Introduction: Carolyn Price and Justin Caouette
In this introduction Carolyn and Justin briefly canvass the literature on compassion and explain how each of the chapters add to ongoing discussions taking place pertaining to how we should understand and apply the concept of compassion.
Chapter 1. The Moral Value of Compassion, Alfred Archer
Many people think that compassion has an important role to play in our moral lives. We might even think, as Arthur Schopenhauer (2010 [1840]) did, that compassion is the basis of morality. More modestly, we might think that compassion is one important source of moral motivation and would play an important role in the life of a virtuous person. Recently, however philosophers such as Roger Crisp (2008), and Jesse Prinz (2011) and psychologists such as Paul Bloom (2016) have called into question the value of sharing in another’s suffering. All three argue that this should not play a significant role in the life of the morally virtuous person. In its place, Crisp endorses rational benevolence as the central form of moral motivation for virtuous people. I will argue that despite the problems facing compassion, it has a distinctive role to play in moral life that cannot be fully captured by rational benevolence. My discussion will proceed as follows. In §1, I examine the nature of compassion and explain how I will be using the term in this paper. I will then, in §2, explain the traditional account of the value of compassion as a source of moral motivation. In §3, I will investigate a number of challenges to the value of compassionate moral motivation. I will then, in §4, explain why, despite facing important problems, compassion has a distinctive role to play in moral life.
Chapter 2. Appreciating the Virtues of Compassion, Bradford Cokelet
This paper defends a new, role-differentiated account of the virtues of compassion. Reference to plural virtues of compassion, rather than a single virtue, is intentional: my main thesis is that in order to understand compassion’s value and advance debate about its ethical importance we need to recognize that the virtue of compassion involves substantively different dispositions and attitudes in different spheres of life – for example in our personal, professional, and civic lives. In each sphere, compassion is an apt and distinctive form of good-willed responsiveness to the value of living beings and their characteristic struggles to live good lives, but the relevant forms of good-willed responsiveness vary because in different contexts there are different types of living beings involved and different relations between the compassionate person and the being to whom she is compassionate. My specific focus is on compassion in human relations; I argue that, in different role and relationship contexts, the virtues of compassion involve different forms of good-willed responsiveness to human struggles to live well. In developing my account I critically engage with the emotion-focused accounts defended by Martha Nussbaum and Roger Crisp and explain how my more plausible account can shed light on the nature and value of compassion for oneself.
Chapter 3. Compassion and Animals: How to Foster Respect for Other Animals in a World without Justice, Cheryl Abbate
The philosophy of animal rights is often characterized as an exclusively justice oriented approach to animal liberation that is unconcerned with, and moreover suspicious of, moral emotions, like sympathy, empathy, and compassion. I argue that the philosophy of animal rights can, and should, acknowledge that compassion plays an integral role in animal liberation discourse and theory. Because compassion motivates moral actors to relieve the serious injustices that other animals face, or, at the very least, compassion moves actors not to participate in or cause these injustices, the philosophy of animal rights should recognize both a duty to cultivate compassionate and a duty to promote compassion. Contra to feminist critiques of Regan’s justice-approach to ethics, the philosophy of animal rights is not committed to eschewing the moral emotions.
Chapter 4. Compassion and Consolation, Aaron Cobb
The virtue of compassion manifests itself in a distinctive syndrome of feeling, thought, desire, and activity. The compassionate person’s field of vision is more readily attuned to suffering. Perceived suffering impresses itself deeply on his psyche; he feels others’ suffering with great weight and urgency, as something to which he must respond with care. Their affliction disposes him to act in ways that could alleviate or ameliorate their suffering. But more than this, the virtue of compassion disposes a person to a kind of relational commitment to suffer with and for the sake of others in their affliction. In this paper, I develop an account of the virtue of compassion that focuses on the relations enacted and extended through the exercise of compassion. Toward this end, I focus on one paradigmatic form of compassionate activity: the consolation of those who experience irremediable suffering. This analysis underscores the central role of the virtue of compassion in addressing human need. And it shows the vital function of compassion in enacting and extending social relations crucial to the human good.
