Emotions at the Heart of Compassion

  • Andrew Peterson
Chapter
First Online:

Abstract

Emotions are central to – and for – compassion, and in the last chapter it was noted that compassion can be viewed as a virtue which stems from an emotional response to the suffering of others. As discussed in Chap. 2, so far as compassion is concerned, emotions play a crucial role in helping us to understand significant moral features of given situations. Thus, for virtues such as compassion, ‘the assumption is that without emotions, the moral enterprise would never have gotten off the ground in the first place’ (Kristjánsson 2014, p. 348). At this stage of the analysis of compassion offered here, then, it is both necessary and important to engage with precisely what the key emotional aspects of compassion are.

Keywords

Emotional Response Common Humanity Empathic Concern Moral Worth Compassion Fatigue 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Arendt, H. (1963). On revolution. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
  2. Baehr, J. (2011). The inquiring mind: The intellectual virtues and virtue epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Barber, B. (1984). Strong democracy. Participatory politics for a new age. Berkeley: University of California.Google Scholar
  4. Batson, C. D. (1991). The altruism question: Toward a social-psychological answer. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
  5. Batson, C. D. (1994). Why act for the public good? Four answers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin: Special Issue: The Self and the Collective, 20(5), 603–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Ben-Ze’Ev, A. (2000). The subtlety of emotions. London: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  7. Blum, L. (1987). Compassion. In R. B. Kruschwitz and R. C. Roberts (Eds.), The virtues: Essays on moral character (pp. 229–236). Belmont: Wandsworth.Google Scholar
  8. Boltanski, L. (1999). Distant suffering: Morality, media and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Borg, M. J. (1997). The God we never knew: Beyond dogmatic religion to a more authentic contemporary faith. San Francisco: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
  10. Boyd, R. (2004). Pity’s pathologies portrayed: Rousseau and the limits of democratic compassion. Political Theory, 32(4), 519–546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Callan, E. (1988). The moral status of pity. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 18(1), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Crisp, R. (2008). Compassion and beyond. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 11(3), 233–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Daniel, N. (2013, January 10). Teaching children empathy. Women’s Hour. BBC Radio Four.Google Scholar
  14. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. London: D. C. Heath.Google Scholar
  15. Eisenberg, N. (1986). Altruistic cognition, emotion and behavior. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
  16. Eisenberg, N., & Miller, P. A. (1987). The relation of empathy to prosocial and related behaviors. Psychological Bulletin, 101(1), 91–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T. L., & Savdovsky, A. (2006). Empathy-related responding in children. In M. Killen & J. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
  18. Faulkner, N. (2014b). Guilt, anger and compassionate helping. In M. Ure & M. Frost (Eds.), The politics of compassion (pp. 139–157). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  19. Garber, M. (2004). Compassion. In L. Berlant (Ed.), Compassion: The culture and politics of an emotion. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  20. Harth, N. S., Kessler, T., & Leach, C. W. (2008). Advantaged group’s emotional response to intergroup inequality: The dynamics of pride, guilt and sympathy. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(1), 115–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Iyer, A., & Leach, C. W. (2010). Helping disadvantaged out-groups challenge unjust inequalities: The role of group-based emotions. In S. Stürmer & M. Snyder (Eds.), The psychology of prosocial behavior: Group processes, intergroup relations and helping (pp. 337–354). Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
  23. Iyer, A., Schmader, T., & Lickel, B. (2007). Why individuals protest the perceived transgressions of their countries: The role of anger, shame, and guilt. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(4), 572–587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Konstan, D. (2014). Pity, compassion and forgiveness. In M. Ure & M. Frost (Eds.), The politics of compassion (pp. 179–188). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  25. Kristjánsson, K. (2014). Pity: A mitigated defence. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 44(3-4), 343–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Lee, H. (1960). To kill a mockingbird. London: Arrow Books.Google Scholar
  27. Lickel, B., Steele, R. R., & Schmader, T. (2011). Group-based shame and guilt: Emerging directions in research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(3), 153–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Lim, D., & DeSteno, D. (2016). Suffering and compassion: The links among adverse life experiences, empathy, compassion and prosocial behaviour. Emotion, 16(2), 175–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Luther King Jr., M. (1964). Beyond Vietnam – A time to break silence. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm. Accessed 24 March 2016.
  30. Nietzsche, F. (1881/1997). Daybreak: Thoughts on the prejudices of morality. Edited by M. Clark & B. Leiter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Nussbaum, M. C. (2001). Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions. Cambridge: CUP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Peters, D., & Calvo, R. A. (2014, September-October). Compassion vs. empathy: Designing for resilience. Interactions, 21(5), 49–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Rousseau, J.-J. (1755/1994). Discourse on inequality (trans: Philip, F, p. 17). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  34. Rousseau, J.-J. (1762/1979). Émile or on education (Introduction, Translation and Notes by A. Bloom). USA: Basic Books.Google Scholar
  35. Schertz, M. (2007). Avoiding ‘passive empathy’ with philosophy for children. Journal of Moral Education, 36(2), 185–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Smith, A. (2009[1759]). The theory of moral sentiments. R. P. Hanleyed. London: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
  37. Snow, N. (1991). Compassion. American Philosophical Quarterly, 28(3), 195–205.Google Scholar
  38. Snow, N. (2000). Empathy. American Philosophical Quarterly, 37(1), 65–78.Google Scholar
  39. Sverdlik, S. (2008). Compassion and sympathy as moral motivation. Occasional papers. Paper 3. http://digitalrepository.smu.edu/centers_maguireethics_occasional/3/. Accessed 25 Jan 2016.
  40. Ure, M. (2014). Sympathy and antipathy in the extra-moral sense. In M. Ure & M. Frost (Eds.), The politics of compassion (pp. 230–247). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  41. Van Zomeren, M., Spears, R., Fletcher, A. H., & Leach, C. W. (2004). Put your money where your mouth is! Explaining collective action tendencies through group-based anger and group efficacy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(5), 649–664.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  42. Welp, L. R., & Brown, C. M. (2014). Self-compassion, empathy, and helping intentions. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(1), 54–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. White, R. (2008). Rousseau and the education of compassion. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42(1), 35–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  44. Whitebrook, M. (2014). Love and anger as political virtues. In M. Ure & M. Frost (Eds.), The politics of compassion (pp. 21–36). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  45. Wilhelm, M. O., & Bekkers, R. (2010). Helping behaviour, dispositional empathic concern, and the principle of care. Social Psychology Quarterly, 73(1), 11–32.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Andrew Peterson
    • 1
  1. 1.Faculty of EducationCanterbury Christ Church UniversityCanterburyUnited Kingdom

Personalised recommendations