Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7: 487511, 2004.

DOI: 10.1007/s10677-005-3714-5

C

Springer 2005

M. WEBER

COMPASSION AND PITY: AN EVALUATION OF NUSSBAUMS

ANALYSIS AND DEFENSE
Accepted: 23 September 2004

ABSTRACT. In this paper I argue that Martha Nussbaums Aristotelian analysis of compassion and pity is faulty, largely because she fails to distinguish between (a) an emotions
basic constitutive conditions and the associated constitutive or intrinsic norms, (b) extrinsic normative conditions, for instance, instrumental and moral considerations, and
(c) the causal conditions under which emotion is most likely to be experienced. I also argue
that her defense of compassion and pity as morally valuable emotions is inadequate because she treats a wide variety of objections as all stemming from a common commitment
to a Stoic conception of the good. I argue that these objections can be construed as neutral
between conceptions of the good. I conclude by arguing that construed in this way there are
nonetheless plausible replies to these objections.
KEY WORDS: compassion, Martha Nussbaum, morality and motivation, Nietzsche, pity

In a series of books and articles, Martha Nussbaum has sought to analyze and defend a cluster of emotions that includes compassion, pity, and
sympathy (see Nussbaum, 1986, 1994a, 1994b, 1996, 2001). This work
fits within a larger movement to rehabilitate the emotions both in ethics
and elsewhere, for instance in cognitive science.1 Although I am in sympathy with this larger movement, and find much to admire in Nussbaums
work, I believe that her analysis suffers insofar as she does not always
clearly distinguish between (a) an emotions basic constitutive conditions
and the associated constitutive or intrinsic norms, (b) extrinsic normative conditions, for instance, instrumental and moral considerations, and
(c) the causal conditions under which emotion is most likely to be experienced. Her defense too is problematic, primarily because it too closely
ties the critiques of compassion and pity to the doctrine attributed to the
Stoics according to which external goods, including not just material goods
but also power, friendship, and health, are of little or no importance because ones own virtue is entirely sufficient for a flourishing human life
(Nussbaum, 1994a, p. 144). I believe that there are important challenges to
1 In ethics, the emotions, in particular sympathy and compassion, have been defended
as moral motives and as otherwise valuable. See Stocker (1996) and Blum (1994, 1980). In
cognitive science, see Damasio (1994).

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compassion and pity that do not depend on accepting the Stoic conception
of the good, indeed that the criticisms Nussbaum draws from Plato and
especially Nietzsche are misconstrued insofar as she renders them Stoic.
In this paper, I will develop and assess these challenges that Nussbaum
misses or misconstrues in virtue of her attempt to see the entire anti-pity
tradition as essentially Stoic.
I
Following the general lines of Aristotles analysis of compassion
(or pity2 ) in the Rhetoric, Nussbaum starts by describing compassion as a
painful emotion directed at anothers misfortune or suffering that involves
three beliefs: (a) that the suffering is serious rather than trivial; (b) that the
suffering is not caused primarily by the persons own culpable actions; and,
(c) that one is subject to a similar misfortune (Nussbaum, 1994a, p. 141,
1996, p. 31, 2001, p. 306).
Various objections can be leveled against this analysis (whether it is true
to Aristotle or not). First, as Nussbaum herself sometimes acknowledges,
it is simply too strong to claim that compassion must involve believing that
the suffering is serious, believing that the suffering is not the persons fault,
and believing that one is subject to similar misfortune.3 Indeed, no beliefs
are required at all. This is not to dispute the cognitivist view of compassion and of emotions generally, according to which emotions essentially
involve a cognitive component.4 Rather, it is to deny that the cognitive feature must be a belief. Consider fear, as an example. Must I believe that the
spider or snake is dangerous in order to be in a state of fear? It seems not, as
I might know (and therefore believe) that the spider or snake is not dangerous but somehow nonetheless see it as dangerous. Its way of creeping,
or slithering, appears menacing, even though I know it is not dangerous.
2 Nussbaum

(1996, p. 29) thinks pity and compassion are essentially the same emotion,
with only subtle differences. She allows, then, that they may be used interchangeably,
though she prefers to use pity when talking the historical debate and compassion when
discussing contemporary issues because, she claims, since the Victorian era pity has taken
on connotations of condescension and superiority. I will use the terms interchangeably,
unless there is a specific reason to draw a distinction. See also Nussbaum (2001), p. 301.
3 It is most clearly acknowledged in Nussbaum (2001).
4 Although cognitivism has become the dominant view, there are dissenters, e.g, Deigh
(1994), and DArms and Jacobson (2003). DArms and Jacobson are recent converts, having
previously endorsed cognitivism (see DArms and Jacobson, 2000). They argue that what
cognitivists have typically taken to be the constitutive thoughts of a given emotion are
a special type of normative standard for emotions (p. 132). For example, cognitivists
typically hold that fear involves the thought that danger is present. DArms and Jacobson
deny this, but admit that danger being present is a norm for fear, such that fear is unwarranted
if danger is not present. I cannot address their view here due to limitations of space.

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Jealousy provides another helpful example: I can be jealous even if I firmly

believe that my partner will always be true, as it is possible, despite this
belief, to see her conversing with the tall, dark stranger as something more
than just talking.5 Robert Roberts gloss on this is to say that emotions
involve construals rather than beliefs.6 It seems that this applies just as
much to compassion as it does to fear and jealousy.
Appropriate modification of the Aristotelian formulation is of course
easy enough: Compassion is a painful emotion directed at anothers misfortune or suffering and involves three construals that correspond to the
three beliefs Nussbaum identifies. Although Nussbaum does not speak in
terms of construals, when she is alive to these concerns she does make
the same point. She says, for instance, that the cognitive components of
emotions such as compassion can be a belief or an appraisal, where appraisals fall well short of belief (see e.g., Nussbaum, 2001, p. 306). Indeed,
in part to accommodate emotions in animals and human infants, Nussbaum
allows that such appraisals can be pre- or non-linguistic.7 She says, then,
that compassion does not require a belief that another person has suffered
misfortune, but rather simply requires that a painful emotion is occasioned
by an awareness of another persons misfortune (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 306,
my emphasis).
Unfortunately, there are problems with the account even with this reformulation. It seems to me, first, that compassion does not require a construal
or any kind of awareness that the persons suffering is not his fault. Consider Fred, who falls asleep at the wheel of his car, crashes, and ends up
confined to a wheelchair. Surely his injury is to some degree, if not entirely, his fault. It seems, nonetheless, that even in the face of this Fred
ought to have our compassion, which requires that having compassion is
5 It might be said that I could only see it as flirting if I have some doubt about my partners

faithfulness. But this seems false to me. Imagine that in the past my partners have been flirts
who have strayed. With this history, my current partners innocent behavior may remind me
(consciously or unconsciously) of my past and trigger an emotional response, even if I know
that my current partners behavior is entirely innocent. Not all flirting, it should be said, is
on the way to unfaithfulness: sometimes it is just flirting, with no thought or intention
of it going any further than that. Whether this should occasion jealousy is another matter.
6 Roberts (1988). Some, e.g., Solomon (1976), characterize emotions in terms of judgments rather than beliefs. However, the same critique applies: one need not judge that the
spider is dangerous; one only need construe it as dangerous.
7 Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 5, 7, 23, 28, 37, 89138. Although this is clearly a move in the
right direction, there is a concern that Nussbaums account of what is cognitive is so broad
that it is hard to know what could count as non-cognitive. For instance, she says that what
she means by something cognitive is nothing more than concerned with receiving and
processing information (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 23). A simple organism that responds to
heat, it would then seem, has cognitions, as does a thermostat, unless a lot is built in to
processing information. Pursuing this issue further, however, would take us too far afield.

