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On the Suffering of Compassion

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Abstract

Compassion is often described in terms of suffering. This paper investigates the nature of this suffering. It is argued that compassion involves suffering of a particular kind. To begin with a case is made for the negative claim that compassion does not involve an ordinary, or afflictive, suffering over something. Secondly, it is argued that the suffering of compassion is a suffering for someone else’s sake: If you feel compassion for another person, P, then you suffer over P:s suffering for P:s sake, and if that is all you do, then you are not affected with an afflictive suffering over something. The final section identifies and addresses a problem concerning self-pity, and a suggestion is made on how to specify the proposed account so as to cover both self-directed and other-directed compassion.

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Notes

  1. The terms ‘compassion’ and ‘commiseration’ (and derivations) will be used synonymously throughout this text. In some cases ‘pity’ and ‘sympathy’ (and derivations) are used to replace ‘compassion’. This should not be taken to suggest that ‘pity’ and ‘sympathy’ are synonymous with ‘compassion’ in contemporary English—they are not, see Nussbaum (2001, p. 301f.).

  2. See, e.g., Blum (1980/1994), Snow (1991), Carr (1999), Ben-Ze’ev (2000), Nussbaum (2001), Deigh (2004), Weber (2004), and Crisp (2008).

  3. In the words of contemporary simulation-theorists one could say that the sorrow of compassion is run “off-line”: it is not an actual state of sorrow or suffering, but rather a “disengaged or ‘as if’” sorrow (see Gordon 1987, 152).

  4. For a defense of this kind of belief-desire analysis of the emotions, see Gordon (1987), and to some extent Carruthers (2004).

  5. In the following text ‘afflictive suffering’ will sometimes be used as a shorthand for ‘afflictive suffering over something’. It should be clear that the aim of the discussion is only to argue for the claim that compassion does not involve an afflictive suffering over something.

  6. It was only when the cost of helping was made especially high that an easy way of escaping made them less likely to help (Batson et al. 1983).

  7. Despite the possibility of unconscious suffering, there is another sense in which afflictive suffering over something always involves believing that something bad has happened. This is in the sense of believing that something has occurred, where the occurrence of this state or event is such that it is bad to us. To suffer over that p, you have to believe that p and wish that not-p. Hence, if you suffer in this way, then you believe that p, where the state or event that is designated by ’p’ is against your wish. To that extent p is bad for you whether or not you believe that it is, and whether or not you believe that you believe that p.

  8. I owe this point to Mats Johansson.

  9. Even if the compassionate reactions are taken to support only the weaker claim that we do not take compassion to involve afflictive suffering, there is still room to argue for (T1). If (T1) was false one would expect us to at least sometimes be of the opinion that our feeling compassion actually involves an afflictive suffering. However, since we never seem to believe that, it is highly unlikely that (T1) is false. Arguably, it is more likely that (T1) is true, than that we are never aware of those instances in which our feeling compassion involves an afflictive suffering over something.

  10. This was suggested by an anonymous referee.

  11. For extended arguments in favor of the view that Schopenhauer took compassion to involve an experience of suffering, albeit not a real suffering on the part of the commiserator, see Atwell (1990), and Nilsson (2003).

  12. Blum (1980/1994, p. 175) has also made the claim that compassion requires an “imaginative dwelling on the condition of the other person”. This means that you have to imagine both the situation that the other is in, and how he reacts towards this situation (ibid., 176f.).

  13. For discussions of the issue of whether imagining an emotion entails experiencing the same emotion, see Wollheim (1973) and Feagin (1997). Both Wollheim and Feagin conclude that imagining an emotion does not entail feeling the same emotion.

  14. Smith (1790/1984, p. 11) makes the rather cryptic remark that our sympathy with another person is “always extremely imperfect” when we do not know why she is feeling the way she does. This seems to suggest that Smith did not actually believe that sympathy always presupposes imagining being in the other’s situation.

  15. Douglas Chismar (1988) has proposed a theory of sympathy that meets the same demands.

  16. Michael Slote (2007, p. 13) has advanced a similar, if not the same, type of argument against the claim that sympathy presupposes empathy.

  17. See, however, Scheler (1948/1954, p. 13), where he says that the other’s suffering can be presented “in an act of understanding or ‘vicarious’ feeling”.

  18. Ingvar Johansson suggested this answer.

  19. For other examples of people who are afflictively suffering over something without dwelling on or being aware of their suffering, see Mayerfeld (1999, p. 51).

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Acknowledgments

For helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper I wish to thank Mats Johansson, Ingvar Johansson, Roger Melin, Kevin Mulligan, Jonas Nilsson, Bertil Strömberg, Pär Sundström, and two anonymous referees for this journal. Work on the paper was supported by a grant from HLIV, Dalarna University.

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  1. School of Health and Social Sciences, Dalarna University, Falun, 791 88, Sweden

    Peter Nilsson

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Nilsson, P. On the Suffering of Compassion. Philosophia 39, 125–144 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9265-6

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