Chapter 5. Compassion and Its Pitfalls, Trudy Govier and David Boutland
We understand compassion as an emotion of sorrow in response to the understood suffering of another person; acknowledgement of that suffering and a motivation to assist the suffering person are central elements of a compassionate response. In connection with moral considerations concerning compassion, we examine a number of concerns about compassion and its object. As to the latter, we describe recent accounts of the phenomenon known as ‘poverty porn.’ ‘Poverty porn’ is a pejorative label for portrayals that vividly emphasize the sorrowful condition of needy persons. It has been criticized as disrespectful of the persons depicted and counterproductive as a means of contributing to meaningful change in their conditions. We outline several pitfalls of compassion and connect our account with a recent account of the fallacy of appealing to pity. We relate our account to three pathologies of compassion: (a) the exploitation by some of the compassionate feelings of others; (b) indulgence in commiseration at the cost of action; and (c) compassion fatigue. Shifting to the theme of persons experiencing compassion, we argue that here, as in other contexts, emotional appeals are relevant to the rationality of actions to be undertaken but insufficient to provide good reasons for those actions. Our treatment bears intriguing similarities to that of Sophie Condorcet in her late eighteenth century work, Letters on Sympathy, appended to her 1798 translation of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments into French.
Chapter 6. Compassion and Practical Reason: the Prospective of the Vulnerable, Carla Bagnoli
This essay distinguishes two concepts of compassion at works in Kant’s ethics. Proximal compassion is a sort of emotional contagion, which interferes with our capacities for rational agency, while distal compassion is active and rational, and key to Kant’s account of duties of virtue. To highlight the respective roles of these two kinds of compassion, the essay centers on a contrast with two distinct models of compassion which are said to sharply depart from Kant. First, Iris Murdoch relates compassion to the appreciation of concrete individuals, objecting that Kant’s discussion of rational agency overlooks individuality, hence canceling the deep differences in moral visions and outlooks. Second, for Theodor W. Adorno, compassion targets the injured and broken lives of vulnerable others, objecting that Kant’s ethics overlooks the genuine moral value of compassion. The argument is that Murdoch’s critique misleads us in objecting to abstraction, while Adorno’s critique places compassion in the right perspective, that is, the perspective of the vulnerable. However, Adorno’s critique is also partly misplaced, insofar as vulnerability is a driving concern in Kant’s theory of practical reason. This argument builds upon recent scholarship to show that the criticisms presented above misdiagnose Kant’s failure to account for compassion as a morally valuable emotion as lack of attention to individual vulnerability. The conclusion is that despite overwhelming critiques, Kant provides us with a useful distinction between two kinds of compassion, which coheres with empirical psychology and succeeds in vindicating the different roles of compassion in moral reasoning.
Chapter 7. Buddhism and the Problem of Universal Compassion, Karsten J. Struhl
The Buddhist analysis of the possibility and desirability of this universal compassion cannot be separated from its grounding in Buddhist philosophy. Thus, in the first section of this chapter, I explain the Buddhist soteriological philosophical project and its metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings. This includes analysis of the Buddhist understanding of the idea of the self as an illusion and the concept of emptiness. In the second section, I discuss the relation of Buddhist philosophical ideas to its project of developing universal compassion both as a means to enlightenment and for its own sake, and I distinguish compassion from empathy and Buddhist universal compassion from compassion which is bounded by one’s circle of concern. In both these sections, I also consider some of the differences between early Buddhism and Mahāyāna Buddhism. Finally, in the third part of this chapter, I argue that Buddhism as philosophical understanding is insufficient to cultivate universal compassion without corresponding spiritual, and, specifically, meditative practices. These include both insight (mindfulness) meditative practices and specific compassion meditations, both of which function to undermine the project of self-cherishing and self-grasping and to make it possible to push compassion beyond the bounds one’s customary circle of concern. I also consider Mahāyāna Buddhism’s ideal of the bodhisattva as an exemplar of compassion and its challenge to early Buddhism’s ideal of the arhat as the exemplar of wisdom, and I conclude that we can use wisdom to develop compassion and compassion to develop wisdom.
