own self-concept. Furthermore, jealousy belongs on this account to another large category, of desert-based emotions: emotions that run deeper, developmentally and logically, than those focused on justice qua institutional entitlement (cf. Kristjánsson 2006 , 2015 ).

The appeal of this characterisation lies, arguably, in the fact that if one removes an emotion from the compound or adds one to it, the resulting emotion compound can, more usefully, be described as something other than jealousy. For example, if A believes that B truly deserves the favour more than A, or does not think of it in terms of just deserts at all, A may be better described as sad, disappointed or despairing rather than jealous. The reason for this is that jealousy appears not to be a passive emotion of mere resignation but a call for repairs, or at least a statement of the deservingness of such repairs, even if they are beyond hope (cf. Toohey 2014 ). Of course, this does not mean that A cannot be sad, disappointed and despairing about the relative lack of favouring by C in addition to being jealous. Alternatively, if A is not angry at C, but is exclusively focused on the undeservingness of B’s relative fortune and how to deprive B of it, the emotion is simply one of two-party indignant envy (cf. Roberts 2003 : 264). Or if we add a primary focus on B’s perceived unsavoury efforts in ‘luring’ C away from A, the emotion becomes one of anger at B, rather than (or in addition to) jealousy.

Despite this ‘appeal’ of the characterisation in question, it remains inherently controversial in philosophical circles, as becomes clear in the section ‘The recent work on jealousy’ below. Not only is it controversial which specific emotions make up the emotion compound, some philosophers even reject the three-party, compound architectonic across the board as we see later. Regarding the first controversy (about the ingredients in the compound), a very odd conceptualisation about the difference between jealousy and envy has crept into some philosophical writings. It assumes that ‘in envy we wish to obtain something that the other has and in jealousy we fear losing something that we already have to someone else’ (Ben-Ze’ev 2013 : 41). I find it difficult to understand how jealousy can fail to be envious; if A does not resent C’s relative favouring of B and want to take it away from B, then a core element in the jealousy compound is missing. Let us focus rather on the fear factor. On the conceptualisation proposed at the beginning of this section, for jealousy to be rational, A must have a reason to believe that B has taken, or is going to take, away C’s favouring. It is not enough that A fears that this may possibly happen. Briefly put, fearing that you may, at a future point in time, find a reason to be jealous is not to experience the emotion of jealousy, but simply to be fearful or suspicious.

Someone might complain that I am being too constrictive here. After all, a distinction between prospective deterrent shame and retrospective post-mortem shame is well entrenched in the shame literature (Kristjánsson 2014 ); should we not also, as Rydell and Bringle ( 2007 ) suggest, distinguish between two kinds of jealousy: suspicious and reactive? There is a stark disanalogy here, however. Prospective shame is still shame. It is not simply fear of doing something shameful in the future but, rather, shame over the very fact that one considers a possible shameful action as an option here and now. In contrast, so-called suspicious or anticipatory jealousy is not jealousy here and now but fear that some deprival of favouring will happen in the future that will give one a reason to experience the relevant composite of anger, indignation and envy (Kristjánsson 2002 : 149–150). That said, A could be suspicious without any good reason that C has already started to favour B; in that case, A is experiencing genuine jealousy, albeit irrational, not only fear of future jealousy. Notably, careful philosophical analyses of jealousy by people like Roberts ( 2003 ) avoid the conflation of fear and jealousy. Roberts talks about the favour being construed as ‘in the process of being lost to the rival, or as already so lost, or as about to be lost’ (2003: 257). Moreover, the most painful experiences of jealousy surely involve cases where there is no hope of a reversal of fortunes – not when one has got something that one still hopes to retain – namely cases where C’s favouring has been irrevocably lost over to B.

In response to question (2), about the putative rationality of jealousy, we need to begin by avoiding the common ‘moralistic fallacy’ of equating moral with rational appropriateness (D’Arms and Jacobson 2000 ). The rationality of an emotion is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of its moral justifiability. Indeed, almost all philosophical emotion theorists will agree with that assumption, apart from small pockets of hard rationalists, who equate the rational with the moral, and hard sentimentalists, who deem emotions incorrigible and self-justifying (see Kristjánsson 2010b ). Irrational emotions are either illogical or they involve epistemological missteps such as disregard for facts, negligent and hasty judgements or purposeful self-deceptions. If a case of jealousy involves none of those missteps and the emotions of envy, anger and indignation are intelligible in the given case, individually and collectively, the jealousy can be deemed rational. Nevertheless, it remains an open question if it should be felt morally , all things considered, in the given context. Notice that it is not necessary for the rationality of jealousy that C does in fact favour B over A; it suffices that A has good reasons for judging/construing that to be the case. Speaking more generally, then, the rationality of an emotion has to do with ‘reasonable warrant’ rather than ‘truth’.

The reason why romantic or sexual jealousy makes for such a morally (as distinct from psychologically) unexciting case – even if it may, historically, constitute the linguistic archetype of jealousy – is that it seems to fall flat on the first hurdle of appropriateness, that of rationality. The sexually jealous person overlooks the fact that love is not a matter of will and no one deserves to be sexually attractive to another. We cannot decide to love someone (romantically/sexually) because we think the person deserves or owes our love. That said, A may well rationally object to C’s breach of commitment in favouring B sexually/romantically over A if A and C are already in a relationship with explicit (as in marriage) or implicit (as in stable relationship) commitments to one another – or A may rationally bear a grudge against B for tempting C, if A has good reasons for holding that to be the case. But in the first of those scenarios the emotion in question is not jealousy but rather anger towards C, and in the second it is anger towards B – typically mixed with envy (cf. Roberts 2003 : 261). This is not to say that genuine jealousy cannot be felt in sexual contexts – as irrational emotions need not be less genuine than rational ones – but rather that from a philosophical point of view, the question of its moral justifiability fails to emerge as the emotion does not satisfy the prior rationality condition. Clearly the same cannot be said for, say, sibling jealousy or classroom jealousy, for we rightly consider differential treatment by parents and teachers morally unjust, other things being equal. The child and the pupil deserve not to be victims of favouritism.

In response to question (3), I previously went against the grain of popular and academic opinion by arguing, from a quasi-Aristotelian virtue ethical perspective, that jealousy does admit of a medial, morally justifiable, trait-like condition and can, in this medial form, be understood as a moral virtue (Kristjánsson 2002 : chap. 5). This proposed justification bears the standard hallmarks of an Aristotelian virtue-based rationale. Emotions can, in Aristotle’s much-rehearsed view, just as actions, have an ‘intermediate and best condition [...] proper to virtue’ – when they are felt ‘at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end and in the right way’ (1985: 44 [1106b17–35]). Persons can be fully virtuous only if they are disposed to experience emotions in this ‘intermediate’ way on a regular basis. Virtuous emotions are in this Aristotelian model not only instrumentally beneficial to a flourishing life ( eudaimonia ); they are an intrinsic, indispensable part of it. Because of the relevance of this Aristotelian turn in the potential justification of jealousy, a quick detour into Aristotelian territory is needed – also alluding to some of the recent historical writings about jealousy by philosophers.

