Compassion

Compassion is the perceived sympathy for the pain and suffering of others. Compassion is a central concept of the Christian tradition and as a German word Übersetzungslehnwort, which prevailed in the translations of the Bible in the 17th century.

This article deals with the concept of compassion in Western cultures.

In the Western tradition pity is treated in the context of morality and ethics, the Christian image of man, psychology or as a value of Western culture and often seen as being a positive quality or virtue. There can be two basic forms of compassion distinguished: Either it is ( 1) pathological, that is, we are affected physically, then the feeling of pain can motivate us to action, either directly or as we remain passive and compassion remains in the mere feeling or ( 2) compassion is directed by reason. The essential question is whether it is an innate feeling is when compassion and so far it is part of human nature, or whether this feeling is culturally determined and how the two are linked. Decides to answering this question, whether the pity is considered an emotion, or rather as an attitude or posture. Condition of compassion is the proximity, that is, de facto compassion can only ever refer to clearly given suffering. Pity we can not only feel for other people, but also for animals, so in animal ethics, it plays a special role. Nowadays compassion (eg, empathy, etc.) often discussed in the wider context of Mitgefühlen. Compassion as an episodic ( temporary ) feeling is also the subject of literature and literary theory.

  • 4.1 Schopenhauer 4.1.1 compassion as a way of negation of will
  • 4.1.2 compassion as the basis of morality

Compassion in antiquity

In ancient times, compassion appears as the object of literature already in the Iliad by Homer, when Achilles lets his anger and Priam at his request hands over the body of his son Hector. Aristotle, who made ​​the first attempt to define the pity, and counts it among the emotions, there are certain as follows:

"Compassion is defined as a kind of pain over a seemingly afflictive phenomenon and the meet someone who does not deserve it, an evil which, as expected, could also make ourselves or one of our men [ ... ] For it is clear that the one who the pity is to find, especially in such a condition must be that he believed that he himself or one of his would suffer an evil [ ... ]. We also have sympathy with those who are similar to us in age, character, habits, social status and origin [ ... ]. "

The key requirement in order to feel pity, according to Aristotle, is therefore at least a partial identification with the one with whom one feels pity.

In his Poetics Aristotle calls the emotion of compassion within his conception developed there Catharsis: The tragedy is to bring the audience a catharsis (ie cleaning) eleos and phobos of the emotions. This provision is effective aesthetic eleos and phobos translated mainly by Lessing's tragedy theoretical reception in the 18th century significant ( see below ), in which Lessing with pity and fear. Whether this translation, however, corresponds to the Greek, is questionable. M. Fuhrmann they referred in his translation of Aristotle's Poetics even as false and misleading: the word eleos could be better translated as " pity " or " emotion " because it always denote a violent, physically manifesting itself affect and is often associated with the expressions been associated to actions, lamenting and wailing.

In the Stoic philosophy pity, however, was explicitly rejected. Their goal was to Apatheia, freedom from all passions. The stoic manner is his own misfortune as any emotion and left over as foreign suffering. However, this closed helpfulness and charity in no way. The philosopher Seneca (ca. 1-65 ) wrote in the Emperor Nero dedicated exhortation De Clementia (On the Milde):

" The way [ ... ] feel no pity, because this can not happen without suffering of the soul. Everything else should do in my opinion, the compassionate, he is happy and in high spirits do: he will come to the aid of alien tears, but not join them; rich he will give his hand to the shipwrecked, [ ... ] the poor a donation, but not a degrading, like her, is throwing the greater part of people who want to appear compassionate and thus despised, whom he helps. "

Christian Medieval Philosophy

In Christianity, compassion is the condition for charity ( Misericordia ) and are therefore an essential part of active charity.

So Lactantius estimates the emotion of compassion positive one: The religion was accordingly " misericordia vel humanitas " the second requirement, to which a man is excited only by the " adfectus misericordiae ". Compassion is the emotion, " in which the rationality of human life is almost entirely contained " and " alone is given to man to aufzuhelfen our wretchedness through mutual support; who picks it up, makes our lives to that of animals. "

Augustine uses the Stoic tradition of Ataraxia ( imperturbability ) against the Christian mercy and explains the emotion of compassion ago:

" But what is compassion other than the strange misery compassion in our hearts, by which we are to help in any case driven, as far as we can? "

This drive ( motus ) is reasonable if the helping act upholds justice, and is - like all emotions - the exercise in virtue.