Chapter 8. Compassion in Medicine, Laura W. Ekstrom
Technical skill in executing surgical procedures, diagnostic acumen, discernment in initiating appropriate referrals – these are all qualities we value in our medical practitioners. But there is another key attribute we may tend to overlook, and it is one that, I argue, is critical: the trait of compassion. One might think that a physician’s being a touchy-feely sort or having the ability to put himself or herself in another’s shoes is, in fact, rather dispensable. Once compassion is properly understood, however, and once we come to appreciate that we ourselves could at any time find ourselves in a particular kind of patient population, it becomes clear that compassion ought to be central to our conception of a good physician. Compassion, I argue, has three components: a cognitive one, an affective one, and a volitional one. The particular content of these components serves to distinguish compassion from related traits such as pity and empathy. It is neither empathy nor pity that I work to champion in medicine, but rather compassion. This chapter fills in the proposed conception of compassion and argues against Nussbaum’s Aristotelian-inspired position that compassion has as a required component one’s appraisal that another’s suffering is not his or her fault. By focusing on patients who are in persistent pain with a source that is difficult to identify, I bring to the fore the importance of compassion in medicine. I close by offering some potential ways forward in promoting compassionate patient care.
Chapter 9. Challenges and Opportunities for Compassionate Mental Health Care, Helen Spandler
This chapter explores the challenges and opportunities for compassionate care in the context of mental health services. Rather than seeing compassion as merely an individual emotion, quality or virtue, I suggest that it is dependent on wider contextual factors such as environments, policies and social relations. Therefore, the first half of this chapter focuses on the importance of creating compassionate contexts and explores some of the socio-cultural barriers to compassion in mental health services. The second half of the chapter describes some initiatives that have been developed to help cultivate compassion in working with mental health crises such as self-harm, suicidal feelings and hearing voices. I draw on the new science of compassion; contemplative philosophies; and initiatives developed by psychiatric service users/survivors, allies and professionals.
Chapter 10. Compassion in the Workplace, Justin M. Weinhardt and Aidan Dumaisnil
In this chapter, we examine the role of compassion in the organizational context. People experience inevitable pain and suffering within the workplace and because of the consequences of actions by organizations. Therefore, individuals in organizations respond to this pain and suffering by engaging in compassion. However, organizational theorists often ignore the humanistic aspect of the individuals in the organization. To address this gap, we outline aspects of the workplace that induce suffering in employees. Next, we discuss why suffering might occur in modern organizations. Then we outline why and how other employees may engage in compassion to those who suffer at work. Building on this we focus on how organizations can influence the expression of compassion in the workplace. Finally, we present evidence that compassion is a beneficial response to the person suffering and the organization as a whole.
In this introduction Carolyn and Justin briefly canvass the literature on compassion and explain how each of the chapters add to ongoing discussions taking place pertaining to how we should understand and apply the concept of compassion.
Chapter 1. The Moral Value of Compassion, Alfred Archer
Many people think that compassion has an important role to play in our moral lives. We might even think, as Arthur Schopenhauer (2010 [1840]) did, that compassion is the basis of morality. More modestly, we might think that compassion is one important source of moral motivation and would play an important role in the life of a virtuous person. Recently, however philosophers such as Roger Crisp (2008), and Jesse Prinz (2011) and psychologists such as Paul Bloom (2016) have called into question the value of sharing in another’s suffering. All three argue that this should not play a significant role in the life of the morally virtuous person. In its place, Crisp endorses rational benevolence as the central form of moral motivation for virtuous people. I will argue that despite the problems facing compassion, it has a distinctive role to play in moral life that cannot be fully captured by rational benevolence. My discussion will proceed as follows. In §1, I examine the nature of compassion and explain how I will be using the term in this paper. I will then, in §2, explain the traditional account of the value of compassion as a source of moral motivation. In §3, I will investigate a number of challenges to the value of compassionate moral motivation. I will then, in §4, explain why, despite facing important problems, compassion has a distinctive role to play in moral life.
Chapter 2. Appreciating the Virtues of Compassion, Bradford Cokelet
This paper defends a new, role-differentiated account of the virtues of compassion. Reference to plural virtues of compassion, rather than a single virtue, is intentional: my main thesis is that in order to understand compassion’s value and advance debate about its ethical importance we need to recognize that the virtue of compassion involves substantively different dispositions and attitudes in different spheres of life – for example in our personal, professional, and civic lives. In each sphere, compassion is an apt and distinctive form of good-willed responsiveness to the value of living beings and their characteristic struggles to live good lives, but the relevant forms of good-willed responsiveness vary because in different contexts there are different types of living beings involved and different relations between the compassionate person and the being to whom she is compassionate. My specific focus is on compassion in human relations; I argue that, in different role and relationship contexts, the virtues of compassion involve different forms of good-willed responsiveness to human struggles to live well. In developing my account I critically engage with the emotion-focused accounts defended by Martha Nussbaum and Roger Crisp and explain how my more plausible account can shed light on the nature and value of compassion for oneself.