3 Some Aristotelian Backdrops

There are three main reasons why it may be considered wise to empty a putative justification of jealousy into the time-revered Aristotelian bottle. The most general reason is that most successful latter-day moral explorations of emotions have been couched in those very terms (e.g. Nussbaum 2001 , on grief and compassion). Another and more specific reason is that Aristotle already offers well-known and plausible moral justifications of medial forms of two of the three emotions in the proposed jealousy-triad compound, proper anger (aka ‘mildness of temper’) and indignation ( nemesis ), and if one complements those with his justification of healthy pride and self-respect as ingredients in the master moral virtue of great-mindedness ( megalopsychia ), the justification of jealousy – characterised along the above lines as a moral virtue – follows somewhat naturally (Kristjánsson 2002 : esp. 162–166). The third reason has to do with Aristotle’s useful distinction between episodic and trait-like forms of emotions. He famously argued that people are praised or blamed for their emotions as dispositional virtues and vices, but we ‘do not blame the person who is simply angry’ (1985: 41 [1105b20–1106a7]). The underlying idea is that we cannot control (and hence not be responsible for) the experience of episodic emotions once the relevant emotional disposition to experience them is in place. When I talked about Aristotle’s moral justification of emotions such as anger, indignation and pride above, those were all justifications of emotions as virtuous traits .

That said, contemporary emotion-regulation theory indicates that the Aristotelian view on responsibility for emotions as confined to traits is overly simplistic (see e.g. various chapters in Gross’s 2009 edited volume). Even if A has cultivated a certain trait of jealousy, or allowed it to take root in her psyche, this does not mean that A is prey to an ungovernable passion from then on. A can be expected, psychologically and morally, to control her episodic jealousy in certain contexts. Conversely, even if A has a very weak jealousy trait, this does not mean A may not experience intense pangs of jealousy in certain extreme circumstances – for even a worm will turn. So although ascriptions of responsibility and moral justifiability are mainly directed towards trait-forms of emotions like jealousy, such ascriptions are not necessarily out of place in the case of episodic experiences. I shall not pursue those complexities further, for present purposes. Hence, whenever I refer to the moral justification of jealousy below, I am referring to ‘jealousy’ in a trait sense rather than as an episodic emotion.

Slightly inimical to – if not embarrassing for – an attempt to couch a moral justification of a medial jealousy trait in Aristotelian terms is the fact that he himself does not mention this emotion, let alone justify it. A word commonly translated as ‘jealousy’, namely zêlotupia , did exist in ancient Greek. However, its meaning seems to have been vague, somehow straddling that of ‘envy’ and ‘emulation’, and it does not explicitly correspond to ‘jealousy’, either as characterised above or to any alternative contemporary specification of it (see Konstan 2006 : chap. 11). The great underlying mystery here is that the ancient Greeks do not seem to have had any single term for the concept of jealousy. To be sure, it does not prove that they did not possess the concept; after all, in his corpus Aristotle keeps mentioning states of character that have no fixed names in Greek. However, those tend to be obscure aberrations (excesses or deficiencies) of well-known traits, invoked to satisfy Aristotle’s penchant for a systematic virtue-and-emotion architectonic. We moderns tend to think of jealousy, however, as more or less the same everywhere and as such an invariable facet of the human condition that we are at a loss to understand a culture that did not have a name, perhaps not even a concept, for it.

This ‘mystery’ is music to the ears of cultural relativists about emotion such as Konstan who claims that ‘the emotions of the ancient Greeks were in some significant respects different from our own’ and their repertoire of emotion words does, therefore, not map neatly onto ours (2006: ix–x). This assumption will not bother social relativists about moral virtues. For those who read Aristotelian virtue ethics through a universalist lens, however, some elucidation is due. Roberts does explain persuasively how different cultures may ‘hypercognise’ or ‘hypocognise’ emotion types and hence have varyingly fine-grained vocabularies to describe them (2003: 12). Nussbaum warns against ‘the common error of supposing that if there is no single term in a language for an experience, that experience must be lacking’ (2001: 155). Similarly, Sanders ( 2014 ) blames theorists like Konstan for invoking a lexical method of looking for directly analogous terms for emotion concepts; he thinks that emotions (such as jealousy in ancient Greece) can be inferred from moral scripts that become apparent in expressed values and actions. While all this may be true, it still remains a mystery why such a common emotion – at least nowadays – as jealousy did not have a clear linguistic designator in Aristotle’s time.

At all events, the fact that Aristotle did not have a word for jealousy in the contemporary sense – and possibly not a concept either – does not tell against the well-foundedness of offering a reconstructed moral justification of jealousy along the same argumentative lines as he used for the emotion traits of anger, indignation and pride. Indeed, there is a helpful discussion in Aristotle of two emotions that are related to jealousy as parts of the larger envy-family: begrudging spite and emulation. Begrudging spite ( epēreasmos ) is A’s pain at B’s possession of a valued thing and the desire to remove it from B, without any moral reason, and (contra envy) without A wanting it for herself ( 2007 : 117 [1378b16–17]). Emulation ( zêlos ) is a mixed emotion characterised by A’s pain ‘at the apparent presence among others like him by nature, of things honored and possible for a person to acquire, [with the pain arising] not from the fact that another has them but that the emulator does not’ ( 2007 : 146 [1388a30–35]). Emulation is mixed because it also includes A’s pleasure at B’s possession of this valued thing, and (contra envy) lack of any desire to take it away from B. Morally speaking, it is a decent emotion and even a (developmentally relative) virtue for young moral learners. It bolsters the case for including envy in the jealousy-triad compound to observe that if we replace envy there with either begrudging spite or emulation, the compound emotion is clearly no longer one of jealousy. So if A does not really care for C’s favour but only wants it removed from B (as in spite), or does not want to take anything away from B – even relatively speaking – but simply wants to get C’s favour also (as in emulation), it becomes counter-intuitive to speak of A as being jealous any more.

4 The Recent Work on Jealousy

Two philosophers have recently offered analyses of jealousy which merit scrutiny (Purshouse 2004 ; Fredericks 2012 ), and at the end of this section I explore a new book with strong philosophical dimensions to it (Toohey 2014 ). Fredericks’s work is a PhD thesis but of such unusually high quality that it will no doubt issue in publications in respected outlets soon. Strikingly, the two authors agree more or less on the conceptual contours of jealousy; Fredericks amends those slightly from Purshouse’s account, but her amendments concern minor nuances that can mostly be left out of consideration here. Hence, for simplicity, I refer to these two analyses collectively as the PF-model. This model is radically different from the one I offered in 2002; indeed, Fredericks takes explicit exception to my account.