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compatible with believing that a persons misfortune is his own doing.8

The simplest explanation for the judgment that Fred nonetheless deserves
our sympathy is that while the accident was his fault, his mistake is one any
one of us could easily have made. We have all probably very nearly fallen
asleep at the wheel and crashed, and this seems to bear on how we ought
to respond.9 It seems, then, that it is not enough (for the denial of compassion) that the person is at fault for his suffering; it requires that his mistake
is a particularly egregious or stupid one, one that most people would not
make.10 Compassion, then, does not require a construal according to which
a person is not at fault for his misfortune, or any awareness to that effect.
Some might deny that Fred ought to have our compassion. But the crucial
point that compassion does not require a construal according to which
the person is not at fault for his misfortune does not depend on accepting the claim that Fred ought to have our compassion, because the debate
itself presupposes that compassion does not require such a construal. If
such a construal were required, then it would be impossible to have compassion for Fred knowing that the accident is his fault, in which case any
debate over whether he should or should not have our compassion would be
incoherent.11 To put it another way, there is no point in insisting that Fred
or others like him should not have our compassion unless it is possible to
experience such putatively unwarranted compassion, which requires that
compassion can be experienced even if the persons misfortune is construed
as his own fault.12
The case I am making is bolstered if we contrast Fred with Ed, who is
similarly injured because he crashed his car, but crashed because he was
8 Although, as the previous discussion suggests, one can believe that while construing
things otherwise, I am here assuming that the person who believes that another person has
brought on his own misfortune is also construing things that way.
9 Husak (1996) argues similarly that in a variety of circumstances a claim that everyone
does that is exculpatory, both legally and morally.
10 I do not pretend to have provided here a clear and exact criterion that distinguishes
cases in which compassion is appropriate and cases in which it is not. It is enough, for my
purposes, to have shown that in at least some cases compassion is appropriate despite the
fact that the persons suffering is to some degree, or even entirely, his fault.
11 I suppose it could be argued that any such debate is incoherent, and people just do
not realize this because they are insensitive to the fact that compassion requires a construal
according to which the person is not significantly at fault for his misfortune. This strikes
me as implausible, however, and suspect insofar as it seems to exclude a substantive debate
by definitional fiat.
12 There can be unwarranted compassion even if it is true that compassion requires a
construal according to which the persons misfortune is not his own fault, namely in the
case where a person feels compassion for a person thinking that his misfortune is not his
fault, when in fact it is. But this is different, and does not by itself show that there cannot
be other kinds of unwarranted compassion.

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under the influence of alcohol. I think we are prone to say that Ed does
not deserve compassion, or if he does he is less deserving and deserving
of less. Why? Because drunk driving, unlike driving when too sleepy, is
an egregious or particularly stupid mistake, one that most of us have not
made and would not make, though of course drunk driving is regrettably
common.13 Of course we would not think less badly of drunk driving if it
were even more common. Frequency alone, then, cannot be the issue. But
this should not lead us to think that there is no rational basis for distinguishing drunk drivers from sleepy drivers, and thus there is no basis for treating
Fred and Ed differently.14 Though I will not offer a full-scale defense here, it
seems to me that there are significant differences between drunk and sleepy
drivers. The most important is simply that drunk drivers are more likely
to get into accidents than sleepy drivers, mainly, I think, because drunks
are often oblivious to their incapacity, or at least very prone to misjudge
its degree, where sleepy drivers are not, or are less so.15 This of course is
compatible with it being the case that many accidents are caused by drivers
falling asleep at the wheel. But this does not compromise the essential
point, which is just that drunk drivers are more likely to cause accidents.16
There is another apparent difference between drunk and sleepy drivers,
though I am skeptical of its ethical significance. The drunk seems more active in the genesis of his incapacitation: he got himself drunk, by drinking
too much.17 Becoming sleepy seems different: we do not have to do anything; it simply comes upon us. Of course we become sleepy if we fail to get
sufficient rest. But herein lies an apparent difference: the drunk is incapacitated because he actively drinks, while the sleepy driver is incapacitated
13 The same disclaimer applies as before: I do not pretend to have provided here a clear
and exact criterion that distinguishes cases in which compassion is appropriate and cases
in which it is not.
14 The thought I wish to deny is that there is an irrational social bias that considers drunk
driving worse than other things that are equally potentially devastating. Some think that
there is such an unjustified bias against smoking: it is shunned in ways that other equally
unhealthy vices are not.
15 Husak (1994) argues that driving with an elevated blood alcohol level is not as dangerous as is commonly thought, especially when compared to other impairments such as
sleepiness, or even driving at night. However, this point is compatible with the claim that
intoxicated drivers, where intoxication is not a matter of blood alcohol level but a matter
of impairment, are more likely to cause accidents than sleepy drivers. Husaks attack is
directed at laws that are based on blood alcohol levels; it is not an attack on the claim that
driving while intoxicated is no more dangerous than while sleepy or otherwise impaired.
16 Of course this does not get sleepy drivers off the hook. They may be less blameworthy
and correspondingly more deserving of our compassion than drunk drivers. But this
does not mean they are by any means free from blame and deserve only compassion. In
addition, they may also deserve blame or chastisement, or even criminal prosecution.
17 I am assuming that the drunk is not forced to drink against his will.

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because he fails to get sufficient rest. It is the sleepy drivers not doing
something his omission which leads to his incapacitation. However,
like many, I am skeptical of the ethical significance of the act/omission
distinction.18 Delving further into the matter, of course, would take us too
far afield.
What if Fred, instead of only injuring himself in the accident, also injured or killed others? I think in this case too we are less inclined to feel
compassion or inclined to feel less compassion. This attitude apparently
depends on accepting a different controversial ethical view, namely that
there can be moral luck which allows that it makes a moral difference
that in the first instance when Fred injures only himself that he was simply
lucky not to have injured or killed others.19 So too in the drunk driving
case: if we think that Ed is even less deserving of compassion or deserves
even less compassion if he injured or killed others, we commit ourselves
to allowing for moral luck. Be that as it may, debates over act/omission
and moral luck do not compromise the fundamental point, which is just
that compassion is entirely compatible with thinking that the person who
suffers is in part, perhaps even entirely, at fault for his suffering. If Fred
falls asleep at the wheel and injures no one but himself, he seems deserving
of at least some compassion.
It is crucial to emphasize that saying that sleepy drivers like Fred deserve
compassion is compatible with saying that, insofar as such drivers are at
fault, they are also deserving of blame and reproach. Compassion, blame,
and reproach can, it seems to me, co-exist, and all be apt in the same
circumstance. This does complicate matters quite a bit. There is a difficult
line we have to walk here balancing supportive compassion and critical
blame and reproach. In most cases and certainly in Freds case it has
always seemed to me that the supportive compassion should come first and
the critical blame and reproach later. What a person needs at first when
he suffers an injury or some other loss is compassion, regardless of the
genesis of his suffering and loss. Similarly, the broken-hearted lover who
foolishly loves the unworthy and unfaithful, for example, is still broken
hearted and needs compassion first and foremost. There is plenty of time
18 There are two components to this skepticism: (1) It is not clear that there is a fact of
the matter as to whether something is an act or an omission; (2) Even if the distinction can
be drawn, it is unclear that it makes a moral difference whether something is an act or an
omission.
19 This commonly held view that it is only luck that distinguishes the impaired driver
who injures or kills others from the impaired driver who does not could be challenged by
arguing that, in general, accidents that cause injury or death to others are the product of
more serious driving errors, errors more likely to be made the more impaired one is. Thus,
in the aggregate, it would be right to say that there is likely greater impairment in accidents
in which others are injured or killed.