Chapter 3. Compassion and Animals: How to Foster Respect for Other Animals in a World without Justice, Cheryl Abbate
The philosophy of animal rights is often characterized as an exclusively justice oriented approach to animal liberation that is unconcerned with, and moreover suspicious of, moral emotions, like sympathy, empathy, and compassion. I argue that the philosophy of animal rights can, and should, acknowledge that compassion plays an integral role in animal liberation discourse and theory. Because compassion motivates moral actors to relieve the serious injustices that other animals face, or, at the very least, compassion moves actors not to participate in or cause these injustices, the philosophy of animal rights should recognize both a duty to cultivate compassionate and a duty to promote compassion. Contra to feminist critiques of Regan’s justice-approach to ethics, the philosophy of animal rights is not committed to eschewing the moral emotions.
Chapter 4. Compassion and Consolation, Aaron Cobb
The virtue of compassion manifests itself in a distinctive syndrome of feeling, thought, desire, and activity. The compassionate person’s field of vision is more readily attuned to suffering. Perceived suffering impresses itself deeply on his psyche; he feels others’ suffering with great weight and urgency, as something to which he must respond with care. Their affliction disposes him to act in ways that could alleviate or ameliorate their suffering. But more than this, the virtue of compassion disposes a person to a kind of relational commitment to suffer with and for the sake of others in their affliction. In this paper, I develop an account of the virtue of compassion that focuses on the relations enacted and extended through the exercise of compassion. Toward this end, I focus on one paradigmatic form of compassionate activity: the consolation of those who experience irremediable suffering. This analysis underscores the central role of the virtue of compassion in addressing human need. And it shows the vital function of compassion in enacting and extending social relations crucial to the human good.
Chapter 5. Compassion and Its Pitfalls, Trudy Govier and David Boutland
We understand compassion as an emotion of sorrow in response to the understood suffering of another person; acknowledgement of that suffering and a motivation to assist the suffering person are central elements of a compassionate response. In connection with moral considerations concerning compassion, we examine a number of concerns about compassion and its object. As to the latter, we describe recent accounts of the phenomenon known as ‘poverty porn.’ ‘Poverty porn’ is a pejorative label for portrayals that vividly emphasize the sorrowful condition of needy persons. It has been criticized as disrespectful of the persons depicted and counterproductive as a means of contributing to meaningful change in their conditions. We outline several pitfalls of compassion and connect our account with a recent account of the fallacy of appealing to pity. We relate our account to three pathologies of compassion: (a) the exploitation by some of the compassionate feelings of others; (b) indulgence in commiseration at the cost of action; and (c) compassion fatigue. Shifting to the theme of persons experiencing compassion, we argue that here, as in other contexts, emotional appeals are relevant to the rationality of actions to be undertaken but insufficient to provide good reasons for those actions. Our treatment bears intriguing similarities to that of Sophie Condorcet in her late eighteenth century work, Letters on Sympathy, appended to her 1798 translation of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments into French.
Chapter 6. Compassion and Practical Reason: the Prospective of the Vulnerable, Carla Bagnoli
This essay distinguishes two concepts of compassion at works in Kant’s ethics. Proximal compassion is a sort of emotional contagion, which interferes with our capacities for rational agency, while distal compassion is active and rational, and key to Kant’s account of duties of virtue. To highlight the respective roles of these two kinds of compassion, the essay centers on a contrast with two distinct models of compassion which are said to sharply depart from Kant. First, Iris Murdoch relates compassion to the appreciation of concrete individuals, objecting that Kant’s discussion of rational agency overlooks individuality, hence canceling the deep differences in moral visions and outlooks. Second, for Theodor W. Adorno, compassion targets the injured and broken lives of vulnerable others, objecting that Kant’s ethics overlooks the genuine moral value of compassion. The argument is that Murdoch’s critique misleads us in objecting to abstraction, while Adorno’s critique places compassion in the right perspective, that is, the perspective of the vulnerable. However, Adorno’s critique is also partly misplaced, insofar as vulnerability is a driving concern in Kant’s theory of practical reason. This argument builds upon recent scholarship to show that the criticisms presented above misdiagnose Kant’s failure to account for compassion as a morally valuable emotion as lack of attention to individual vulnerability. The conclusion is that despite overwhelming critiques, Kant provides us with a useful distinction between two kinds of compassion, which coheres with empirical psychology and succeeds in vindicating the different roles of compassion in moral reasoning.