While acknowledging, implicitly at least, that jealousy is a cognitively complex (as distinct from a structurally ‘basic’) emotion, the PF-model explicitly rejects two received wisdoms about jealousy: that it is a compound emotion and that it is necessarily a three-party emotion with a quadratic structure. Clearly, such radical departures from the mainstream need to be well motivated. To start with the second, it seems to be based predominantly on a strong ordinary-language intuition that Purshouse and Fredricks are unwilling to abandon (cf. Fredricks 2012 : 133), although they are happy to deny bedrock status to some other prevailing ways of using words. This is the intuition that it is reasonable to call A, the collector of rare coins, jealous when A experiences pain at the realisation that a rival B owns the most valuable collection which A desperately desires (Fredericks 2012 : 48; cf. Purshouse 2004 : 185). Now, everyone will agree that there are playful, metaphorical cases where ‘jealousy’ is used in place of ‘envy’ or ‘admiration’, as in ‘I really feel jealous of your success!’ where this is simply supposed to mean ‘I really admire your success!’. The example of the coin collector does not fall into that category. Let us also exclude the possibility here – which would not pose any threat to the three-party model – that A is jealous of B with respect to some elliptical agency, C, say God or Providence, for providing B with superior fortune in coin-collecting (although that could well be what A thinks). Nevertheless, I will contend that in this scenario, an ascription of jealousy is out of place and that if this is, indeed, the verdict of ordinary language, then it must be corrected in the service of conceptual rigour. In the model suggested earlier in this article, if A judges B to have gained an advantage in collecting through unfair play, then A is angrily envious of B; if A judges B to be undeserving of the advantage over A, then A is indignantly envious; if A is simply unhappy, full stop, about the unfavourable comparison with B and wants to get some of B’s coins, then A is invidiously or maliciously envious – or, if you like, ‘just’ envious – of B. All these possibilities present standard cases of envy; it simply muddies the conceptual waters to bring jealousy into the equation. From a philosophical perspective, nothing compels acceptance of the linguistic intuition on which the PF-model relies here but much militates against it, especially when viewed against the background of the realisation that indiscriminate language speakers often confuse ‘envy’ and ‘jealousy’, with an increasing recent tendency being to replace the former indiscriminately with the latter (Kristjánsson 2002 : chap. 5). Critically minded philosophers should resist such a tendency rather than condoning it.

The PF-model considers a compound theory of jealousy redundant if we acknowledge three necessary conceptual-evaluative conditions (rather than more cognitively ‘basic’ emotions) undergirding jealousy: that (a) A desires to possess a good, possibly to a certain extent, or in a certain way, say, exclusively or pre-eminently; (b) A regards the actual or potential possession of this good by another person, the rival, as inconsistent with the fulfilment of his desires; and (c) A has in mind some (possibly imagined) set of circumstances in which the desire would have been satisfied (Purshouse 2004 : 195; Fredericks adds the condition that the good in (a) be non-replicable, 2012: 67; for Purshouse it is just ‘generally’ so, 2004: 198).

The first observation about this conceptualisation is that it seems, at first sight at least, to be too capacious and fail to distinguish jealousy from envy. Purshouse argues that although it does not exclude envy across the board, each component rules out a certain kind of envy (2004: 195–198). Thus, (a) rules out ‘destructive envy’ where A just wants to take the good away from B without wanting to possess it herself; (b) rules out emulative envy where A only wants to match B without taking anything away from B; (c) rules out the sort of (childish) envy where possession of the envied good is not even envisaged realistically, like being the president of the USA for a non-American. All this is cold comfort for the PF-model, however, as the sorts of envy that Purshouse claims are ruled out in (a) and (b) are not really proper instantiations of envy at all, but rather what Aristotelians consider the separate emotions of begrudging spite and emulation (Kristjánsson 2006 : chap. 3). Moreover, I am not sure that jealousy always has to refer to a set of possibly imagined circumstances (with ‘possible’ understood in an actual rather than a merely logical sense). The fact that an inferior philosopher A is putatively jealous of Plato (B) for being so much admired by the philosophical community (C) may indicate to us that A’s jealousy is irrational; but why should it not constitute genuine jealousy (cf. Fredericks 2012 : 79, where she seems to confuse an emotion’s genuineness with its rationality)? All in all, I do not think the PF-model does justice to the uniqueness of jealousy as an emotional reaction; it offers a conceptualisation that is too permissive and fails in its attempt at conceptual clarification and discrimination .

Fredericks makes the opposite complaint about my 2002 model, namely that it is too narrow (2012: 208) and fails to account for a number of prevailing intuitions. She gives examples of A who has extremely low self-esteem and does not feel any anger at C’s favouring of the rival B, because A thinks she is so much inferior to B, and of another A who thinks that B is such a great person that B really deserves C’s attention – yet, both As could be jealous, Fredericks contends. In general, she claims that I do not leave room for jealousy that closely resembles fear or sadness, rather than anger and indignation (2012: 63–64). I have given a separate account above of why I think it is unwise to equate jealousy with fear of jealousy.

The real sticking point is what Fredericks might want to call ‘sad jealousy’. In the end, I think this debate is about something more than a clash of linguistic intuitions that I or Fredericks or the majority of ordinary-language users hold. It may well be that ‘jealousy’ is often used, in ordinary language, to describe cases where A feels she is entirely lacking in deservingness compared to B, yet feels sad over C’s favouring of B. However, the crucial question will be if such uses are reasonable and serviceable for the individuation of jealousy from other emotions in the emotional terrain. My worry is that, in the cases Fredericks suggests, there is nothing left to distinguish jealousy from mere sadness over A’s loss of C’s favouring to B. We have reason to see jealousy standing out as a unique emotion precisely because it involves the expression of a moral grievance rather than mere resignation. This essential element is well brought out in a case study that Wurmser and Jarass discuss (Wurmser and Jarass 2008 b : 4), of the jealous woman Jane who, when interviewed, expressed the concern that ‘she had been wronged, that she had suffered grievous injustice’ – and made a claim for distribute justice to be restored. The authors use this case as an illustration of irrational, pathological jealousy, which it may well be as it hails from the context of sexual jealousy where considerations of distributive justice seem out of place. But that does not change the fact that Jane’s emotion counts as jealousy, however irrational, precisely because she is issuing a moral grievance rather than just wallowing in misery over lost love.

The PF-model does not go far enough towards a normative analysis of jealousy and seems in the end too reliant on putative ordinary-language intuitions, although the authors have not, to the best of my knowledge, conducted any social science studies of those – nor do they refer to such studies done by others. Even for those who consider a psychological study of lay intuitions the natural starting point for conceptual inquiries in emotion research (Morgan et al. 2014 ), such studies have already shown linguistic intuitions on jealousy to differ radically (Kristjánsson 2002 : chap. 5). This holds even among those language users that Roberts refers to as ‘insightful’ and ‘sensitive’ (2003: 57). Some users, like ‘Jane’ above, seem to understand jealousy along the indignation lines I have suggested, while others take it to incorporate fear and/or sadness. In such cases, there is no substitute for normative philosophical regimentation – at least if we aim to say something substantive about the moral standing of the emotion. Otherwise, we will just be talking at cross purposes. I have suggested before (2002) and in this article that a certain characterisation of jealousy is, for reasons of conceptual clarity and economy , the most serviceable one around.

In the end, I consider the crucial ‘competition’ in the conceptual field to be not between my model and the PF-model, but between my model and an account that retains the generally accepted three-party, compound-structure of jealousy but that replaces the indignation component with fear/suspicion – and/or sadness. I have attempted to argue for the superiority of my model by pointing out that whereas the emotion I describe cannot be called anything other than ‘jealousy’, the alternative emotion can helpfully be referred to by other entrenched emotion terms. I am fully aware, however, that this argumentative move is not conclusive and that a satisfactory conceptual analysis of jealousy remains work in progress. I am also aware of various logical and psychological problems associated with the very idea of ‘compound emotions’. Logically, it is difficult to know where to stop in reducing complex emotions to more simple ones; even such a fundamental ‘primary’ emotion as anger would, in some cases at least, seem to be reducible to even simpler emotions such as frustration or despair. Psychologically, a compound-model of a negatively felt emotion such as jealousy begs the question of whether the pain felt in jealousy is specific to that compound emotion or is somehow made up of the pain felt in the (three) more basic emotions. Or are negatively valenced emotions not set apart at all by different sorts of felt pain but simply by their cognitive consorts? If that is the view on offer, some objectors may complain that debates about which emotions make up the jealousy-compound divert attention from the fact that the most conspicuous phenomenological aspect of jealousy is the felt pain.

