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Compassion and Beyond

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Abstract

This paper is a discussion of the emotion of compassion or pity, and the corresponding virtue. It begins by placing the emotion of compassion in the moral conceptual landscape, and then moves to reject the currently dominant view, a version of Aristotelianism developed by Martha Nussbaum, in favour of a non-cognitive conception of compassion as a feeling. An alternative neo-Aristotelian account is then outlined. The relation of the virtue of compassion to other virtues is plotted, and some doubts sown about its practical significance.

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Notes

  1. See also Kimball (2004), p. 303, who notes that ‘pity’ and ‘compassion’ were largely synonymous until recent times.

  2. See Konstan (2001), p. 2.

  3. Translations throughout are my own.

  4. Nussbaum means what theologians call ‘natural’ evil.

  5. Leonard Kahn has pointed out to me that the requirement would be more plausible if ‘or greater than deserved’ were added.

  6. It is accepted also by e.g. Blum (1987), p. 230; Snow (1991), p. 198; Ben-Ze’ev (2000), p. 237. Cannon (2005, pp. 99–100) points out that what is thought to be trivial often isn’t.

  7. See also Hestevold (2004, p. 334), though Hestevold distinguishes pity from compassion, denying the seriousness requirement of the former.

  8. I use the plural here because of the different ways in which the same feeling can be experienced: duration, intensity, and so on. More on this in the text below.

  9. It may be that a more plausible requirement would be that the punishment be not only deserved but also justified, since it does not follow from a punishment’s being deserved that it ought to be carried out. Consider here Tacitus’s famous account of Nero’s cruelty to the Christians: ‘hence compassion arose even for criminals who deserved exemplary punishment, because it appeared as if they were being destroyed not for the public good but with a view to gratifying the cruelty of one man’ (Tacitus 1907, 15.44).

  10. See Ben-Ze’ev (2000), pp. 330, 335.

  11. See also Blum (1987), p. 233; Carr (1999, pp. 411–29); Hestevold (2004, pp. 334–5) (again speaking of pity); Cannon (2005, pp. 100–101); Weber (2005, pp. 489–93).

  12. This case also provides a counter-example to Nussbaum’s claim that ‘it would be simply hypocritical to weep over a plight that you yourself have caused’ (2001, p. 313). She is perhaps to be understood, however, as implying that hypocrisy arises only in the case in which the causation is blameworthy. But we may believe the God of the Old Testament to be blameworthy without charging him with hypocrisy. Perhaps compassion requires the onlooker to believe that she is not to be blamed for the evil. But an onlooker may repent and then feel compassion. And even if there is no repentance or regret, compassion may be possible. Consider someone who has successfully defrauded a pension fund of some very large sum. She may accept that what she did was wrong and blameworthy, but not regret what she did, nor show any sign of repentance or remorse. Nevertheless, she may, when reflecting on the suffering her action has caused, feel compassion for those who are now living in poverty as a result of her crime.

  13. See Konstan (2001), p. 47.

  14. See D’Arms and Jacobson (2003), pp. 133–4, 138–9.

  15. As Brad Hooker pointed out to me, we should understand ‘suffering’ as equivalent to ‘what is bad for a person’. There is no need to understand it only as a mental state.

  16. Cf. Cannon (2005), pp. 101–2.

  17. See e.g. Konstan (2001), p. 14, with refs. to Hoffman and to Denham; Sherman (2004), pp. 463–4, with references in nn. 6–10; de Waal (2005, pp. 16–22) and esp. the references to the work of Carolyn Zahn-Waxler on the comfort offered by children slightly over one year old to others in apparent distress and to the evidence for compassion in rats and monkeys (including a remarkable case of a bonobo showing intelligent concern for the well-being of a bird). On the neuroscience of emotion, see e.g. Panksepp (1998), p. 4: ‘[M]any of the ancient, evolutionarily derived brain systems all mammals share still serve as the foundations for the deeply experienced affective proclivities of the human mind. Such ancient systems evolved long before the emergence of the human neocortex with its vast cognitive skills’. Recent work has shown that the experience of pain in oneself and the awareness that a loved one is experiencing pain activates the same affective pain circuits in the brain (Singer at al. (2004); Singer (2006), pp. 858–9). The fMRI evidence is beginning to suggest that those who advocate a cognitivist account of emotions such as compassion may be committed to a cognitivist account of pain itself.

  18. An even weaker version of the eudaimonistic judgement requirement than the dispositional one which could be constructed on the basis of what Nussbaum says here would claim that the person must not be disposed to consider the evil as no significant part of her scheme of goals. But even this version is open to the counter-examples in the text below.

  19. For further criticism, see Deigh (2004), pp. 469–70; Cannon (2005), pp. 102–3.

  20. Later, in her discussion of what kind of ‘pain’ is supposed to be involved in compassion, Nussbaum asks: ‘[B]ut what is this mental pain, if not a way of seeing the victim’s distress with concern, as a terrible thing?’ (Nussbaum 2001, p. 326), again running together the feeling of concern with the cognition of something as bad.

  21. Cf. Peter Goldie’s notion of ‘feeling towards’ (2000, pp. 4, 16–28, 58–62, 72–83); also Deigh (1994), p. 837 and refs. to Greenspan and Roberts; D’Arms and Jacobson (2000, p. 67, n. 4).

  22. For excellent examples of the general phenomenon, see Goldie (2000), p. 62. An evolutionary explanation is offered in Öhman et al. (2000).

  23. This account is perhaps more plausible on a so-called ‘internalist’ conception of pleasure and pain, according to which there is something phenomenologically similar running through each kind of experience. This was the standard view of the British empiricists, and I have provided some defence of it in Crisp (2006), ch. 3, and Crisp (2006a).

  24. See Hatfield et al. (1994).

  25. See e.g. Hume (1889), 3.5, p. 157, who defines compassion as the desire for another’s happiness; Piper (1991), p. 743; Snow (1991), p. 197; Carr (1999), pp. 411, 414; Goldie (2000), pp. 213–14; Cannon (2005), p. 103.

  26. Note here Aristotle’s view that analogues of even sophisticated human emotions can often be found in non-human animals (1991, 8.1, 588a18–b3).

  27. See e.g. http://www.deathwithdignity.org/voices/opinion/lewrockwell.11.14.05.asp; and the discussion of Nietzsche’s attitude to compassion in Weber (2005), p. 507.

  28. See Herodotus (1908), 3.14. Aristotle appears to have confused Psammenitus with his father, Amasis. For discussion, see Ben-Ze’ev (2000), pp. 342–3.

  29. Cf. Slote (2006), pp. 227–8, with references to Batson and Hoffman. Slote himself is inclined to accept certain of these ‘biases’ or, as he prefers, ‘preferences’, taking as his ideal form of moral motivation that of fully developed human empathy. This is a point where one’s normative epistemology is at least open to influence by one’s first order views. Those who find impartiality plausible at the first order level are less likely to accept that the emotions, with all their partiality, are epistemically reliable.

  30. This and the previous point are again supported by fMRI evidence. See Singer et al. 2006; Singer 2006, p. 859.

  31. See Milgam (1963).

  32. For comments on previous drafts and/or discussion, I am grateful to Marianne Fillenz, Leonard Kahn, David Konstan, and delegates at the 2007 conference of the British Society for Ethical Theory.

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    Roger Crisp

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Crisp, R. Compassion and Beyond. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 11, 233–246 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9114-x

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