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later for critical judgment and for learning lessons.20 This general point
about timing, it seems to me, applies especially, though not exclusively, to
children and young people, who are especially prone to certain kinds of
mistakes in the process of growing up.
In sum, I have thus far argued that whatever we may think about the
distinction between acts and omissions, and about moral luck, Freds case
makes clear that compassion is compatible with thinking that a person is
to some degree at fault perhaps completely at fault for his suffering. In
particular, if a persons suffering is the product of a mistake we all could
just have easily made then compassion by no means seems entirely out of
place. This makes room for compassion in the face of a wide variety of
circumstances, including in particular the various mistakes of children and
teenagers, even the best of whom are prone to typical mistakes associated
with a specific age.
There are two replies to the argument that I have just given that should
be addressed. One reply is to argue that compassion is not in order in cases
where a person is to some degree at fault for his suffering, though another
similar emotion is, and this explains whatever intuitive force there is to
the example of Fred who falls asleep at the wheel.21 Pity and sympathy,
for instance, are often put forward in this context. Unlike compassion, it
is claimed, pity and sympathy do not involve seeing the sufferer as free
from fault.22 It seems to me, however, that there is no real dispute here.
20 Indeed,

I am inclined to argue that whatever lesson is supposed to be learned is more

likely to be learned if compassion comes first.
21 Nussbaum suggests a more direct response to handle the intuition about Freds case.
She suggests that in some cases the severity of the injury or loss is out of proportion to
the culpable persons action, and the person thus deserves compassion for the extra or
nonblameworthy suffering. See Nussbaum, 1994a, p. 142, 1996, p. 33, 2001, pp. 311
312. Thus, in Freds case, his injury in the accident is severe, and out of proportion to
his mistake for which he is to blame. This seems to me a hard argument to make here,
because serious injury and even death are just what frequently happens when you fall
asleep at the wheel. What, then, are the grounds for claiming that the consequences
serious injury and even death are out of proportion? I suppose the answer is that how bad
the mistake is does not depend on the severity or size of its typical outcomes, but instead
by some independent evaluative standard. At a minimum, we are owed some account of
this independent evaluative standard. Perhaps I have provided at least the beginnings of
this: How big a mistake is depends on how frequently it is made a mistake is a smaller
mistake if it is more common. If this is right, then perhaps Nussbaum and I are ultimately
in agreement. There is another option here too, which is to argue that the outcome is out of
proportion because while the mistake is a big one (not one commonly made), it is one for
which the person has a good excuse, e.g., poor parental guidance, or mental instability. See
Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 311312. I will not pursue here the merits of this approach, simply
due to limitations of space.
22 This is just one of many postulated differences between compassion and pity. See,
e.g., Blum, 1994, p. 178, and Snow, 1991, p. 196.

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At issue is a matter of terminology, because we can just as easily talk of

compassion that does not concern itself with fault as we can talk about
sympathy and pity as different from compassion insofar as they are not
concerned with fault.23 If there is an issue at all, it is this. It is commonly
held that pity, unlike compassion, involves condescension (in addition to
Nussbaum, 1994a, 1996, and 2001, pp. 301, 383, see Blum, 1994, and
Snow, 1991). If this is right, and if we also insist that Fred deserves pity
instead of compassion, the result is that the appropriate attitude is one that
includes condescension. This strikes me as a mistake, just because fault
can be assigned without condescending. Indeed, this is just what I think
Freds case, and others like it, show: in cases of mistakes we all (might)
make, we can assign fault without thinking too terribly of the person who
suffers as a result of his mistakes without condescending. So if pity
involves condescension, and alternatives such as compassion do not, then
compassion is more suited to Freds case than pity. If on the other hand pity
does not necessarily involve condescension, then, so long as condescension
is not present, it can be appropriate to Freds case. The bottom line is that
whatever the appropriate emotion is, it should not be condescending.
Nussbaum sometimes suggests something a bit different, that what is
called for in cases in which the person is at fault for his own suffering is
not compassion or pity but mercy. Mercy, she says, like pity and unlike
compassion, allows that a person is at fault for his own suffering (see
Nussbaum, 1994a and Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 365368, 397399). But what
is mercy? According to Nussbaum, mercy is defined as the inclination
of the judgment toward leniency in selecting penalties (Nussbaum, 2001,
p. 365). But if mercy is just a matter of leniency in punishment, it seems
that it is not enough. In Freds case, it seems to me, something more heartfelt is warranted: simply being lenient does not seem to do justice to the
misfortune he as suffered.24 In reply, Nussbaum could claim, as she does,
that the merciful person is not always hard (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 365).
But in cashing out how it is that the merciful person is not hard, she seems to
build compassion into mercy. She explains, for instance, that the merciful
person will examine the persons situation with great sympathy, sensitive
to the fact that the person has suffered a misfortune, and that though it was
his fault, it is hard for all of us to avoid the multitudinous ways in which we
might cause our own misfortune (Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 365366, 397398).
23 Which way we go should be decided pragmatically, depending, for instance, on whether
we need a distinction between compassion and pity to mark a different distinction.
24 Indeed, if mercy is just a matter of leniency in punishment, then it is not an emotion at
all. Rather, it is a kind of attitude or policy. My point, then, is that some sort of emotional
response some emotion of fellow-feeling is warranted above and beyond whatever
leniency in punishment is warranted.

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A different way to respond to my argument that compassion does not