To return to the PF-model, Purshouse makes do with a conceptual account of jealousy; Fredericks, however, moves on to explore jealousy’s moral standing. In that endeavour, I find her contribution more rewarding; and – for what it is worth – she has at least persuaded me to change my mind on one significant issue. In my 2002 book I argued that jealousy could be justified on two grounds. One is through its intrinsic value for the well-rounded moral life; I return to that point later. The other is through its instrumental value in strengthening commitments and enriching relationships (Kristjánsson 2002 : 160) – as a sort of a value-signalling protective mechanism (cf. Clanton 1996 : 177). Fredericks explores such a functional justification and finds it wanting. She argues plausibly that jealousy offers, in general, an ineffectual, unreliable and often counter-productive means for acknowledging valuable people and strengthening caring or non-caring relationships with them (2012: chaps. 2 and 3). Fredericks marshals powerful and subtle arguments here, showing that even what I would call ‘rational’ jealousy creates a loss in the moral value of relationships and prevents them from becoming more valuable. Those arguments have persuaded me to drop instrumentalism from the moral justification of jealousy. More generally, those concerns may make us wonder if instrumentalist arguments for the value of emotions ever work. Let us suppose that a new persuasive social scientific study appeared which found jealousy to have, in fact, a positive effect on caring relationships. Would those findings suffice to undergird a moral defence of jealousy? I am not sure, for the same reason that I am not sure that we would find A’s over-the-top angry tantrums, because B had failed to clean the toilet, morally justified even if it turned out that angry over-the-top tantrums strengthen caring relationships because of, say, the catharsis that often follows them. Something more is needed to justify an emotion trait.

That something more is, I argue, provided by the sort of intrinsic justifications that Aristotle gives for virtue-based emotion traits of character. The clearest examples he offers are of the desert-based emotions, such as compassion and righteous indignation. It is a sign of a well-rounded moral character to feel pain at undeserved outcomes and pleasure at deserved ones, other things being equal, irrespective of the extrinsic rewards that these emotions may produce. A desert-based sense of distributive justice in human affairs is thus incorporated into Aristotle’s very conception of eudaimonia (Kristjánsson 2006 ; cf. Nussbaum 2001 : 32). These considerations underwrite the proposed intrinsic justification of jealousy as the insignia of healthy pride, admirable self-respect and a keen sense of justice (Kristjánsson 2002 : 162): a justification that still survives even if the instrumentalist one is sloughed off. Not being inclined to utter a moral grievance when C undeservedly favours B over you – not being inclined to resent C’s favouring and to remove the favour from B – is the sign of such a lack of assertiveness and self-respect, such a cringing spirit of tolerance – not to mention lack of sensitivity to injustice – that it can only be deemed a moral failure on an Aristotelian account: a vice.

My proposed conceptual and moral account of jealousy places it firmly in the category of desert-based emotions, and it is as such that I justify its proper incarnation, qua trait, as a moral virtue. Notice that nothing in this justification entails that jealousy is most often felt in a virtuous way. Indeed, given the prevalence of irrational sexual jealousy and of excessive forms of sibling or friendship jealousies, of which world literature is full, there is every reason to believe that experiences of virtuous jealousy are, by comparison, rare. Even when an experience of jealousy can count as rational, there are often other complicating factors in the situation which should steer a person of phronesis -guided overall virtue away from being jealous. In any case, I hope to have made it abundantly clear that any justification of jealousy as intrinsically valuable can only be of what Clanton calls ‘ appropriate jealousy, constructively expressed’ (1996: 183).

Larger questions than can be addressed in this article loom, however, about the extent to which any such intrinsic justifications of emotion traits can have universal moral value. Roberts ( 2013 ) argues that they will always remain relative to historic moral frameworks (as distinct from moral theories), such as Aristotelianism, Christianity or Buddhism. For example, a Christian or a Buddhist could choose never to be jealous, in line with those frameworks, without such a jealousy-deficit counting as morally (let alone rationally) inappropriate. While one could question Roberts’s general framework-relativism, I shall make do with the more parsimonious claim here that I have proposed an intrinsic justification of jealousy from within an Aristotelian moral framework.

Fredericks objects to any such intrinsic justification of jealousy, for example conducted along Aristotelian lines (2012: 187–198, 210–211), but her arguments are much weaker here than in the case of the instrumentalist justification, primarily because she refuses to acknowledge the relevant moral grievance – the righteous indignation – as part of a jealousy compound. I hope, however, to have provided a strong philosophical argument why (a) jealousy is best understood as a compound emotion and (b) that indignation forms part of the compound.

The final work worth considering in this section is the recent book by Peter Toohey ( 2014 ). That book defies an easy classification into academic pigeon-holes. Written by a professor of classics, who (as could be expected) makes clever and sustained use of literary examples of jealousy, the book relies otherwise mostly, if slightly surprisingly, on social scientific sources, mixed with the author’s own armchair philosophy. Despite being written from a broad humanities perspective, Toohey does not engage at all with the philosophy literature on jealousy; for example Farrell’s ( 1980 ) classic landmark piece is completely overlooked. Toohey’s own common-sense philosophy – manifested in his conceptual and moral musings about jealousy – is credible enough, however, to give this work considerable philosophical traction.

The approach taken by Toohey to conceptual questions about jealousy is excitingly refreshing. The basic question of what jealousy ‘is’ gets answered by a thorough exploration of visual and literary works of acts, depicting jealousy. Indeed, a vast number of the former (from medieval artists to Gauguin and Munch) are reproduced throughout the book and analysed in detail. The author’s idea here is that to understand jealousy, we need to immerse ourselves in its symbolism (for example of colours and of eyes and ears) and to study flesh-and-blood situations, in contrast to the flimsy and truncated cases academics typically elicit of some lifeless As, Bs and Cs. To cut a long story short, Toohey’s analysis leads him to embrace the three-party (or what he calls ‘triangular’) model of jealousy and to conclude, for reasons similar to those given earlier in this article, that some of the most intriguing cases of jealousy are non-romantic. He offers particularly insightful observations on jealousy among artists, academics and within families (between siblings and between parents and children). While relying heavily on social scientific sources, he also rejects their common envy–jealousy dichotomy – although he does suggest, somewhat quirkily, that envy may be a form of jealousy rather than vice versa (2014: 20–21).

