Not sure if Cohen feels exactly as I do about the continuum, but Stephen D. Edington in his http://ftp2.wpine.com/uu/sermons/envy.html commenting on Cohen sure does.
I guess I could end on that note [definition of envy], but I'll expand upon it just a bit. To stay with Ms. Cohen's work for just a couple more minutes, she offers a vice to virtue continuum, in the manner to which I've already referred, with respect to envy. It runs from "Destructive" to "Positive" envy. As she sees it, "positive envy" is not an oxymoron. The stops along the way, on Ms. Cohen's continuum, are: The Wish to Harm, Self-Hatred, Resentment, Covetousness, Admiration, and Emulation. A very interesting configuration, let me run it by you again: The Wish to Harm, Self-Hatred, Resentment, Covetousness, Admiration, and Emulation. The wish to do harm and self-hatred, and then admiration and emulation are all a part of the same "envy continuum", with envy actually giving way to positive admiration and emulation at some point.
Where one comes down on that continuum depends much more on who it is that is doing the viewing, rather than what is actually out there to be seen. Anais Nin, a novelist, essayist, long-time friend and some-time lover of Henry Miller, once noted:
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
The last line is my position exactly on where to come down on the continuum. :) Vaughan Pratt