require that the person who suffers misfortune is seen as free from fault
would be to suggest that insofar as the mistake is one anybody might
have made it is not really the persons fault. Fault and the corresponding
blame should be attributed only to mistakes that stand out that lie
outside the norm. Teenagers, for instance, are not at fault for various forms
of rebellious activity, and for the selfishness and self-absorption so typical
of them. Similarly, sleepy drivers like Fred are not really at fault for the
accident.
But this seems to go a bit too far. Perhaps we should be more forgiving
attribute fault without a lot of blame when the mistakes or errors people
make are common (for their age, in the case of teenagers). However, this
does not require denying fault all together. Surely Fred is at fault for falling
asleep at the wheel, regardless of the fact that it is a common mistake that
we have all very nearly made. So too with teenagers and their various forms
of bad behavior: rather than thinking that they are not at fault, we should
be forgiving in the face of assigning fault.
In her more recent work, Nussbaum acknowledges that we can and
perhaps should have compassion for people who are responsible for their
own misfortune, especially, as I have suggested, if a persons mistakes
are typical for his age, e.g., adolescence. A parent, she says, may feel
compassion for the mess an adolescent child has gotten into, and yet think
that it is the childs own fault (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 314). But she insists
that in a case like this there is a higher level at which we do not think
the adolescent is at fault. When we have such thoughts, she says, we
are . . . making a two-stage judgment. In one way, it is clearly the childs
own fault; and yet the condition of adolescence, which is not her fault,
brings with it a certain blindness and a liability to certain types of errors
(Nussbaum, 2001, p. 314). This seems to me a step in the right direction.
However, I do not think that it goes far enough, because there are cases
such as Freds case in which we can and perhaps should feel compassion
even when it is not the case that at some higher level the person is not at
fault.25
25 There may be a way to squeeze Freds case into Nussbaums framework. Imagine that
Fred is a middle-aged man with older children at college and younger children at home.
As a result, he (and likely his partner too) must work hard both in the office and at home.
No wonder, then, that he is tired and prone to (nearly) fall asleep at the wheel. In this case,
we might say that Fred, much like the imagined teenager, is in a condition in Freds case,
middle-age in America the structure of which is not his fault, or at least not entirely his fault,
which brings with it a liability to make certain types of errors, in this case making mistakes
because one is very tired. It seems to me, however, that compassion for a person injured due
to falling asleep at the wheel need not be limited to persons like Fred, with all his middle-age
responsibilities. So it seems to me that Nussbaums approach here is likely too narrow.

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What I have argued thus far, then, is that in at least some cases in which
a person is at fault for his own suffering he nonetheless deserves at least
some compassion, and perhaps some mercy as well.26 If this is right, then
we cannot accept Nussbaums claim that compassion requires thinking
that a person is not at fault for his misfortunes, or any awareness to that
effect. We also should be wary of her repeated insistence that insofar as
we believe that a person came to grief through his or her own fault, we will
blame and reproach, rather than pitying (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 311; see also
Nussbaum, 1994a, p. 142, 1996, p. 33). This is just too harsh.27 Does Fred
deserve only blame and reproach, even in the case where he injures only
himself? Is leniency with respect to punishment (mercy) all he deserves if
the accident results in others being injured or killed?
There is of course a more generous way of reading Nussbaums claim
that we will only blame and reproach, according to which it is just an
empirical, psychological claim: as a matter of empirical fact, people tend
to blame and reproach, rather than respond with compassion and pity, when
the person is to some significant extent at fault for his suffering.28 This,
however, is not to say that people should only blame and reproach, rather
than showing compassion and pity (also). This distinction, however, is not
sufficiently attended to in Nussbaums treatment of compassion. Too often
she fails to distinguish the normative and the descriptive. Needless to say,
this can be quite misleading, suggesting that the very harsh view that denies
Fred compassion is the right normative view and that this is simply the
product of an analysis of the nature or logic of compassion and pity.
The distinction between the normative and the descriptive is also insufficiently attended to in many of her discussions of the (modified) claim that
compassion involves construing matters in such a way that one is subject
to the same misfortunes as those who suffer.29 It may be true as a matter of empirical fact that people tend to feel compassion only if they see
themselves as subject to the same misfortune. A failure to see oneself as
26 There is one caveat that I mentioned above: if mercy includes compassion, then mercy
is enough.
27 As I have noted, the harshness is mitigated insofar as it is allowed that mercy is
warranted. However, as I have argued above, mercy alone does not seem sufficient: a degree
of compassion or pity seems warranted as well.
28 Even this seems false, because especially with those close or dear to us we tend to feel
compassion whether the suffering is the persons fault or not. If the empirical claim is true
at all, it is true when applied to our attitude toward strangers.
29 In particular, Nussbaum (1994a, 1996). The treatment in Nussbaum (2001) is superior,
in which she retracts the requirement of similar possibilities in favor of a eudaimonistic
requirement according to which compassion, and emotions generally, require that the object
of the emotion makes a difference to the subject. In this modified view, Nussbaum holds that
similar possibilities is merely an epistemological requirement or guide for compassion.
See especially, pp. 3134, 315321.

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similarly vulnerable often explains a lack of compassion. In the first part

of a passage from Rousseaus Emile that Nussbaum approvingly cites, this
seems to be the message:
Why are kings without pity for their subjects? Because they count on never being human
beings. Why are the rich so hard toward the poor? It is because they have no fear of
being poor. Why does a noble have such contempt for the peasant? It is because he will
never be a peasant. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quoted in Nussbaum, 1996, p. 34. See also
Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 315316)

However, it is another thing entirely to say that people should not feel
compassion unless they correctly see themselves as subject to the same
misfortunes as those who suffer. The king may not feel compassion for his
subjects because he cannot imagine himself being in their circumstances.
Surely, however, it is no excuse for a callous and cruel king to say I am
king, and will never be a subject even if what he says is true! There must
be something wrong with any analysis of the nature or logic of compassion
that makes this a good excuse.
What has gone wrong, it seems to me, is that Nussbaum has failed to
(consistently) distinguish more than just the descriptive and the normative. She has failed to distinguish between (a) an emotions basic constitutive conditions and the associated constitutive or intrinsic norms; (b)
extrinsic normative conditions, for instance instrumental or moral considerations; and (c) the causal conditions under which emotion is most
likely to be experienced. Consider the first. The standard cognitivist view
is that, in general, emotions cannot be distinguished phenomenologically
in terms of how they feel. They are distinguished, instead, in virtue of
their distinctive cognitive components, the thoughts that a subject must
have if he is to be counted as having that emotion at all. Pride (in oneself),
for example, requires a thought or construal according to which there is
something good about oneself. If one feels some kind of warm glow but no
such thought is present, then one simply is not experiencing pride.30 The
thought that there is something good about oneself, then, is a constitutive
condition for pride. What comes with this is a constitutive or intrinsic
norm: if what one takes to be good about oneself is not really good, or
if it is good but one is mistaken in thinking one in fact has this quality,
then ones pride is mistaken unjustified or unwarranted at least with
respect to the quality in question. Constitutive or intrinsic norms, however,
must be distinguished from extrinsic norms stemming from independent
rational and moral considerations. For instance, it might be argued that
it would be wrong for the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project to
30 To deal with counterexamples it might have to be allowed that the thought could be
subconscious.