Toohey does not underestimate the destructive side of jealousy. Yet he expends considerable energy in undermining the view that ‘the emotion is utterly abhorrent – a product of a warped character, unhinged fury or actual mental illness’ (2014: 81). He ends up defending jealousy’s role in ‘protecting relationships, maintaining fair treatment, encouraging creativity and competitive achievement’ (2014: 221). The problem with Toohey’s rationales is that they typically straddle the instrumentalist–intrinsic dichotomy; hence, it is not entirely clear when he is arguing for the role of jealousy as an intrinsic part of the good life versus its positive role in producing extrinsic benefits. Some of the arguments for the latter may be susceptible to the sort of criticism that Fredericks ( 2012 ) has successfully mounted. Yet what remains intact is Toohey’s argument – which harmonises with the main theme of the present article – that what typically motivates jealousy is ‘inequity aversion’: the desire to identify and censure inequity in human relations and ‘hopefully to re-establish fair treatment’ (2014: 188–189). He explains, for example, the jealousy often felt towards benefits cheats (with the government as the benefactor: C) as grounded in the realisation that they are being rewarded for no effort of their own (2014: 192). In general, jealousy has ‘its eyes set firmly on what it reckons is your due’ (2014: 194) – or as I have put it above, jealousy is a desert-based emotion . Toohey reaches a measured moral verdict about jealousy: It ‘stands at the crossroads between selfishness and fairness, it has benefits and costs, it encourages the best and worst in people’ – but in its proper and best incarnations, it ‘can be a very beautiful thing’ (2014: 185 and 223).

Toohey’s book makes for by far the most enjoyable read of all the works canvassed in this article, and I whole-heartedly recommend it. Yet precisely because of the erudition and insightfulness of its author one cannot help sensing the disappointment of an opportunity lost by his failure to engage with the existing philosophical literature, and to start building the academic bridges that could elevate the discourse on jealousy to a new level of profundity.

5 Concluding Remarks

It remains a matter for some surprise and disappointment how rarely jealousy shows up on the academic radar in journals such as the present one. I hope that my exploration of the philosophical discourse on jealousy has repaired some of the shameful dearth of philosophical attention given to this emotion. At the same time, I have indicated how a study of jealousy can serve as a helpful pathway to a fuller understanding of the emotional value embodied in desert-based emotions. Philosophers have a knack for disposing cavalierly of objections to their views so as to leave them comfortably the same as before. I hope that the revision I have made to my previous account in light of Frederick’s careful argumentation signals willingness to make amends in light of objections. I have, however, provided arguments for not engaging in the sort of conceptual reshuffle that Frederick’s and Purshouse’s radical departures from the earlier proposed conceptualisation – and indeed from any three-party, compound-emotion account of jealousy – would entail.

It would be amiss to fail to mention here emotion education – in an article inspired by Aristotelian considerations – as Aristotle considered questions of moral justification inseparable, in practice, from questions of moral cultivation. Let me simply suggest that jealousy may be one of those virtues where we need to teach students to err on the side of one, rather than the other, extreme in order to successfully hit the golden mean: namely, to steer clear of the more contrary, but more common, extreme of the mean by dragging themselves off in the opposite direction, as one does ‘in straightening bent wood’ (Aristotle 1985 : 51–52 [1109a30–b8]). Although, as I have argued, moral character can be crippled by under-reactions of jealousy, it is probably more often endangered by over-reactions. In line with what Nussbaum has suggested more generally (2001: 236), the arts and literature will serve as the most valuable source of moral understanding and guidance in proper-jealousy education, since they provide such rich sources of narratives of both well-formed and malformed jealousy (cf. Toohey 2014 ). In addition to educational concerns, which deserve more sustained scrutiny, jealousy clearly has wider socio-political implications than those indicated by the relatively narrow understanding of ‘moral’ in the present article. For reasons of space, however, those implications will have to remain a topic for another day.

To wrap up, many readers will have heard of H. G. Wells’s tongue-in-cheek definition of moral indignation as jealousy with a halo. If the account proposed in this article bears scrutiny, jealousy admits of an equally sarcastic definition as moral indignation with a stigma. I have tried, however, to remove the stigma of categorical repudiation and ready condemnation from this emotion and indicate its potential salience for flourishing lives. Engaging with the most recent philosophical sources on jealousy has helped nuance that aim.

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Kristjánsson, K. Jealousy Revisited: Recent Philosophical Work on a Maligned Emotion. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 19 , 741–754 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9668-3

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Analytical Essay: Jealousy

To William Shakespeare, the bard of Avon, it was a ‘green-eyed monster’. To B.C. Forbes, it is a ‘mental cancer’. In either case, jealousy (or its counterpart, envy) is depicted as a horrible, destructive entity. But is jealousy always harmful? Or can there be benefits to the emotion? I would assert that, depending on the character of the individual, jealousy can have the power to either improve or destroy.

Jealousy is a complicated emotion. It is similar to envy in many ways, and often is connected with it. Jealousy is experienced when a person sees a threat to what they have, or even what they want to have. Think of Shakespeare’s famous play, “Othello”. The title character goes wild with jealousy when he thinks another man has won his wife’s attention. He wants her love all to himself and ends up killing her in a jealous rage, seeing betrayal when there was none. Of course, this is an extreme case of jealousy. Not all situations end in death. But being jealous of a parent’s attention can cause sibling rivalry. Being jealous of a co-worker’s promotion can lead to petty backstabbing. Jealousy, rooted in both fear and anger, can have dangerous consequences if not held in check.

Jealousy can also be a useful emotion if utilized properly. Being jealous of another person’s wealth can give a person renewed drive to succeed in their own business ventures. Overcoming or even just acknowledging jealousy can give someone personal insight and growth. Healthy competition is not wrong, nor is jealousy if it gives a signal for a person to change something in their life. But on the flip side, however, jealousy can cause control issues, relationship violence, feelings of inadequacy, stress, and self-doubt. It is reported that 1/3 of all married couples in counselling suffer from some level of jealousy. Left unresolved, these feelings can lead to divorce. Through jealousy, people can lose confidence, trust, and self-esteem, which shows why it is necessary to analyze and overcome these strong emotions.

The best way to handle jealousy is to acknowledge it for what it is. Everyone feels jealousy at some point in their life, but it is how it is handled that gives insight into a person’s character. Asking the question, “Why am I jealous?” can lead to personal growth. If jealousy is being based on false beliefs – (think back to Shakespeare’s Othello) – then those thoughts need to be changed. If jealousy is harming a relationship, they best thing to do is simply apologize and then talk those feelings out. Explaining what you feel isn’t shameful, but rather a sign of strength.

Jealousy, like wrath or pride, is a passionate emotion that everyone will have to face at one point in their life. Whether they acknowledge the emotion for what it is – fear and anger – will determine whether they learn and grow from the emotion, or suffer because of it.

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Miscellaneous

You'll no doubt have to write a number of argumentative essays in both high school and college, but what, exactly, is an argumentative essay and how do you write the best one possible? Let's take a look.

A great argumentative essay always combines the same basic elements: approaching an argument from a rational perspective, researching sources, supporting your claims using facts rather than opinion, and articulating your reasoning into the most cogent and reasoned points. Argumentative essays are great building blocks for all sorts of research and rhetoric, so your teachers will expect you to master the technique before long.

But if this sounds daunting, never fear! We'll show how an argumentative essay differs from other kinds of papers, how to research and write them, how to pick an argumentative essay topic, and where to find example essays. So let's get started.

What Is an Argumentative Essay? How Is it Different from Other Kinds of Essays?

There are two basic requirements for any and all essays: to state a claim (a thesis statement) and to support that claim with evidence.

Though every essay is founded on these two ideas, there are several different types of essays, differentiated by the style of the writing, how the writer presents the thesis, and the types of evidence used to support the thesis statement.

