The Ethic of Compassion and the Ethic of Justice

Sagi, Avi

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-99178-8_2

Avi Sagi⁴

Part of the book series: Contributions To Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 99))

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Abstract

The sole ruler in the normative kingdom is the individual, the subject as moral agent. The best realm for examining the standing of the individual is the practical-ethical field of action. It is through action that the individual can concretize his appearance as one who constitutes the suitable moral norm relying on his epistemic autonomy. Action, however, is also the field where the self can retreat when faced with the appearance of the other. In this chapter, I show that the difference between these two appearances of the self comes forth in the difference between two types of ethic: the ethic of justice and the ethic of compassion. Whereas the ethic of justice realizes the sovereign control of the moral subject, who constitutes the field relying on her normative considerations, the ethic of compassion epitomizes the subject’s readiness to retreat and renounce his active and sovereign standing in favor of what appears before his eyes—the suffering other.

This chapter appeared in a Hebrew book titled Facing Others and Otherness: The Ethics of Inner Retreat (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2012). The Hebrew title is Mul aherim ve-aherut: Etika shel ha-nesigah ha-penimit.

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Notes

1.
A previous version of sections of this chapter appears in Avi Sagi, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd, trans. Batya Stein (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2002), 159–172.
2.
Aristotle, The Ethics of Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1955), 166.
3.
Ibid.
4.
Ibid.
5.
Ibid., 167.
6.
Ibid., 167–168.
7.
For an extensive analysis of the “discourse” concept, which projects on my use of it, see Sara Mills, Discourse (London: Routledge, 1999).
8.
In this chapter, I deal with the way that Hermann Cohen understood Spinoza. A rigorous reading of Spinoza shows that Cohen ascribed to him views that are not his, but since I do not deal here with the history of ideas, I will refrain from discussing the sources that influenced his interpretation.
9.
Benedict de Spinoza, Ethic, trans. W. Hale White and Amelia Hutchinson Stirling (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), Schol., Prop. xxii, 125.
10.
Spinoza, Ethic, Schol., Prop. xxiv, 127.
11.
Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972), 140.
12.
Ibid.
13.
Ibid., 139. In my quotations from the English version of Cohen’s book, I changed from pity to compassion the translation of the original German mitleiden.
14.
Norman S. Fiering, “Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of Eighteenth Century Sympathy and Humanitarianism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37 (1966), 195.
15.
On his view, see Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, trans. E. F. Payne (Indianapolis, ID: Bobbs Merril, 1965), 187–198.
16.
Ibid., 145.
17.
Ibid., 144.
18.
Samuel David Luzzato, “The Foundations of the Torah,” in Studies in Torah Judaism: Luzzato’s Ethico-Psychological Interpretation of Judaism, ed. Noah H. Rosenbloom (New York: Yeshiva University, 1965), 157. Hermann Cohen may have been influenced by Luzzato’s analysis. Note that, like Schopenhauer, Luzzato too viewed compassion as a constitutive component of moral action, and his definition of compassion is close to that of Cohen in Religion of Reason, 162.
19.
See also Lawrence Blum, “Compassion,” in The Virtues: Contemporary Essays on Moral Character, ed. Robert B. Kruschwitz and Robert B. Roberts (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1987), 230; Nancy E. Snow, “Compassion,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 28 (1991) 195–196.
20.
Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity, trans. Phyllis and Trevor Blewitt (London: Cassell, 1953), 209.
21.
Adrian M. S. Piper, “Impartiality, Compassion, and Moral Imagination,” Ethics 101 (1991), 743.
22.
Snow, “Compassion,” 197–199.
23.
Blum, “Compassion,” 231–232. On the imagination as a mediating mechanism in the relationship with the other, see below.
24.
Ibid.
25.
Cohen, Religion of Reason, 140.
26.
Ibid., 142.
27.
Snow, “Compassion,” 197–199.
28.
Alan R. Drengson, “Compassion and Transcendence of Duty and Inclination,” Philosophy Today 25 (1981), 39.
29.
Jorge Semprún, Literature or Life, trans. Linda Coverdale (New York: Viking, 1997), 24.
30.
Cohen, Religion of Reason, 142.
31.
Ibid., 16–19.
32.
Ibid., 19–20.
33.