Chapter 7. Buddhism and the Problem of Universal Compassion, Karsten J. Struhl
The Buddhist analysis of the possibility and desirability of this universal compassion cannot be separated from its grounding in Buddhist philosophy. Thus, in the first section of this chapter, I explain the Buddhist soteriological philosophical project and its metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings. This includes analysis of the Buddhist understanding of the idea of the self as an illusion and the concept of emptiness. In the second section, I discuss the relation of Buddhist philosophical ideas to its project of developing universal compassion both as a means to enlightenment and for its own sake, and I distinguish compassion from empathy and Buddhist universal compassion from compassion which is bounded by one’s circle of concern. In both these sections, I also consider some of the differences between early Buddhism and Mahāyāna Buddhism. Finally, in the third part of this chapter, I argue that Buddhism as philosophical understanding is insufficient to cultivate universal compassion without corresponding spiritual, and, specifically, meditative practices. These include both insight (mindfulness) meditative practices and specific compassion meditations, both of which function to undermine the project of self-cherishing and self-grasping and to make it possible to push compassion beyond the bounds one’s customary circle of concern. I also consider Mahāyāna Buddhism’s ideal of the bodhisattva as an exemplar of compassion and its challenge to early Buddhism’s ideal of the arhat as the exemplar of wisdom, and I conclude that we can use wisdom to develop compassion and compassion to develop wisdom.
Chapter 8. Compassion in Medicine, Laura W. Ekstrom
Technical skill in executing surgical procedures, diagnostic acumen, discernment in initiating appropriate referrals – these are all qualities we value in our medical practitioners. But there is another key attribute we may tend to overlook, and it is one that, I argue, is critical: the trait of compassion. One might think that a physician’s being a touchy-feely sort or having the ability to put himself or herself in another’s shoes is, in fact, rather dispensable. Once compassion is properly understood, however, and once we come to appreciate that we ourselves could at any time find ourselves in a particular kind of patient population, it becomes clear that compassion ought to be central to our conception of a good physician. Compassion, I argue, has three components: a cognitive one, an affective one, and a volitional one. The particular content of these components serves to distinguish compassion from related traits such as pity and empathy. It is neither empathy nor pity that I work to champion in medicine, but rather compassion. This chapter fills in the proposed conception of compassion and argues against Nussbaum’s Aristotelian-inspired position that compassion has as a required component one’s appraisal that another’s suffering is not his or her fault. By focusing on patients who are in persistent pain with a source that is difficult to identify, I bring to the fore the importance of compassion in medicine. I close by offering some potential ways forward in promoting compassionate patient care.
Chapter 9. Challenges and Opportunities for Compassionate Mental Health Care, Helen Spandler
This chapter explores the challenges and opportunities for compassionate care in the context of mental health services. Rather than seeing compassion as merely an individual emotion, quality or virtue, I suggest that it is dependent on wider contextual factors such as environments, policies and social relations. Therefore, the first half of this chapter focuses on the importance of creating compassionate contexts and explores some of the socio-cultural barriers to compassion in mental health services. The second half of the chapter describes some initiatives that have been developed to help cultivate compassion in working with mental health crises such as self-harm, suicidal feelings and hearing voices. I draw on the new science of compassion; contemplative philosophies; and initiatives developed by psychiatric service users/survivors, allies and professionals.
Chapter 10. Compassion in the Workplace, Justin M. Weinhardt and Aidan Dumaisnil
In this chapter, we examine the role of compassion in the organizational context. People experience inevitable pain and suffering within the workplace and because of the consequences of actions by organizations. Therefore, individuals in organizations respond to this pain and suffering by engaging in compassion. However, organizational theorists often ignore the humanistic aspect of the individuals in the organization. To address this gap, we outline aspects of the workplace that induce suffering in employees. Next, we discuss why suffering might occur in modern organizations. Then we outline why and how other employees may engage in compassion to those who suffer at work. Building on this we focus on how organizations can influence the expression of compassion in the workplace. Finally, we present evidence that compassion is a beneficial response to the person suffering and the organization as a whole.