Essays can be roughly divided into four different types:

#1: Argumentative #2: Persuasive #3: Expository #4: Analytical

So let's look at each type and what the differences are between them before we focus the rest of our time to argumentative essays.

Argumentative Essay

Argumentative essays are what this article is all about, so let's talk about them first.

An argumentative essay attempts to convince a reader to agree with a particular argument (the writer's thesis statement). The writer takes a firm stand one way or another on a topic and then uses hard evidence to support that stance.

An argumentative essay seeks to prove to the reader that one argument —the writer's argument— is the factually and logically correct one. This means that an argumentative essay must use only evidence-based support to back up a claim , rather than emotional or philosophical reasoning (which is often allowed in other types of essays). Thus, an argumentative essay has a burden of substantiated proof and sources , whereas some other types of essays (namely persuasive essays) do not.

You can write an argumentative essay on any topic, so long as there's room for argument. Generally, you can use the same topics for both a persuasive essay or an argumentative one, so long as you support the argumentative essay with hard evidence.

Example topics of an argumentative essay:

• "Should farmers be allowed to shoot wolves if those wolves injure or kill farm animals?"
• "Should the drinking age be lowered in the United States?"
• "Are alternatives to democracy effective and/or feasible to implement?"

The next three types of essays are not argumentative essays, but you may have written them in school. We're going to cover them so you know what not to do for your argumentative essay.

Persuasive Essay

Persuasive essays are similar to argumentative essays, so it can be easy to get them confused. But knowing what makes an argumentative essay different than a persuasive essay can often mean the difference between an excellent grade and an average one.

Persuasive essays seek to persuade a reader to agree with the point of view of the writer, whether that point of view is based on factual evidence or not. The writer has much more flexibility in the evidence they can use, with the ability to use moral, cultural, or opinion-based reasoning as well as factual reasoning to persuade the reader to agree the writer's side of a given issue.

Instead of being forced to use "pure" reason as one would in an argumentative essay, the writer of a persuasive essay can manipulate or appeal to the reader's emotions. So long as the writer attempts to steer the readers into agreeing with the thesis statement, the writer doesn't necessarily need hard evidence in favor of the argument.

Often, you can use the same topics for both a persuasive essay or an argumentative one—the difference is all in the approach and the evidence you present.

Example topics of a persuasive essay:

• "Should children be responsible for their parents' debts?"
• "Should cheating on a test be automatic grounds for expulsion?"
• "How much should sports leagues be held accountable for player injuries and the long-term consequences of those injuries?"

Expository Essay

An expository essay is typically a short essay in which the writer explains an idea, issue, or theme , or discusses the history of a person, place, or idea.

This is typically a fact-forward essay with little argument or opinion one way or the other.

Example topics of an expository essay:

• "The History of the Philadelphia Liberty Bell"
• "The Reasons I Always Wanted to be a Doctor"
• "The Meaning Behind the Colloquialism ‘People in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones'"

Analytical Essay

An analytical essay seeks to delve into the deeper meaning of a text or work of art, or unpack a complicated idea . These kinds of essays closely interpret a source and look into its meaning by analyzing it at both a macro and micro level.

This type of analysis can be augmented by historical context or other expert or widely-regarded opinions on the subject, but is mainly supported directly through the original source (the piece or art or text being analyzed) .

Example topics of an analytical essay:

• "Victory Gin in Place of Water: The Symbolism Behind Gin as the Only Potable Substance in George Orwell's 1984"
• "Amarna Period Art: The Meaning Behind the Shift from Rigid to Fluid Poses"
• "Adultery During WWII, as Told Through a Series of Letters to and from Soldiers"

There are many different types of essay and, over time, you'll be able to master them all.

A Typical Argumentative Essay Assignment

The average argumentative essay is between three to five pages, and will require at least three or four separate sources with which to back your claims . As for the essay topic , you'll most often be asked to write an argumentative essay in an English class on a "general" topic of your choice, ranging the gamut from science, to history, to literature.

But while the topics of an argumentative essay can span several different fields, the structure of an argumentative essay is always the same: you must support a claim—a claim that can reasonably have multiple sides—using multiple sources and using a standard essay format (which we'll talk about later on).

This is why many argumentative essay topics begin with the word "should," as in:

• "Should all students be required to learn chemistry in high school?"
• "Should children be required to learn a second language?"
• "Should schools or governments be allowed to ban books?"

These topics all have at least two sides of the argument: Yes or no. And you must support the side you choose with evidence as to why your side is the correct one.

But there are also plenty of other ways to frame an argumentative essay as well:

• "Does using social media do more to benefit or harm people?"
• "Does the legal status of artwork or its creators—graffiti and vandalism, pirated media, a creator who's in jail—have an impact on the art itself?"
• "Is or should anyone ever be ‘above the law?'"

Though these are worded differently than the first three, you're still essentially forced to pick between two sides of an issue: yes or no, for or against, benefit or detriment. Though your argument might not fall entirely into one side of the divide or another—for instance, you could claim that social media has positively impacted some aspects of modern life while being a detriment to others—your essay should still support one side of the argument above all. Your final stance would be that overall , social media is beneficial or overall , social media is harmful.

If your argument is one that is mostly text-based or backed by a single source (e.g., "How does Salinger show that Holden Caulfield is an unreliable narrator?" or "Does Gatsby personify the American Dream?"), then it's an analytical essay, rather than an argumentative essay. An argumentative essay will always be focused on more general topics so that you can use multiple sources to back up your claims.

Good Argumentative Essay Topics

So you know the basic idea behind an argumentative essay, but what topic should you write about?

Again, almost always, you'll be asked to write an argumentative essay on a free topic of your choice, or you'll be asked to select between a few given topics . If you're given complete free reign of topics, then it'll be up to you to find an essay topic that no only appeals to you, but that you can turn into an A+ argumentative essay.

What makes a "good" argumentative essay topic depends on both the subject matter and your personal interest —it can be hard to give your best effort on something that bores you to tears! But it can also be near impossible to write an argumentative essay on a topic that has no room for debate.

As we said earlier, a good argumentative essay topic will be one that has the potential to reasonably go in at least two directions—for or against, yes or no, and why . For example, it's pretty hard to write an argumentative essay on whether or not people should be allowed to murder one another—not a whole lot of debate there for most people!—but writing an essay for or against the death penalty has a lot more wiggle room for evidence and argument.

A good topic is also one that can be substantiated through hard evidence and relevant sources . So be sure to pick a topic that other people have studied (or at least studied elements of) so that you can use their data in your argument. For example, if you're arguing that it should be mandatory for all middle school children to play a sport, you might have to apply smaller scientific data points to the larger picture you're trying to justify. There are probably several studies you could cite on the benefits of physical activity and the positive effect structure and teamwork has on young minds, but there's probably no study you could use where a group of scientists put all middle-schoolers in one jurisdiction into a mandatory sports program (since that's probably never happened). So long as your evidence is relevant to your point and you can extrapolate from it to form a larger whole, you can use it as a part of your resource material.

And if you need ideas on where to get started, or just want to see sample argumentative essay topics, then check out these links for hundreds of potential argumentative essay topics.