According to Thomas Aquinas says pity that his own heart the suffering of the other pities ( " miserum cor ' super miseria alterius "); Misericordia is a type of tristitia (sadness, sorrow ), which is explained by the love of others. By its nature, it is in humans was a movement ( motus ) or excitation of the sensory or psychic faculty of desire, which is why at him from affectus misericordiae, d i is talk of a ( sensual and psychic ) affections of compassion; in the second place, the misericordia a virtue dar. At Thomas is clearly the distinction of compassion as a pathological, bodily affective phenomenon, that is a feeling in the narrow sense, and a certain by reason, compassion: Compassion is a passion, when the sensory drive ( motus appetitus sensitized ) is the only determining. Is pity, however, regulated according to reason as a motus appetitus intellectivi, then compassion is a virtue.

17th and 18th centuries

It was not until the 17th and then heard especially in the 18th century, in which the compassion become a central social feeling and a core component of an ethics of emotions, the considerations to pity obtain systematic relevance.

Descartes refers to Aristotle, when he describes compassion as a kind of sadness, which is then excited when someone an undeserved evil befalls. In contrast, Thomas Hobbes expresses negative about the compassion and leads the affect on a selfish interest and the fear of things to come back in front of their own suffering. He describes compassion as a " perturbation animi ", which interferes with proper consideration. Spinoza rejects the pity from:

" Pity, in a person who lives according to the guidance of reason, in itself bad and useless. "

As proof, Spinoza argues that compassion as a feeling of sadness "in itself bad". The good which follows from the compassion and this is that we " strive to free himself from his misery " pitied the people we want already " accomplish by the mere dictates of reason ."

Philosophy of the Moral Sense

While Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza deal with the compassion only briefly, David Hume and Adam Smith work following Shaftesbury and Hutcheson's philosophy of moral sense theory of compassion, respectively. sympathy from that - emerged in the Enlightenment - is a strong historical significance for moral philosophy.

David Hume assumes that nature has provided for a similarity between people, which is the prerequisite for being able to understand the other, and a condition for being able to make the feelings of others as our own. The imagination allows the formation of a corresponding idea of ​​the feelings of others, in an "impression " that is changing. By symphathy it is possible for us to put ourselves in another, this also applies to pain and suffering. Compassion as a special case of sympathy, according to Hume has the following characteristics: compassion depended on the sight of the object pitied. It states that it is a feeling that presupposes a degree of closeness and too great a degree of distance can not stand.

Adam Smith shares Hume's view that the reason for the sympathy for the fate of others is human nature: compassion put on as soon as we see her suffer another or us his suffering is portrayed vividly. However, he draws attention to the difference, which is that the pain we feel at the sight of the suffering of another, is not the same pain that the sufferer perceives itself. The role of imagination for the idea occurs to him against Hume forth exacerbated: the feelings of others are not directly experienced by us, but only by means of an image we make of it, that is the idea we have of ourselves make the feelings:

" Like our own brother lying on the rack, as long as we probably find ourselves, the senses are we never say what he suffers. "

Sympathy referred to Smith a sympathy ( fellow feeling ), " with any kind of affects " other. The sympathy concept forms the core of his moral philosophy.

Rousseau

Jean -Jacques Rousseau is one of the pioneers of the concept of compassion, as is typical for the modern age. According to Rousseau is a pity präreflexiver ( the reflection lying ahead ) affect, which he referred to as engines. This is based - as with Hume and Smith - in nature and therefore can be observed in animals after Rousseau also. When pity if it were " purely natural [s ] feeling " and it is the only "natural virtue " which he ( i.e., the Man in his natural state) ascribes to the "savages". The Recon is aimed explicitly against Hobbes ' image of man, who characterized with the people in the state of nature as a wolf to man (homo homini lupus est): " Man is an impulse has been given [ ... ] the wildness of his self-love or [ ... ] to tame the concern for its preservation.. Congenital reluctance, his peers to see her suffer, moderates the ardor for his own well-being " Rousseau also highlights the aspect of clarity of suffering and determined compassion as identification: " It is common ground compassion must be the more violent the sentient the onlooking animal is, to take the place of the sufferer. " In the natural state, it is displayed instead of the laws and motivated to provide assistance:

" So it is certain that compassion is a natural feeling and mutual preservation of the whole race is beneficial by it for any one person moderates the effectiveness of self-love. This feeling makes us that we make to each sufferer without consideration assistance; represent them in the state of nature the place of laws, morals and virtue, and yet this has preceded that no one is tempted her sweet voice to disobey. "

Rousseau explicitly rejects a morality from which their maxims " in subtle syllogisms " looking for kind of the Golden Rule, and is this a ' maxim of compassion ' answer: " Befördere your best, but let it be another redound so little at a disadvantage as possible is ".

Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing interested in pity especially the aesthetic perspective. The central function of literature exists for the reconnaissance Lessing in the teaching of moral tenets. It is the ability of compassion to the most important civic virtues. Compassion is the effect of that cause ( a form of ' bourgeois tragedy ' d i ) the viewer and to cleanse him to improve him morally the tragedy: " The most compassionate person is the best person."