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take pride in their scientific accomplishments after witnessing the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One need not agree with this judgment
to see the point, which is that the norm being invoked is of a different sort.
There is no claim here that the scientific accomplishments are not impressive scientifically no claim, then, that (scientific) pride is not intrinsically
warranted. The claim is that despite the fact that pride is in this way intrinsically warranted, there are overriding moral considerations that render
pride inappropriate all-things-considered. Contrast this case with another.
Some people argue that it is wrong to take pride in ones appearance because our appearance is not what matters about us rather, it is only what
we are inside. Whether one agrees with this or not, it should be clear that
the point here is different because the suggestion is that what people take
to be good or valuable their pleasing appearance really is not good or
valuable at all. The target here is the constitutive norm that requires that
what one takes pride in is in fact something good or valuable. There is a
clear difference, then, between intrinsic, constitutive norms and extrinsic
rational and moral norms.31
Further, both of these kinds of conditions must be distinguished from
causal conditions, or those conditions under which an emotion is likely to be
experienced. Pride is more likely to be felt, for instance, when compared
to or in the presence of those of similar or lesser merit. Even a gifted
music student is more likely to feel proud of his ability when compared
to his fellow students, rather than, say, to Yo-Yo Ma. The comparison can
make even a gifted student think he has no talent at all. But if he does
have talent, then pride is intrinsically warranted, whether he experiences
it or not. So causal conditions must be distinguished from constitutive or
intrinsic conditions and the associated intrinsic norms. Extrinsic norms are
similarly distinct.
With respect to compassion, it seems from the earlier discussion that
the only constitutive condition is that one takes another person (or nonhuman feeling thing) to be seriously suffering. Perhaps we should only
have compassion in cases in which the suffering is not the persons fault or
the product of some kind of mistake that we all are prone to make. But this
is another matter.32 Thus compassion is intrinsically unwarranted only if
31 DArms

and Jacobson (2000). An example of an extrinsic rational norm with respect

to pride is the following: It is sometimes suggested that it is instrumentally rational to
feel pride in oneself, even when one has little to be proud of even when the constitutive
norm is not satisfied because having such pride may provide the psychological conditions
necessary for the kind of achievement that intrinsically warrants pride. For example, an
untested athlete is more likely to beat a champion opponent if he is especially confident or
proud, despite being untested.
32 This allows us to accommodate the thinking of some that we can but should not feel
compassion for those who deserve their punishment, e.g., convicted criminals.

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it is experienced when in fact the other person is not seriously suffering. It

need not be the case that one takes the suffering not to be the sufferers fault
in order to experience compassion. Indeed, as I emphasized earlier, if this
were the case, then it would be impossible to experience compassion for
someone at fault for his misfortune, which surely is not the case. Nor is it the
conclusion sought by those who think that we should not experience compassion for those at fault for their own suffering. Their concern is that we
sometimes experience compassion when we should not, which is just to say
that the concern here is an extrinsic moral consideration pertaining to compassion. Thus, even if its true which I have argued it is not that someone
or something deserves compassion only if the suffering is not his or her
fault, or not largely so, this is an extrinsic rather than an intrinsic concern.
It seems to me, then, that whether a person is at fault for his misfortune is
at most plausibly a causal condition for compassion: people are, as a matter
of empirical fact, disinclined to experience compassion when the person
suffering is at fault. The same is true with the condition that the subject see
himself as subject to the same misfortune: it cannot be either a constitutive
condition or a rational/moral condition; at most, it is a felicitous eliciting
condition. Insofar as Nussbaum fails to make these distinctions, her analysis
is flawed, and can be gravely misleading, suggesting that certain normative
claims, e.g., that compassion is warranted only when the sufferer is not at
fault for his suffering, follow from the nature or logic of compassion. It
does not follow. Moreover, it is false.
In fact, I am not at all sure it is even right to say that as a matter of
empirical psychological fact a person must think he can suffer the same
misfortune in order to have compassion, or that he must think the sufferer
not at fault. Surely having such thoughts facilitates compassion. But it is
another thing to say that in their absence people generally do not feel compassion. This would entail, for example, that generally speaking a person
unable to have children cannot have compassion for a person who has lost a
child. It would also entail that in general the scrupulously law-abiding parents of a known-to-them guilty criminal will not have compassion for his
plight in prison. But surely compassion in these circumstances is possible,
even quite un-extraordinary.33
Indeed, Nussbaum herself seems to allow for this kind of thing in her
earliest discussions of the pedagogical value of tragedy and the modern
33 In Nussbaum (2001), such cases are handled either by invoking the eudaimonistic
requirement, or by suggesting that the requirement is that one is similarly subject or such
misfortune might befall a loved one. See p. 316. As I have noted, I find the treatment
there more satisfactory. The critical comments here, then, should be seen as directed at
the discussions in Nussbaum (1994a, 1996). These criticisms are largely anticipated in
Nussbaum (2001), and the position is consequently modified, with the similar possibilities
requirement replaced by the eudaimonistic requirement.

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novel. She initially suggests that the value of such drama and literature is
that it teaches people especially young people that they are subject to
various misfortunes that they may have not yet experienced:
To the young adolescent who is preparing to take a place in the city . . . tragedy has a
special significance. Such a spectator is learning pity in the process. Tragedies acquaint
young people with the bad things that may happen in human life, long before life itself
does so: they thus enable concern for others who are suffering what the spectator has
not yet suffered. (Nussbaum, 1996, p. 39)

However, she then suggests that the power of such drama and literature
is even greater, because it can teach us to be compassionate even towards
those who suffer what we ourselves could not possibly suffer:
. . . tragedy leads the spectator to cross boundaries that are usually regarded as firm in
social life. Through sympathetic identification, it . . . asks him to identify himself not
only with those whom he in some sense might be . . . but also with many whom he
never in fact can be, though one of his loved ones might such as Trojans and Persians
and Africans, such as wives and daughters and mothers. (Nussbaum, 1996, p. 39, my
emphasis)

So Nussbaum herself allows that one can learn to be compassionate

toward people very different people whose sufferings one is not oneself
subject to.
Of course despite various kinds of social stratification we are in fact
all subject to nearly all the misfortunes that others suffer, because social
structures and our personal good fortune can radically change. This is
Rousseaus point in the passage cited, which continues as follows:
Each may be tomorrow what the one whom he helps is today. Do not, therefore, accustom
your pupil to regard the sufferings of the unfortunate and the labors of the poor from the
height of his glory; and do not teach him to pity them if he considers them alien to him.
Make him understand well that the fate of these unhappy people can be his, that all their
ills are there in the ground beneath his feet, that countless unforeseen and inevitable
events can plunge him into them from one moment to the next. Teach him to count on
neither birth nor health nor riches. Show him all the vicissitudes of fortune. (Rousseau,
quoted in Nussbaum, 1996, p. 34)

Rousseaus message to the imagined callous king is that what he

says that he is king and always will be is not necessarily true,
because kings, dictators and oligarchs are deposed, exiled, guillotined,
and shot in the streets. Thus, whether they think themselves immune
or not, they should have compassion for their subjects (even if being
subject to similar misfortune is a constitutive condition of compassion).
The passage clearly does not suggest that callous kings and other leaders are off the hook if they are not or do not believe that they might

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one day be deposed or exiled. Nussbaum, however, frequently invites

this misunderstanding because she does not make the distinctions I have
emphasized.34
II
Nussbaums second task, after presenting the analysis of compassion which
I have examined above, is to defend compassion and pity against a variety
of attacks that suggest that they should not serve as the fundamental ground
of morality, or more strongly that they should have no place at all in our
social life. One commonly proffered reason for this is that compassion is
partial: Pity . . . binds us to our own immediate sphere of life, to what has
affected us, to what we see before us or can easily imagine. This means,
however, that it distorts the world: for it effaces the equal value and dignity
of all human lives (Nussbaum, 1996, p. 43; see also Nussbaum, 2001,
pp. 360361). It seems to me, however, that the analysis of compassion
above should mitigate fears that compassion is hopelessly partial. If it were
the case that compassion, in its very nature, extends to only those whose
misfortunes we think we ourselves might suffer, then surely concerns about
partiality would persist. But we have seen that similar possibilities is not
a requirement of compassion, not a part of its nature or logic. It may
well be true that we are generally more prone to have compassion when we
think that we could suffer similar misfortune. But this does not mean that
it can not stretch beyond these bounds. A failure to see this in the case of
compassion to distinguish its constitutive conditions from its empirical,
contingent eliciting conditions can lead us to mistakenly think that its
partiality is more problematic than it is, that is, to see it as an essential,
ineliminable, intrinsic feature of the compassion instead of an empirical,
contingent feature that can be overcome and eliminated. Of course it could
be maintained that nonetheless it is very hard to expand the range of ones
compassion to include those whose misfortunes one does see oneself as
vulnerable to.35 I think the best reply here is just to say that it is at least
equally hard to adopt the moral point of view and have as much (moral)
concern for distant strangers as one has for those in ones immediate sphere
of life.36
34 For Nussbaums treatment of the passage from Rousseaus Emile in Nussbaum (2001),

see pp. 315317.