101 Persuasive (or Argumentative) Essay and Speech Topics

301 Prompts for Argumentative Writing

Top 50 Ideas for Argumentative/Persuasive Essay Writing

[Note: some of these say "persuasive essay topics," but just remember that the same topic can often be used for both a persuasive essay and an argumentative essay; the difference is in your writing style and the evidence you use to support your claims.]

KO! Find that one argumentative essay topic you can absolutely conquer.

Argumentative Essay Format

Argumentative Essays are composed of four main elements:

• A position (your argument)
• Your reasons
• Supporting evidence for those reasons (from reliable sources)
• Counterargument(s) (possible opposing arguments and reasons why those arguments are incorrect)

If you're familiar with essay writing in general, then you're also probably familiar with the five paragraph essay structure . This structure is a simple tool to show how one outlines an essay and breaks it down into its component parts, although it can be expanded into as many paragraphs as you want beyond the core five.

The standard argumentative essay is often 3-5 pages, which will usually mean a lot more than five paragraphs, but your overall structure will look the same as a much shorter essay.

An argumentative essay at its simplest structure will look like:

Paragraph 1: Intro

• Set up the story/problem/issue
• Thesis/claim

Paragraph 2: Support

• Reason #1 claim is correct
• Supporting evidence with sources

Paragraph 3: Support

• Reason #2 claim is correct

Paragraph 4: Counterargument

• Explanation of argument for the other side
• Refutation of opposing argument with supporting evidence

Paragraph 5: Conclusion

• Re-state claim
• Sum up reasons and support of claim from the essay to prove claim is correct

Now let's unpack each of these paragraph types to see how they work (with examples!), what goes into them, and why.

Paragraph 1—Set Up and Claim

Your first task is to introduce the reader to the topic at hand so they'll be prepared for your claim. Give a little background information, set the scene, and give the reader some stakes so that they care about the issue you're going to discuss.

Next, you absolutely must have a position on an argument and make that position clear to the readers. It's not an argumentative essay unless you're arguing for a specific claim, and this claim will be your thesis statement.

Your thesis CANNOT be a mere statement of fact (e.g., "Washington DC is the capital of the United States"). Your thesis must instead be an opinion which can be backed up with evidence and has the potential to be argued against (e.g., "New York should be the capital of the United States").

Paragraphs 2 and 3—Your Evidence

These are your body paragraphs in which you give the reasons why your argument is the best one and back up this reasoning with concrete evidence .

The argument supporting the thesis of an argumentative essay should be one that can be supported by facts and evidence, rather than personal opinion or cultural or religious mores.

For example, if you're arguing that New York should be the new capital of the US, you would have to back up that fact by discussing the factual contrasts between New York and DC in terms of location, population, revenue, and laws. You would then have to talk about the precedents for what makes for a good capital city and why New York fits the bill more than DC does.

Your argument can't simply be that a lot of people think New York is the best city ever and that you agree.

In addition to using concrete evidence, you always want to keep the tone of your essay passionate, but impersonal . Even though you're writing your argument from a single opinion, don't use first person language—"I think," "I feel," "I believe,"—to present your claims. Doing so is repetitive, since by writing the essay you're already telling the audience what you feel, and using first person language weakens your writing voice.

For example,

"I think that Washington DC is no longer suited to be the capital city of the United States."

"Washington DC is no longer suited to be the capital city of the United States."

The second statement sounds far stronger and more analytical.

Paragraph 4—Argument for the Other Side and Refutation

Even without a counter argument, you can make a pretty persuasive claim, but a counterargument will round out your essay into one that is much more persuasive and substantial.

By anticipating an argument against your claim and taking the initiative to counter it, you're allowing yourself to get ahead of the game. This way, you show that you've given great thought to all sides of the issue before choosing your position, and you demonstrate in multiple ways how yours is the more reasoned and supported side.

Paragraph 5—Conclusion

This paragraph is where you re-state your argument and summarize why it's the best claim.

Briefly touch on your supporting evidence and voila! A finished argumentative essay.

Your essay should have just as awesome a skeleton as this plesiosaur does. (In other words: a ridiculously awesome skeleton)

Argumentative Essay Example: 5-Paragraph Style

It always helps to have an example to learn from. I've written a full 5-paragraph argumentative essay here. Look at how I state my thesis in paragraph 1, give supporting evidence in paragraphs 2 and 3, address a counterargument in paragraph 4, and conclude in paragraph 5.

Topic: Is it possible to maintain conflicting loyalties?

Paragraph 1

It is almost impossible to go through life without encountering a situation where your loyalties to different people or causes come into conflict with each other. Maybe you have a loving relationship with your sister, but she disagrees with your decision to join the army, or you find yourself torn between your cultural beliefs and your scientific ones. These conflicting loyalties can often be maintained for a time, but as examples from both history and psychological theory illustrate, sooner or later, people have to make a choice between competing loyalties, as no one can maintain a conflicting loyalty or belief system forever.

The first two sentences set the scene and give some hypothetical examples and stakes for the reader to care about.

The third sentence finishes off the intro with the thesis statement, making very clear how the author stands on the issue ("people have to make a choice between competing loyalties, as no one can maintain a conflicting loyalty or belief system forever." )

Paragraphs 2 and 3

Psychological theory states that human beings are not equipped to maintain conflicting loyalties indefinitely and that attempting to do so leads to a state called "cognitive dissonance." Cognitive dissonance theory is the psychological idea that people undergo tremendous mental stress or anxiety when holding contradictory beliefs, values, or loyalties (Festinger, 1957). Even if human beings initially hold a conflicting loyalty, they will do their best to find a mental equilibrium by making a choice between those loyalties—stay stalwart to a belief system or change their beliefs. One of the earliest formal examples of cognitive dissonance theory comes from Leon Festinger's When Prophesy Fails . Members of an apocalyptic cult are told that the end of the world will occur on a specific date and that they alone will be spared the Earth's destruction. When that day comes and goes with no apocalypse, the cult members face a cognitive dissonance between what they see and what they've been led to believe (Festinger, 1956). Some choose to believe that the cult's beliefs are still correct, but that the Earth was simply spared from destruction by mercy, while others choose to believe that they were lied to and that the cult was fraudulent all along. Both beliefs cannot be correct at the same time, and so the cult members are forced to make their choice.

But even when conflicting loyalties can lead to potentially physical, rather than just mental, consequences, people will always make a choice to fall on one side or other of a dividing line. Take, for instance, Nicolaus Copernicus, a man born and raised in Catholic Poland (and educated in Catholic Italy). Though the Catholic church dictated specific scientific teachings, Copernicus' loyalty to his own observations and scientific evidence won out over his loyalty to his country's government and belief system. When he published his heliocentric model of the solar system--in opposition to the geocentric model that had been widely accepted for hundreds of years (Hannam, 2011)-- Copernicus was making a choice between his loyalties. In an attempt t o maintain his fealty both to the established system and to what he believed, h e sat on his findings for a number of years (Fantoli, 1994). But, ultimately, Copernicus made the choice to side with his beliefs and observations above all and published his work for the world to see (even though, in doing so, he risked both his reputation and personal freedoms).

These two paragraphs provide the reasons why the author supports the main argument and uses substantiated sources to back those reasons.

