Nietzsche is known for his penetrating critique of Mitleid. He seems to be critical of all compassion but at times also seems to praise a different form of compassion, which he refers to as “our compassion” and contrasts it with “your compassion”. Some commentators have interpreted this to mean that Nietzsche’s criticism is not as unconditional as it may seem – that he does not condemn compassion entirely. I disagree and contend that even though Nietzsche appears to speak favorably of (...) some forms of compassion, he regards the nature of all compassion to be fundamentally bad. Furthermore, I suggest that Nietzsche’s discussion on different forms of compassion have significant implications for achieving greatness and meaning in life. More specifically, I argue that, for Nietzsche, “our compassion,” however regrettable qua compassion it is, may give occasion for a rare and peculiar insight into “co-suffering” with others, which in turn results in overcoming compassion entirely. I also argue that although Nietzsche objects to compassion, he approves of a form of what feminist theorists might now call “anticipatory empathy.” Even though a large body of literature has evolved over Nietzsche’s critical evaluation of compassion, his understanding of a non-compassionate response to suffering is, in my view, rather overlooked and should receive more attention. (shrink)

Current discussions of hermeneutical injustice, I argue, poorly characterise the cognitive state of victims by failing to account for the communicative success that victims have when they describe their experience to other similarly situated persons. I argue that victims, especially when they suffer moral wrongs that are yet unnamed, are able (1) to grasp certain salient aspects of the wrong they experience and (2) to cultivate the ability to identify instances of the wrong in virtue of moral emotions. By moral (...) emotions I mean emotions like indignation that reflect an agent’s ethical commitments and bear on her ethical assessments. Further, I argue that victims can impart their partial understanding of the wrong they suffer to others who are not similarly situated by eliciting moral emotions such as pity that are tied to broad notions of justice and fairness. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article aims to bring some understanding to the phenomenon called compassion. The use of particular linguistic expressions to denote the phenomenon of compassion in the East and West can confuse us, as those terms are embedded in unique cultural settings. This article undertakes a historical, etymological, and philosophical exploration of the terms, compassion and karuna. The article will include a short literature review of these concepts and an investigation of the differences and similarities between them. The concluding speculation is (...) that the Western perspective on compassion is founded on an individualistic, self-centred vision, and the karuna of the East is founded on a communitarian, non-self based vision. (shrink)

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

The fate of war captives has been extensively explored, as, indeed, has the way that fate affects both the conduct and course of hostilities. Nevertheless, little research has been conducted on the link that connects the two, namely the act of surrender, and this is especially true of classical Greece. This article seeks to remedy this situation by answering three interlinked questions, namely: how men attempted to surrender on the battlefields of classical Greece; in what tactical conditions they did so; (...) and finally, what prospects they had of surviving the process. (shrink)

In the present essay I would like to explore the different meanings of the emotion named Schadenfreude from a perspective integrating Plato’s and Aristotle’s moral philosophy with the analyses of phenomenological anthropologists such as Scheler, Plessner and Blumenberg. In the first half of my essay I will focus on Aristotle’s distinction between, on the one hand, a pleasure at another’s misfortune which does not necessarily obstruct pity in the opposite position and provides relief from indignation, and a malicious pleasure at (...) another’s misfortune understood as the opposite of envy. In the second half of the essay I will examine the link between the joy involved in Schadenfreude and laughter by asking whether and to what extent this contemplative emotion contributes to the emergence of a theoretical attitude. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to build a parallelism between Aristotle’s debate with Plato on the merits of poetry and the debate of Hume with Smith on the nature of sympathy. My arguments is that the Aristotelian concept of pity, as presented in the Poetics, presupposes a mechanism of sympathy which is akin to the Smithian one, as articulated in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Accordingly, I reconstruct Aristotle’s debate with Plato on poetry as a debate on the operation (...) and value of sympathy, and I trace an intriguing contiguity on the way Plato and Hume understood the mechanism of sympathy. (shrink)

In understanding the degree of choice we have in our emotions, we benefit from the Stoics’ analysis into first and second movements: appraisals and reappraisals. The Stoics were concerned to avoid the harm that emotions can cause, but their idea of working on goals, rather than on emotions as such, generalizes beyond their concerns. For modern people, the problem of taking responsibility for our emotional life becomes less paradoxical when we consider interpersonal issues.

Two themes, the elusiveness of wisdom and the distortion of speech, are traced through three important scenes of Herodotus' Lydian logos, the meeting of Solon and Croesus , the scene where Cyrus places Croesus on the pyre , and the advice of Croesus to Cyrus to cross the river and fight the Massagetae in their own territory . The paper discusses whether Solon is speaking indirectly at 1.29–33, unable to talk straight to Croesus about his transgressive behavior: if so, that (...) illuminates the dynamics of speech at a court. At 1.86–90 Croesus may not have fully understood what Solon earlier said to him. Cyrus may understand Croesus' report of Solon's words better than Croesus does himself. Herodotus' readers will also be uncertain what the response of Delphi will be to Croesus' indignant questioning: if a reader has failed to grasp the significance of Gyges' transgression five generations earlier, that reenacts the forgetfulness of figures in the text. At 1.207 Croesus' advice to Cyrus is of questionable wisdom: Croesus too cannot speak directly, and he has anyway learned the wrong lesson from his catastrophe, extrapolating too directly from his own experience. The conclusion suggests some reasons why Herodotus should have chosen to begin his History with Lydia, the kingdom that is on the cusp between East and West, and with Croesus, a figure that resists description in the easy formulations of Greek/barbarian discourse. (shrink)

This article argues that the episode in Il. 24.552–658 involving Achilles and Priam brings out the hero’s ability to control his emotions – even if he did lose them momentarily – by means of his calculation of what will come next. This interpretation fits the compositional structure of the epic, whose closure is highlighted by the hero’s dramatized emotions in his encounter with the Trojan king.

The paper studies Livy's account in Book 45 of the aftermath of Aemilius Paullus' conquest of Macedon employing two interpretative methods, both common in recent studies of historians. The first is “metahistory,” in other words interpreting events within a historical narrative as commenting covertly on the genre of history and on the work as an example of that genre. The second is seeing how internal audiences provide a guide for the reader's interpretation. These, though theoretically independent, are in practice often (...) related, with internal audiences being used as a trigger for wider reflections on the text and the genre. Four linked passages from Livy 45 are discussed in detail. One invites a systematic metahistorical reading without the use of an internal audience, partly to endorse Livy's own manner of “secondary” history, partly to promote a moral reading of the text. The other three employ internal audiences to similar effect: first, Aemilius' meeting with the defeated Perseus, and the lesson which he draws about the mutability of fortune; second, the spectacular games he organizes at Amphipolis; and third, his eventual triumph in Rome, along with the speech that Servilius gives in its support. The understanding of the genre of history that Livy promotes through these passages is, however, astonishingly narrow and didactic, ignoring even central aspects of his own work which do not conform to that understanding. The paper concludes by considering why Livy would wish to present himself and his genre as single-mindedly moralistic when neither he nor it actually was. (shrink)