35 See Nussbaum (2001) pp. 386: . . . the psychological mechanisms by which human
beings typically arrive at compassion empathy and the judgment of similar possibilities
typically rest on the senses and the imagination in a way that makes them in principle
narrow and uneven.
36 We should see it as an improvement in Nussbaums view, then, to switch from the
similar possibilities requirement to the eudaimonistic requirement in Nussbaum (2001),

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Partiality, however, is not the only objection to compassion and pity.

As Nussbaum notes, the Stoics level a fundamental objection according to
which pity has a false cognitive-evaluative structure, which is just to say,
in terms I have introduced, that the emotions (alleged) constitutive conditions can never be satisfied (Nussbaum, 1994a, p. 146, 1996, p. 41, 2001,
pp. 356357). The Stoics, on Nussbaums view, share the view (which I
have rejected) that compassion requires thinking that someone has suffered
a significant misfortune for which he is not at fault. Thus, taking into account only constitutive norms, one ought to experience compassion for a
person if and only if he has suffered a significant misfortune for which
he is not at fault. However, Nussbaum explains, on the Stoic view these
conditions can never be met because the Stoics maintain (1) that external
goods, including not just material goods but also power, friendship, and
health, are of little or no importance because ones own virtue is entirely
sufficient for a flourishing human life, and (2) that ones own virtue is entirely under ones own control, such that were it to be compromised it would
be ones own fault the result of ones own weakness or bad decisions.
Thus pitys evaluative structure or evaluative presentation is necessarily mistaken because a person is always at fault for any misfortune he
suffers.
Once again, the analysis of compassion and pity above provides a quick
response. For I have argued, successfully I hope, that compassion can be
warranted even when a person is to some degree at fault, perhaps entirely
at fault, for his own misfortune. Thus, even if it is allowed that virtue is
sufficient for a good life and that one is responsible for ones own virtue,
compassion can still be entirely warranted in cases where a person suffers
a misfortune (a falling away from virtue). In particular, if the person suffers
such misfortune due to a culpable mistake that we all are prone to make,
then compassion is nonetheless warranted.
This of course is not Nussbaums reply to the Stoic objection. Instead,
she argues, equally reasonably, that we should simply reject the Stoic conception of the good (Nussbaum, 1994a, p. 143, 1996, pp. 4457, 2001, pp.
370375). External goods, including material goods, friends, good health,
and all the rest are important to the good life, even if we can overestimate
their importance, especially the importance of material goods.37 Thus, since
external goods can be lost, or never had, through no fault of ones own, the
though here too it may be hard to incorporate the well-being of others into our own conception of eudaimonia, that is, for distant others to be as important to us as those more near.
Nussbaum (2001, pp. 388391), also argues that one cannot likely reach the moral point
of view without having previously experienced compassion and in some sense worked to
expand it.
37 This is a well-known point Aristotle himself makes in the Nichomachean Ethics, Book
I, Chapter 9.

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Stoics are wrong to think that the evaluative presentation of compassion

and pity is necessarily false.
Nussbaum similarly rejects a variety of other challenges to pity and compassion, arguing that they are ultimately permutations on the fundamental
Stoic objection because they stem from mistakenly placing value on external goods. So, for instance, Nietzsche famously argues that compassion and
pity are bad for, or demean, the pitied: To offer pity, Nietzsche says, is as
good as to offer contempt.38 This is also a well-known claim made by Ayn
Rand in The Virtue of Selfishness and in her novels Atlas Shrugged and The
Fountainhead.39 According to Nussbaum, this is ultimately a Stoic objection because compassion and pity demean the pitied by implying that this
is a person who really needs the things of the world, whereas no virtuous
person has such needs (Nussbaum, 1996, pp. 4142; see also Nussbaum,
2001, pp. 357358). Rand and Nietzsche also think that having pity is bad
for or demeans the pitier. Here too, Nussbaum argues that the objection is
Stoic because in taking pity you are acknowledging to yourself the value
of the things of the world, and are prepared to pity oneself for misfortune
with respect to external goods: Given the judgment of similar possibilities
[that one is subject to the same misfortune], pity also insults the dignity
of the person who gives pity.40 Finally, Nussbaum notes that Nietzsche
thinks that compassion and pity are intimately linked to other emotions that
are nearly universally agreed to be unappealing or objectionable, including
fear, anxiety, grief, anger, envy, and hate (Nussbaum, 1996, pp. 4344; see
also Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 361364). Compassion and pity lead to fear,
anxiety and grief, she says, because the person who pities accepts certain controversial evaluative judgments concerning the place of external
goods in human flourishing. But a person who accepts those judgments
accepts that she has given hostages to fortune. And to give hostages to
fortune is to be set up not only for pity, but also for fear and anxiety and
grief (Nussbaum, 1996, p. 43). So too with anger:
The pitier acknowledges the importance of certain wordly goods and persons, which can
in principle be damaged by anothers agency. The response to such damages will be pity

38 Friedrich

Nietzsche, Daybreak (D15).

39 Both Nietzsche and Rand also claim that selflessness is a vice and selfishness a virtue.

In Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil (2), for instance, he says that . . . for all the value
that . . . the selfless may deserve, a higher and more fundamental value for life might be
ascribed to . . . selfishness.
40 Nussbaum (1996) p. 42. Plato, Republic 606b, makes a similar point, that insofar as
one pities others one is prone to pity oneself: I suppose that only a few are able to figure
out that enjoyment of other peoples sufferings is necessarily transferred to our own and
that the pitying part, if it is nourished and strengthened on the sufferings of others, wont
be easily held in check when we ourselves suffer.