The paragraph on cognitive dissonance theory gives both broad supporting evidence and more narrow, detailed supporting evidence to show why the thesis statement is correct not just anecdotally but also scientifically and psychologically. First, we see why people in general have a difficult time accepting conflicting loyalties and desires and then how this applies to individuals through the example of the cult members from the Dr. Festinger's research.

The next paragraph continues to use more detailed examples from history to provide further evidence of why the thesis that people cannot indefinitely maintain conflicting loyalties is true.

Paragraph 4

Some will claim that it is possible to maintain conflicting beliefs or loyalties permanently, but this is often more a matter of people deluding themselves and still making a choice for one side or the other, rather than truly maintaining loyalty to both sides equally. For example, Lancelot du Lac typifies a person who claims to maintain a balanced loyalty between to two parties, but his attempt to do so fails (as all attempts to permanently maintain conflicting loyalties must). Lancelot tells himself and others that he is equally devoted to both King Arthur and his court and to being Queen Guinevere's knight (Malory, 2008). But he can neither be in two places at once to protect both the king and queen, nor can he help but let his romantic feelings for the queen to interfere with his duties to the king and the kingdom. Ultimately, he and Queen Guinevere give into their feelings for one another and Lancelot—though he denies it—chooses his loyalty to her over his loyalty to Arthur. This decision plunges the kingdom into a civil war, ages Lancelot prematurely, and ultimately leads to Camelot's ruin (Raabe, 1987). Though Lancelot claimed to have been loyal to both the king and the queen, this loyalty was ultimately in conflict, and he could not maintain it.

Here we have the acknowledgement of a potential counter-argument and the evidence as to why it isn't true.

The argument is that some people (or literary characters) have asserted that they give equal weight to their conflicting loyalties. The refutation is that, though some may claim to be able to maintain conflicting loyalties, they're either lying to others or deceiving themselves. The paragraph shows why this is true by providing an example of this in action.

Paragraph 5

Whether it be through literature or history, time and time again, people demonstrate the challenges of trying to manage conflicting loyalties and the inevitable consequences of doing so. Though belief systems are malleable and will often change over time, it is not possible to maintain two mutually exclusive loyalties or beliefs at once. In the end, people always make a choice, and loyalty for one party or one side of an issue will always trump loyalty to the other.

The concluding paragraph summarizes the essay, touches on the evidence presented, and re-states the thesis statement.

How to Write an Argumentative Essay: 8 Steps

Writing the best argumentative essay is all about the preparation, so let's talk steps:

#1: Preliminary Research

If you have the option to pick your own argumentative essay topic (which you most likely will), then choose one or two topics you find the most intriguing or that you have a vested interest in and do some preliminary research on both sides of the debate.

Do an open internet search just to see what the general chatter is on the topic and what the research trends are.

Did your preliminary reading influence you to pick a side or change your side? Without diving into all the scholarly articles at length, do you believe there's enough evidence to support your claim? Have there been scientific studies? Experiments? Does a noted scholar in the field agree with you? If not, you may need to pick another topic or side of the argument to support.

#2: Pick Your Side and Form Your Thesis

Now's the time to pick the side of the argument you feel you can support the best and summarize your main point into your thesis statement.

Your thesis will be the basis of your entire essay, so make sure you know which side you're on, that you've stated it clearly, and that you stick by your argument throughout the entire essay .

#3: Heavy-Duty Research Time

You've taken a gander at what the internet at large has to say on your argument, but now's the time to actually read those sources and take notes.

Check scholarly journals online at Google Scholar , the Directory of Open Access Journals , or JStor . You can also search individual university or school libraries and websites to see what kinds of academic articles you can access for free. Keep track of your important quotes and page numbers and put them somewhere that's easy to find later.

And don't forget to check your school or local libraries as well!

#4: Outline

Follow the five-paragraph outline structure from the previous section.

Fill in your topic, your reasons, and your supporting evidence into each of the categories.

Before you begin to flesh out the essay, take a look at what you've got. Is your thesis statement in the first paragraph? Is it clear? Is your argument logical? Does your supporting evidence support your reasoning?

By outlining your essay, you streamline your process and take care of any logic gaps before you dive headfirst into the writing. This will save you a lot of grief later on if you need to change your sources or your structure, so don't get too trigger-happy and skip this step.

Now that you've laid out exactly what you'll need for your essay and where, it's time to fill in all the gaps by writing it out.

Take it one step at a time and expand your ideas into complete sentences and substantiated claims. It may feel daunting to turn an outline into a complete draft, but just remember that you've already laid out all the groundwork; now you're just filling in the gaps.

If you have the time before deadline, give yourself a day or two (or even just an hour!) away from your essay . Looking it over with fresh eyes will allow you to see errors, both minor and major, that you likely would have missed had you tried to edit when it was still raw.

Take a first pass over the entire essay and try your best to ignore any minor spelling or grammar mistakes—you're just looking at the big picture right now. Does it make sense as a whole? Did the essay succeed in making an argument and backing that argument up logically? (Do you feel persuaded?)

If not, go back and make notes so that you can fix it for your final draft.

Once you've made your revisions to the overall structure, mark all your small errors and grammar problems so you can fix them in the next draft.

#7: Final Draft

Use the notes you made on the rough draft and go in and hack and smooth away until you're satisfied with the final result.

A checklist for your final draft:

• Formatting is correct according to your teacher's standards
• No errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation
• Essay is the right length and size for the assignment
• The argument is present, consistent, and concise
• Each reason is supported by relevant evidence
• The essay makes sense overall

#8: Celebrate!

Once you've brought that final draft to a perfect polish and turned in your assignment, you're done! Go you!

Be prepared and ♪ you'll never go hungry again ♪, *cough*, or struggle with your argumentative essay-writing again. (Walt Disney Studios)

Good Examples of Argumentative Essays Online

Theory is all well and good, but examples are key. Just to get you started on what a fully-fleshed out argumentative essay looks like, let's see some examples in action.

Check out these two argumentative essay examples on the use of landmines and freons (and note the excellent use of concrete sources to back up their arguments!).

The Use of Landmines

A Shattered Sky

The Take-Aways: Keys to Writing an Argumentative Essay

At first, writing an argumentative essay may seem like a monstrous hurdle to overcome, but with the proper preparation and understanding, you'll be able to knock yours out of the park.

Remember the differences between a persuasive essay and an argumentative one, make sure your thesis is clear, and double-check that your supporting evidence is both relevant to your point and well-sourced . Pick your topic, do your research, make your outline, and fill in the gaps. Before you know it, you'll have yourself an A+ argumentative essay there, my friend.

What's Next?

Now you know the ins and outs of an argumentative essay, but how comfortable are you writing in other styles? Learn more about the four writing styles and when it makes sense to use each .

Understand how to make an argument, but still having trouble organizing your thoughts? Check out our guide to three popular essay formats and choose which one is right for you.

Ready to make your case, but not sure what to write about? We've created a list of 50 potential argumentative essay topics to spark your imagination.

Courtney scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT in high school and went on to graduate from Stanford University with a degree in Cultural and Social Anthropology. She is passionate about bringing education and the tools to succeed to students from all backgrounds and walks of life, as she believes open education is one of the great societal equalizers. She has years of tutoring experience and writes creative works in her free time.

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Home / Essay Samples / Life / Love / Jealousy

Jealousy Essay Examples

Jealousy in antigone, the tale of genji, and the 1001 nights.

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