Ibid., 19.
34.
Sara Shiloh, Don’t Expect Miracles (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2006), 17 [Heb].
35.
Blum, “Compassion,” 233.
36.
Yosef Haim Brenner, Writings, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1978–1985), 435–436 [Heb].
37.
On this matter, see George W. Rainbolt, “Mercy: An Independent, Imperfect Virtue,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 27 (1990), 169.
38.
Cohen, Religion of Reason, 137.
39.
For further discussion of the distinctions between pity and compassion and their implications for interpersonal relations, see Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, The Subtlety of Emotions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), ch. 11.
40.
Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (London: Michael Joseph, 1988), 39.
41.
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1990), 85–89.
42.
Semprún, Literature or Life, 42.
43.
Arendt, On Revolution, 86.
44.
Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media, and Politics, trans. Graham Burchell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 3–7.
45.
Ibid., 4–5; Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “A Halakhic Approach to Suffering,” in Out of the Whirlwind: Essays on Mourning, Suffering and the Human Condition, ed. David Shatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky, and Reuven Ziegler (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 2003), 86.
46.
Ibid.
47.
Ibid., 103.
48.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1956), 128–136.
49.
Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward (London/New York: Verso, 2001), 40–44.
50.
Ibid., 15.
51.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, trans. Roger D. Masters and Judith R. Masters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), 96.
52.
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
53.
Marilyn Friedman, “Feminism in Ethics: Conceptions of Autonomy,” in Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, ed. Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 205–224. See also Gilligan, In a Different Voice.
54.
Alison M. Jaggar, “Feminist Ethics: Some Issues for the Nineties,” Journal of Social Philosophy 1–2 (1989): 91–107; Joan C. Tronto, “Beyond Gender Difference to a Theory of Care,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12 (1987): 644–663; Friedman, “Feminism in Ethics,” 208–209.
55.
Jaggar, “Feminist Ethics.”
56.
Jean P. Rumsey, “Justice, Care, and Questionable Dichotomies,” Hypatia 12 (1997), 100–101.
57.
Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis, ID: Hackett, 1981), 3.
58.
Ibid., 10.
59.
Ibid., 20.
60.
Ibid., 11.
61.
See, in particular, Matthew 5:44–48; 22: 37–39; Mark 12:30, and ff.
62.
Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics, 12.
63.
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 205 (emphasis in original).
64.
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 2:368.
65.
Ibid., 4:928.
66.
See also Drengson, “Compassion and Transcendence,” 38–41.
67.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 42.
68.
Jane Flax, “Beyond Equality: Gender, Justice and Difference,” in Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics, and Female Subjectivity, ed. Gisela Bock and Susan James (London: Routledge, 1992), 206.
69.
Aristotle, Ethics, 148. See also John Rawls, Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 22: “We need a conception that enables us to envision our objective from afar.”
70.
Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 39.
71.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, ID: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 2.
72.
George Fletcher, Basic Concepts of Legal Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 79. This view of Fletcher, which he rightfully claims is anchored in Scripture, reaffirms Rawls’ view as described at length in Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 15–24.
73.
Sigmund Freud, The Complete Psychological Works, vol. 21, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), 94–95.
74.
Chaim Perelman, Justice, Law, and Argument: Essays on Moral and Legal Reasoning (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980), 24.
75.
Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, trans. Anthony Bower (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957). 73.
76.
Ibid.
77.
Ibid., 29.
78.
Ch. Perelman, “La justice,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 41 (1957), 345.
79.
The distinction between these two politics actually expands the distinction between the two kinds of justice described by Aristotle: distributive and corrective (Aristotle, Ethics, 145–150). The expansion of distributive justice is the routine aspect and the expansion of corrective justice is manifest in revolutionary justice.