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if the damage is to someone else; but if the damaged person is oneself, and the damage
is deliberate, the response will be anger. (Nussbaum, 1996, p. 43; see also Nussbaum,
2001, pp. 361362)

The story is the same with envy and hatred: We envy and hate people
for the external goods that they have and we lack; we see their success as
somehow bad for us. The haves, on the other hand, hate the have-nots
because they fear that they might take away what they have (see Nussbaum,
1994a, pp. 146147, 1996, p. 43).
Insofar as these criticisms are tied to the Stoic conception of the good, it
seems that they go out the window with the rejection of the Stoic conception
of the good, along with the false cognitive-evaluative structure objection.
But if these criticisms can be characterized independently of the Stoic conception of the good especially if they can be characterized independently
of any particular conception of the good then there is still work to do to
defend compassion and pity. I think that this is indeed the case, that these
criticisms can be construed in non-Stoic terms. Consider first the charge
that compassion and pity are bad for both the pitied and the pitier. One
way to flesh this out would be just to say that whatever might be of value,
whatever makes for the good human life, we fall farther from it insofar as
these emotions have us dwell on our weaknesses and failures to achieve
this good, insofar as it encourage us to commiserate to cry and console
when things do not go well, instead of picking ourselves up off the floor
and striving to achieve whatever it is that is valuable in life, whatever it is
that makes for a good life.41 Pity harms the pitied, then, insofar as it sanctions lamenting, rather than picking oneself up and making things better.
Pity harms the pitier insofar as it has him emphasize consoling a down
person rather than putting his energies into accomplishing something great
himself, or supporting others including the imagined individual pitied
in their efforts to accomplish something great. Crying and consolation, to
put it simply, get you nowhere. This surely is a big part of Platos critique
of compassion and pity in Book Ten of the Republic, at 604c-d:
We must accept what has happened as we would the fall of the dice, and then arrange our
affairs in whatever way reason determines to be best. We mustnt hug the hurt part and
spend our time weeping and wailing like children when they trip. Instead, we should
always accustom our souls to turn as quickly as possible to healing the disease and
putting the disaster right, replacing lamentation with cure . . . we also say that the part

41 Nussbaum correctly notes that the ancient Stoics make this point. However, it is crucial

to distinguish (a) distinctively Stoic points, and (b) things the Stoics said. What makes
Stoicism distinctive is its conception of the good. This objection, then, is not distinctively
Stoic.

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that leads us to dwell on our misfortunes and to lamentation, and that can never get
enough of these things, is irrational, idle, and a friend of cowardice.42

Nietzsche, I think, has the same idea in mind when he complains that
pity persuades men to nothingness.43 In a way it condones failure, insofar
as its message is that theres no shame in it. In Nietzsches hands, however,
the point is developed into a larger cultural criticism. He complains that
Christianity the religion of pity has sided with all that is weak and
base, with all failures.44 To this extent it is a culture of mediocrity, at best.
Rather than supporting the strong, creative and successful, the culture or
morality of pity throws its support in every sense of the word, i.e., both
emotional and monetary support behind the weak and unsuccessful:
. . . success in individual cases is constantly encountered in the most widely different
places and cultures: here we really do find a higher type, which is, in relation to mankind
as a whole, a kind of overman . . . Christianity should not be beautified and embellished
[because] . . . it has waged deadly war against this higher type of man.45

Indeed, such men are vilified, hated by the culture of pity: it has placed
all the basic instincts of this [higher] type under the ban; and out of these
instincts it has distilled evil and the Evil One: the strong man as the typically
reprehensible man, the reprobate.46 The result is by and large dull people
and a dull culture:47
The problem I thus pose is not what shall succeed mankind in the sequence of living
beings . . . but what type of man shall be bred, shall be willed, for being higher in value,
worthier of life, more certain of a future. Even in the past this higher type has appeared
often but as a fortunate accident, as an exception, never as something willed. In fact,
this has been the type most dreaded almost the dreadful and from dread the opposite
type was willed, bred, and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick human
animal the Christian.48

Clearly, I think, Nietzsches complaints do not presuppose the Stoic

conception of the good. The charge that compassion and sympathy are bad
for both the person pitied and the pitier can be construed entirely neutrally,
42 This is compatible with acknowledging that some of Platos critical comments can be

construed in Stoic terms. See Nussbaum, 1994a, p. 145.

43 Nietzsche, The Antichrist 7.
44 Nietzsche, The Antichrist 5.
45 Nietzsche, The Antichrist 45.
46 Nietzsche, The Antichrist 5.
47 It is unclear to me exactly how much, if at all, Nietzsche cares about the state of the
culture as a whole above and beyond how it affects certain individuals, in particular, those
capable of being the higher type.
48 Nietzsche, The Antichrist 3.

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simply as the claim that compassion and pity comfort us in our failure
rather than spurring us to success, however success is judged. It does this
in myriad ways. As Plato suggests, it simply takes up time and energy that
might otherwise be spent productively. Nietzsche adds that it has a lasting
psychological effect, causing depression and despair:
Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing
effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which
suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity
makes suffering contagious. Under certain circumstance, it may engender a total loss of
life and vitality out of all proportion to the magnitude of the cause.49

As for the hate that compassion and pity supposedly breed, to take it
as one example of the objectionable emotions associated with compassion
and pity, Nietzsche seems to think that it arises not because compassion
and pity are yoked with placing value on the external goods that the Stoic
conception of the good rejects as valuable. Rather, compassion and pity
breed hate because in their quest to console those who are down, by
whatever standard, it can easily turn to vilifying those who are up, and
everything about them (their instincts). Consolation, in other words, can
be achieved either by bringing up those who are down, or by bringing
down those who are up.50 Pity, Nietzsche seems to think, leans toward the
latter.51 This point is completely neutral with respect to conceptions of the
good. Thus, contra Nussbaum, it is not an essentially Stoic point rooted in a
conception of the good that denies the value of external goods. This seems
clear in a passage from the Genealogy of Morals that Nussbaum herself
explicates:
The veiled glance of pity, which looks inward on ones own possibilities with a profound sadness, acknowledging ones own weakness and inadequacy this glance of
the pitier is, Nietzsche argues, the basis of much hatred directed against a world that
makes human beings suffer, and against all those in that world who are not brought low,
who are self-respecting and self-commanding: It is on such soil, on swampy ground,
that every weed, every poisonous plant grows . . . Here the worms of vengefulness and
rancor swarm.52
49 Nietzsche,

The Antichrist 7.
the culture or morality of pity specializes in taking down those who are
successful, whether they deserve it or not. Putative heroes are debunked or slandered, and
replaced by hardship cases.
51 This is not to say that Nietzsche favors bringing up those who are down, as he seems
to think that only very few are capable of being up of being the overman and thus rather
than trying to bring up those who are down, we should turn our eye to those who are up,
and support them. This elitist strand in Nietzsche I will address in what follows.
52 Nussbaum, 1996, p. 44; see also Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 362363. The quotation from
Nietzsche is from his Genealogy of Morals, Book III, Chapter 14.
50 Thus

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Nietzsches central attacks on compassion and pity seem to me, then, to

be independent of any particular conception of the good. Surely they do not
presuppose the Stoic conception of the good. Thus, insofar as Nussbaum
tries to bring Nietzsche entirely into the Stoic fold, she misses or misconstrues much of what he has to say. To be fair, there are surely traces of
Stoicism to be found in Nietzsche. Nietzsches critique of the culture or
morality of pity is manysided. In addition, Nietzsche never treats the
topic systematically, bits and pieces appearing in different texts. In all this,
there are surely elements that draw on the Stoic view. But this should not
lead us to interpret all that he says in Stoic terms.