Lessing developed his theory of tragedy in confrontation with Aristotle. He takes his effective aesthetic rules, which are that the tragedy cathartic effect achieved by energizing the audience pity and fear (see above, there also regarding the problems of translation ):

"They [ Aristotle ] misunderstood him, mistranslated. He speaks of pity and fear, not out of pity and terror; and his fear is not quite the fear which our impending evil of another, awakened for these others, but it is the fear which springs from our resemblance to the person suffering for ourselves; it is the fear that we see on these verhänget the misfortunes, can make ourselves; it is the fear that we may be pitied the object itself. In a word, this fear is related to the pity ourselves. "

He interprets Aristotle to the effect that it is the emotion of fear not to the completely different of compassion, but to its expanded form. Fear is a self-referential compassion which we feel at the thought that the Watched on stage suffering could also make ourselves. Lessing explains his thesis by drawing on the already mentioned by Aristotle aspect of our similarity or equality with the sufferer, which is necessary for identification. This equality or similarity not only means that we put ourselves in the suffering and understand his feelings can, but beyond that we ' fear ' need to easily fall causing suffering in the same situation. To arouse the emotions of fear, through the compassion comes only to maturity - as Lessing puts it - the tragic hero has the same audience, so he must be one of us:

" From this equality arises the fear that our destiny very easily which could just be his, so like when we feel him to be ourselves. , And this fear was there, which bring the compassion to speak to maturity "

When compassion which excites the tragedy in the audience, is to shop around an episodic ( temporary ) feeling. To be effective as a moral feeling can, it has to be transformed into a permanent feeling after Lessing. In this transformation is the cathartic moment, the actual task of the tragedy:

" So if it is true that the whole art of tragic poetry goes to the secure arousal and duration of some compassion, as I say now, the ability of the tragedy is this: it is our ability to feel compassion expand. You should teach us not merely against this or feel those unfortunates pity, but it should make us so far felt that we must at all times, and under all forms, stir and take for the unfortunate. [ ... ] The compassionate person is the best person to all of society, to all kinds of generosity of aufgelegteste. So who makes us compassionate, makes us better and more virtuous, and the tragedy that does that, does this also, or -. , It does that in order to do this can "

Thus, the tragedy is resp. the theater morally justified because it promotes the morality of man and make him morally better. Lessing refers in his time heavily debated controversy about the moral value of the theater an offset to Rousseau. This just criticized the episodic character of the excited the audience pity that not motivated to provide assistance, and keeps the theater to be useless, if not harmful:

"I hear say that tragedy leads to pity by fear. All right. But what is this compassion? A fleeting and vain vibration that does not take more than the bill, which they caused; a remnant of a natural sensation [ ... ] has produced a barren pity that soaks himself with his own tears and never even the slightest act of humanity. "

It is mainly the objection raised by Lessing moral claim of art, ( around 1800 in the broader context of the discussion about the relationship between art and reality esp ) is more powerful in the tradition. So formulated, for example, Schiller just this claim in the title of his poetics Scripture: consider the theater as a moral institution.

19th century

Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer is the great theorist of compassion within the classical German philosophy. Pity he regards, in reference to Rousseau, as an original feeling that connect all beings capable of suffering together and based on identification. The only moral motive compassion fancy a counterweight to the selfishness and lend itself as the basis of morality.

Compassion as a way of negation of will

In Schopenhauer's pessimistic metaphysics of the will pity fulfills an important systematic function, insofar as it leads to insight of the essential identity of all living beings as sufferers ( tat tvam asi ), and so paves the way for the denial of the will. In his major work The World as Will and Idea, the pity is not a purely präreflexiver affect, but which was completed in pity identification with the sufferer is a form of "knowledge of the alien suffering ," the " equated from their own suffering immediately understandable and that " only will. Understood pity as caritas is for Schopenhauer the only form of love; all other feelings so designated are deception and serve the reproduction and thus the egoism: " all true and pure love is compassion, and each love is not pity, selfishness is ". For Schopenhauer, all forms of compassion can be ultimately traced back to self-pity, he sees where the phenomenon of weeping:

" When we are moved not by their own, but through strange suffering cry; this is done by the fact that we put ourselves in the imagination vividly the place of the sufferer or consequently especially behold in his fate the fate of all mankind and our own, and thus always but cry by a long detour back on ourselves, compassion feel with ourselves. "

At the sight of the suffering of another ( also an animal ) we identify ourselves so that we feel and recognize our own suffering in a strange suffering. A significant step beyond, and an extension of compassion is to recognize the suffering watched the suffering of the world, and this not only to feel like your own, but rather to recognize the essence of the very own innermost being:

" [ ... ] Such a man, who, his inmost and true self recognizes in all beings, and the endless suffering of all living things as the so the pain of the whole world must consider its and dedicate. He is a stranger no more suffering. All other torments, which he sees and can so rarely alleviate all the torments of which he indirectly customer, so that it recognizes only as a possible act on his mind as his own. [ ... ] It recognizes the whole, grasps the essence of the same and finds it in a [ ... ] resistant suffering grasped see where he Looks, suffering humanity, the suffering animal nature and a vanishing end of the world. This is him now as close as the egoist only his own person. "

Compassion is in Schopenhauer's metaphysics thus a form of self-knowledge. Ultimately, it is the will to live, which recognizes itself in its essence. At this level of compassion, it acts as a " sedative ", that is, as a counter- motive to egoism in pronouncing will affirmation and leads on the state of "resignation " to the denial of the will.