80.
Perelman, Justice, Law, and Argument, 24.
81.
Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 312–314.
82.
Ibid.
83.
Melvin J. Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion (New York: Plenum Press, 1980).
84.
Montesquieu, The Persian Letters (London: Casan, 1901), 156.
85.
Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 4; Plato, “The Republic,” trans. Paul Shorey, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), 674–685; Edgar Bodenheimer, Jurisprudence: The Philosophy and Method of the Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 6–9, 179.
86.
Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 2.
87.
MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 2.
88.
Yehuda Amichai, “The Place Where We Are Right,” in The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, trans. Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 34.
89.
Heinrich von Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas: A Tale from an Old Chronicle (New York: Melville, 2005), 3.
90.
Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 5–7.
91.
Badiou, Ethics, 70.
92.
Sagi, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd, 117–131.
93.
Sandel pointed to the special closeness between justice and right in Rawls’ thought. See Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, especially 17–18.
94.
Avi Sagi, “Society and Law in Israel: Between a Rights Discourse and an Identity Discourse,” in The Multicultural Challenge in Israel, ed. Avi Sagi and Ohad Nachtomy (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 129–149.
95.
Ibid.
96.
The reference is to the Jewish prisoners in the extermination camps who worked at the crematoria.
97.
Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 39.
98.
Martha C. Nussbaum, Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life, trans. Michael Shkodnikov, preface to the Hebrew translation (Haifa: Haifa University Press, 2004), 13 [Heb].
99.
Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 173.
100.
Ibid., 177.
101.
Ibid., 189.
102.
Ibid., 190.
103.
Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), 110. For an analysis of the role that Husserl ascribes to imagination in the attitude to the other, see Paul Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1967), 123–130.
104.
Rorty, Contingency, xvi. On the role of poetic imagination in shaping the moral disposition, see also Nussbaum, Poetic Justice, and Edith Wyschogrod, “A Symposium on Jewish Postmodernism: Trends in Postmodern Jewish Philosophy,” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 76 (1993), 130. For further discussion of the connection between empathy with the other and art, see Karl F. Morrison, “I Am You”: The Hermeneutics of Empathy in Western Literature, Theology and Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).
105.
See, for example, Norman Geras, Solidarity in the Conversation of Humankind: The Ungroundable Liberalism of Richard Rorty (London: British Library, 1995), 8–41.
106.
Marcel Reich-Ranicki, The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki, trans. Eward Osers (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001), 205.
107.
Leyb Rochman, The Pit and the Trap; A Chronicle of Survival, trans. Moshe Kohn (New York: Holocaust Library, 1983).
108.
Ibid., 88.
109.
Camus, The Rebel, 23.
110.
Nussbaum, Poetic Justice, 13.
111.
This approach of a dual perspective is already found in Gilligan, In a Different Voice. See also the detailed discussion in Rumsey, “Justice, Care,” 99–113. Rumsey analyzes the various options of relationships between the ethic of justice and the ethic of care: these ethics can be mutually exclusive, or adapted to specific circumstances, or simultaneously endorse a dual perspective of the moral experience. Rumsey points to the problems involved in the first two options. The moral experience is clearly damaged by exclusivity, in ways described at length in her article. The second approach fails to provide clear epistemological guidance concerning the uses of the two ethics—when and in what context to apply each one of them. Rumsey therefore supports the third option, as posing the least difficulties. In the body of the text, I too support the third option and point to the unique role of each of these ethics in the moral experience.
112.
Albert Camus, The Plague, trans. Stuart Gilbert (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1960).
113.
Ibid., 6.
114.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 211–213.
115.
For further analysis, see Sagi, Albert Camus, 107–131, 159–172.
116.