III
So what should we make of the criticisms we find in Plato, Nietzsche and
Rand, now construed in non-Stoic terms, that is, put forth in a way neutral with respect to conceptions of the good? I think that they should not
deeply trouble friends of compassion and pity, though I will give only a
brief, preliminary defense of that claim here. First, Nietzsches criticisms
do not seem to me to call for completely expunging compassion and pity.
Rather, they suggest that these emotions, and the associated virtues, can
be overemphasized, at the expense of the tonic emotions, and their corresponding virtues, which heighten our vitality. We can cry and console
too much, be too willing to be undisturbed by weakness and failure or
worse, all-too-ready to take a kind of pleasure in misery and its consolation
(compare to Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 375376). The real danger that Nietzsche
points out, it seems to me, is a kind of cult of compassion, according to
which pity comes to be seen as the sole value, the virtue from which all
others are derived. For then there is nothing that spurs us on to positive
achievement. Though Nietzsche himself seems to hold strongly that pity is
necessarily a vice, he does sometimes emphasize that things only get really
bad when pity is made the virtue:
Some have dared to call pity a virtue (in every noble ethic it is considered a weakness);
and if this were not enough, it has been made the virtue, the basis and source of all
virtues. To be sure and one should always keep this in mind this was done by a
philosophy that was nihilistic and had inscribed the negation of life upon its shield.53

What goes along with this is that the problem is not so much directing
resources both emotional and financial toward those who are less rather
than more successful (by whatever standard), but rather exclusively directing resources toward those who are less rather than more successful. But
53 Nietzsche,

The Antichrist 7.

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surely we can agree that at least some of our resources should go toward
the best and the brightest. People of various political persuasions from
so-called right to left can agree on this. Disagreement is over just
how much should go to the best and the brightest and how much should go
to everybody else.
Of course how much should go to everybody else might depend upon
how much we think that, with sufficient resources, most people are capable
of significant success (by whatever is the relevant standard). Nietzsche, at
least at times, seems pretty clearly to think that it is only the few that have
such capacity. But we might well reject this element of his thought, with the
result that the Nietzschean commitment to excellence is compatible with
dedicating resources to a wide spectrum of people, including, in particular,
those who, without such resources, have shown relatively little promise.
All this requires thinking that a little bit of compassion is not like a little
bit of rust, itself corrosive and impossible to prevent from spreading until it
covers all until nothing else remains. But it seems to me that compassion
is not in this way like rust. It is simply not the case that either having or
receiving compassion cripples one in the way Nietzsche suggests: it simply
does not entirely vitiate our vitality. It may if it is made too central to
our emotional and ethical life. But this is just to say that we must not let
compassion and pity take over our lives. It is only then that it is bad for the
pitier and the pitied (Blum, 1994, p. 181, also emphasizes this point).
Nietzsche, and Plato too, sometimes suggest that compassion and pity
inspire nothing beyond providing consolation hugging the hurt part,
in Platos words, and weeping and wailing together like children. This
seems to be at least a part of the reason they both want little to do with such
emotions. They both think that instead, or at least as soon as possible, we
should, to put it bluntly, quit crying and set ourselves to putting the disaster
right. This is the familiar When the going gets tough, the tough get going!
There are, I think, two points to be made here in defense of pity and compassion and the associated virtues. First, it seems unfair and I mean just plain
inaccurate to think that compassion and pity inspire only consolation and
it is other emotions other virtues that inspire putting the disaster right
and moving toward high achievement. It seems to me that it is compassion
itself that motivates this moving forward. Compassion calls for consolation,
for sure. But it does not end there: compassion also inspires rectifying the
situation seeking, as much as possible, improvement.54 Also, the value of
54 It

might be denied that compassion has a positive side. Blum (1994, p. 175), for
instance, allows that compassion focuses only on what is negative, and in this way concerns
itself only with alleviating pain and not with producing pleasure. He notes, however, that
while the existence of one altruistic attitude (one concerned with the negative and alleviating
pain) is no assurance of the possession of others (focused and the positive and producing

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consolation should not be understimated. Suffering is a profoundly private

experience, leaving one isolated and wondering if others care. Consolation
assures those who suffer that others do care. This kind of intimate
engagement with those who suffer, this bringing them back to the social
world of recognition acknowledging that they are suffering, and that they
matter is highly important in itself. The truth in what Nietzsche and Plato
say, then, is that we must be sure that the many aspects of compassion are
all at work, and to the right degree. A too heavy emphasis on getting over
it and putting the disaster right can be counterproductive, just as much
as can be too much emphasis on consolation and dwelling on weakness and
failure.55
I will conclude this preliminary defense with two quick points, both
relating to the charge, clear in Nietzsche and even clearer in Rand, that
pity leads to an attack on the successful (by whatever standard), because
bringing down those who are successful provides consolation to those who
are not. If this is indeed Nietzsches view, then it seems to me that it confuses
pity and envy. Envy is just as much satisfied by bringing down those who
are successful as it is by lifting oneself up. Pity, on the other hand, does
not have this destructive element. Finally, as a comment on pity being
linked with hate, I offer a psycho-social-political observation. It seems to
me that insofar as those who praise compassion and pity and champion the
less fortunate hate the more successful and the more privileged, it is not
simply because the latter are more successful and privileged. Rather, what
is thought to be disgraceful indeed hateable are those who are more
successful and privileged who seem to have little or no concern at all for
the less fortunate. It is not their talent, their success or their privilege that
is hated, but their indifference.56 If this is right and I can offer it only as
a nonscientific observation then it is a mistake to think that those who
think compassion and pity virtues, and who champion the less fortunate, are
part of a negative force comfortable only with misery or worse, actually
attracted to misery and opposed to human achievement and excellence, as
pleasure), there is no reason to think that the two are mutually exclusive. This suggests a
position analogous to mine: while compassion on its own may be undesirable, its presence
is valuable when combined with other emotions that focus on the positive (and producing
pleasure). In this account too, a balance has to be struck, because too much compassion
too much focus on the negative and consolation and too much of the more positive
emotions which ignore the need for consolation are equally problematic.
55 This is a version of a point I made earlier: people are more likely to pull themselves
together if they are offered a little compassion first, just as a person is more likely to learn
a lesson from his mistakes if he is offered a little compassion first.
56 This indifference might be genuinely hateable only if it is agreed that talent, success
and privilege are to a significant degree the result of luck, as Rawls argues, and, contra
Nozick, that fairness requires mitigating the inequalities that arise from luck. I am not able,
however, to defend these two claims here.

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it is sometimes charged. It is similarly a mistake to think that compassion

and pity are inextricably tied up with hatred, as some have charged.
IV
There are, I have argued, objections to compassion and pity that do not
depend on assuming a Stoic conception of the good. These objections,
however, should not convince us that compassion and pity are not virtues.
What they show, rather, is that there are pitfalls and pathologies associated
with these emotions and with an ethic that counts them as virtues.57 In a
world in which so many suffer while a small minority flourishes, it is easy
to invest all ones energy emotional and moral into the plight of those
who suffer, and to lose sight of perhaps even to develop a certain contempt
for the more privileged and the value of other capacities or virtues that
are essential to the realization of the highest human excellences. This is a
good warning. Issuing such a warning would perhaps not satisfy Plato or
Nietzsche, or Rand and her followers. They might take themselves to have
established something much more radical more antipity. I have argued,
at least in a preliminary fashion, that more radical claims are insufficiently
supported by the arguments given.
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57 Insofar

as the question is whether in matters of morality we should be guided by

(suitably modified) emotions such as compassion, or instead by reason (by the motive of
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have associated pitfalls and pathologies.

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Department of Philosophy
Yale University
108 Connecticut Hall
New Haven Connecticut 06520
USA
E-mail: michael.weber@yale.edu