Compassion as the basis of morality

The price of publications is the foundation of morality Schopenhauer works pity systematically from the foundation of morality. His ethics of compassion is directed primarily against the deontological ethics of Kant, the man wanted to dictate how they have to act (see: Schopenhauer's criticism of the categorical imperative ). In contrast, Schopenhauer wants on the ' empirical way ' find the foundation of ethics by asking for it: " whether there is any action, to which we must recognize genuine moral worth ." It must therefore be searched for the corresponding " driving force " that motivated to moral action. Such a driving force, the only moral at all, Schopenhauer finds in pity than one " ethical primal phenomenon " and an " undeniable [n ] fact of human consciousness."

According to Schopenhauer, there are " three basic drivers ", is due to every human action: " a) selfishness that wants their own well ( is infinite ), b) the evil which wants the foreign Woe ( goes to the extreme cruelty, c ). compassion which wants the foreign good ( goes up to the magnanimity and generosity ) "Compassion is defined as the " immediate Motivated will through the suffering of others, " Schopenhauer noted here necessary for compassion ID: " the difference between me and every other on which just egoism is based [ is ] lifted at least to a certain degree. " Despite identification of a distance is maintained, which is made possible by the realization: "I now but do not put in the skin of the other, so I can only by means of the knowledge I have of him, ie the image of him in my head, I identify myself as far with him that my act announcing those difference as canceled. " Schopenhauer criticized the idea that we put ourselves " in the place of the sufferer " in pity and feel his pain as our:

"So it is by no means; but it just remains for us every moment of clear and present, that he is the sufferer, not us: and downright in his person, not in our we feel the suffering [ ... ] we suffer with him, that in him we feel his pain as his and do not have the illusion that he is ours. "

As a first principle of ethics provides Schopenhauer following maxim on (and thus contradicts his above- formulated approach, just draw any normative ethics ): " Neminem laede, imo omnes, quantum potes IUVA " ( Hurt no one, but rather help everyone as much as you can! ). At this rule can be prepared by Schopenhauer two classes of actions differ, pointing to two degrees of compassion: 1 passive it leads to the omission, by counteracting egoism ( as a sedative, see above) and prevents us from "self cause to be "foreign pain. From this springs the justice as one of the "cardinal virtues". 2 a higher level reaches the pity if it " drives to active help " me active. From this springs the cardinal virtue of philanthropy.

The pity is not a pure feeling in Schopenhauer. Although this represents the base, but should be a realization in its expanded form, ie, it is connected with reason. Therefore, the question is raised whether it is Schopenhauer's concept of compassion is not simply an attitude is (in the sense of a ' cultured feeling '). Schopenhauer's ethics of compassion is repeatedly discussed in animal ethics.

Nietzsche's critique of pity

Friedrich Nietzsche was hostile to compassion. In contrast to Schopenhauer, however, he considers this phenomenon from the perspective of one who tries to create sympathy for his fellow man. He called it a "need of the unfortunate ", " public displays carrying" their suffering ultimately exert the power over the sympathy ends. Want to generate active compassion, constitutes the attempt by any person to compensate for their own weakness to a certain degree " Woe to do " the compassion ends:

" Rather, we observe children who cry and scream in order to be pitied, and therefore wait for the moment when their condition may fall into the eyes; you live in dealing with the sick and the mentally - afflicted one and ask whether it is not the eloquent complaints and whimpering, the public displays of unhappiness wear basically aims to present to hurt: compassion, which then express those, is so far a consolation for the weak and the suffering, as they realize it, but at least still have a power that, despite all its weakness: the power to do harm. The unfortunate man wins a kind of pleasure in this sense of superiority, which brings him witnessing of pity to consciousness; his imagination rises, it is still important enough to make the world pain. Thus, the thirst for sympathy is a thirst for self- enjoyment, and although at the expense of others; it shows the people around the ruthlessness of his very own self- love [ ... ] "

20th century

Max Scheler distinguishes two kinds of compassion: the genuine compassion and pure emotional contagion. In the latter, the person suffers.

Kate Hamburger takes the position that compassion is an ethically neutral feeling in her 1985 published book The pity.

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