For an analysis of solidarity in Camus’ thought, see ibid., 117–131.
117.
Camus, The Rebel, 281. See also 283.
118.
Sagi, Albert Camus, 117–131.
119.
Albert Camus, The Fall, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960).
120.
Sagi, Albert Camus, 131–143.
121.
Avi Sagi, A Challenge: Returning to Tradition (Jerusalem/Ramat-Gan: Shalom Hartman Institute/Bar-Ilan University, 2003), 470–490 [Heb].
122.
Ramban (Nachmanides), Commentary on the Torah, vol. 5, Deuteronomy, trans. Charles B. Chavel (New York: Shilo, 1976), 88.
123.
The Code of Maimonides, The Book of Acquisition, Laws of Neighbors 14:5, gloss of Maggid Mishneh ad locum [Heb].
124.
See Moshe Halbertal, By the Way of Truth: Nahmanides and the Creation of Tradition (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2006), 287–289 [Heb]. For further analysis of Nahmanides’ position see Avi Sagi, Judaism: Between Religion and Morality (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1998), 86–91 [Heb].
125.
Nahmanides’ position is an interesting example of how the Aristotelian tradition, presented above, penetrated the halakhic discourse.
126.
This is the interpretation of this dispute in Midrash Bereshit Rabba, Genesis, Critical Edition, ed. Ch. Albeck (Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965) 24:5, 237 [Heb].
127.
R. Meïr Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser, known as Malbim, Leviticus, 19, 18, § 45. See also Sifra, ed. Isaac Weiss (Wien, 1862), 89b, Rabad ad locum, § 12 [Heb].
128.
The Code of Maimonides, The Book of Judges, trans. Abraham M. Hershman, Laws of Mourning 14:1 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1949). Similarly, Maimonides writes in The Commandments: Sefer Ha-Mitzvoth, vol. 1, The Positive Commandments, trans. Charles B. Chavel (London/New York: Soncino Press, 1967), Positive Commandment 206: “By this injunction we are commanded that we are to love one another even as we love ourselves, and that a man’s love and compassion for his brother in faith shall be like his love and compassion for himself …. This injunction is contained in His words (exalted be He), ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’” (220). See also The Book of Knowledge, Laws of Personality Development [Hilkhot De’ot] trans. Moses Hyamson (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1981), 6:3.
129.
R. Pinhas ha-Levi, Sefer ha-Hinnuch: The Book of [Mitzvah] Education, vol. 3, Leviticus, 219, trans. Charles Wengrov (Jerusalem/New York: Feldheim, 1984), 89.
130.
Nevertheless, it merits note that Jewish tradition does not sweepingly present either the ethic of justice or the disposition of compassion as universal. Quite the contrary, a widespread halakhic tradition conveyed by Maimonides and by the author of Sefer ha-Hinnuch limits the disposition of compassion and love exclusively to Jews (see also Moses b. Jacob of Coucy, Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, Positive commandment 9; Eliezer b. Samuel of Metz, Sefer Yereim ha-Shalem, § 224; Isaac b. Joseph of Corbeil, Sefer Mitzvot Katan, commandment 17). Contrary to this approach, we find in Tanna Debe Eliyyahu: The Lore of the School of Elijah, trans. William G. Braude and Israel J. Kapstein (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1981), 28 (26): “Hence the Sages said a man should keep away from dishonesty in dealing, whether with Jew or Gentile, indeed with any one in the marketplace. Besides, he who steals from a Gentile will in the end steal from a Jew; … he who sheds the blood of a Gentile will in the end shed the blood of a Jew” (347). This midrash correctly grasps that dispositions cannot be compartmentalized. Developing a basic disposition toward one person leads to its extension toward the other. Hence, the distinction between objects of the disposition on an ethnic basis is problematic, since limiting the disposition of compassion solely to Jews could also lead to the application of negative dispositions toward them.
131.
State institutions should also exercise compassion. Institutions, as noted, do not exist as entities without the people who administer them, and incumbent on them is the duty to act as moral agents. This duty includes, as argued, an attitude of compassion.

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Department of Philosophy, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Avi Sagi

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Sagi, A. (2018). The Ethic of Compassion and the Ethic of Justice. In: Living With the Other. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 99. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99178-8_2

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