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On Pity and Its Appropriateness

Stephen Leighton We have become suspicious of pity. Once taken to be a fitting response to the

misery of others, we have become concerned that in pitying we look down upon others, and that in being pitied we are diminished. Our suspicions about offering pity are not born out of hard-heartedness or the lack of sympathy for others, but the suspicion that pity’s expression damages where it is meant to restore. So understood, our aspirations to discern the appropriate circumstances in which to feel pity have given way to doubts that pity is an appropriate passion to feel. Can pity be appropriate any longer?

I shall argue that conceptions of pity remain available to us in which pity is an appropriate passion to feel and to receive. The argument begins with our conflicting attitudes towards pity, then sets these against Nietzsche’s condemnation and Aristotle’s endorsement of it. Socrates’ refusal to appeal to the pity of his jurors proves a helpful locus for further reflection. Proceeding in this way introduces historical and exegetical considerations, but the primary aim is to use particular developments within philosophy to discern the boundaries of pity, to see its limitations, and to locate pity’s place upon our own cultural landscape. The argument will address conditions for feeling, expressing, and holding back pity, as well as those for petitioning, demanding, receiving, shunning and repudiating it. At times, it will help to relate pity to other emotions and their values. I end, for example, by differentiating pity from compassion, understanding both to be appropriate in their circumstances. So too analogies with friendship and love prove illuminating, as does a contrast with shame. 1. Conflicting Attitudes

Consider our reactions to the misfortunes of others. The pity we readily accord within the theatre, to Oedipus in his misery or to Ophelia in hers, we become hesitant about outside the theatre’s doors. Our hesitation about offering pity can vary from a general unease (e.g. toward an anonymous other’s past sadness) to outright repugnance (e.g. toward an important friend struggling with a recent disaster). Still, we are not always reluctant to pity, even when outside the theatre: pity felt for non-human animals subjected to human experimentation seems widespread.

Current usage often reveals a disparaging of pity. Recently, a Canadian government official commented on a whistleblower: “I don't want to be mean, but this is a poor woman in a pitiful state, a woman with no husband that I know of. She's feeling the pressure of being a single mother with financial responsibilities. […] Basically, I find it pitiful.”1 No one mistook these remarks for sympathetic concern. “I pity you” tends to be uttered accusatorily; being described as “pitiful” diminishes one to being pathetic.

1 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada /national/

2004/02/27/pelletier_bedard040227.html), March 27, 2004.

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Such disparaging is remarkable given pity’s definition and legacy. One definition offered by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) speaks of a “feeling or emotion of tenderness aroused by the suffering, distress, or misfortune of another, and prompting a desire for its relief [...].”2 Moreover, the dictionary associates pity with sympathy, compassion, clemency and mercy – all of which remain highly desirable. Again, it was not so very long ago that Bertrand Russell, when explaining what he had lived for, felt free to write: “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”3

Although Russell’s attitude toward pity has become rarer, pity as a valued kind of tenderness has not been abandoned. The lyrics of popular song often give voice to pity’s appropriateness. “I Pity the Poor Immigrant” (B. Dylan), “Isn’t it a Pity?” (G. Harrison) and “A Town without Pity” (G. Pitney) address matters lamented, where pity is humane and caring. To be a pity remains a lamented loss; to be pitiless seems inhumane. 2. Nietzsche’s Reservations

Our doubts and suspicions about pity’s appropriateness might be better appreciated if set in terms of some of its criticisms. Nietzsche is philosophy’s most well-known critic of pity, concerned as he was with what he took to be an emerging value and morality of pity.4 He writes:

“Pity, a squandering of feeling, a parasite harmful to moral health, ‘it cannot possibly be our duty to increase the evil in the world.’ If one does good merely out of pity, it is oneself one really does good to, and not to the other. Pity does not depend upon maxims but upon affects; it is pathological. The suffering of others infects us, pity is an infection.”5

The purported aim of pity may be another’s good, but Nietzsche takes pity to work toward the benefit of the person feeling pity instead. In this, it is a squandering of feeling, and harmful to moral health. At the same time, it becomes an infection to all involved, both those pitied and those pitying, but also others more generally. Elsewhere Nietzsche observes that pity, while celebrated as a real virtue by those of the herd, “is reckoned contemptible and unworthy of a strong, dreadful soul”; pity is taken to be a danger, a weakness, and being pitied is an affront.6 The purported good damages, affronting persons pitied, and weakening and endangering those offering pity. Instead:

“A great man […] wants no ‘sympathetic’ heart, but servants, tools; in his intercourse with men he is always intent on making something out of them. He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar; and when one

2 Oxford English Dictionary 1971. 3 Russell 1967, 13. 4 See, for example, his preface to the On the Genealogy of Morals, secs. 5 and 6 (Nietzsche

1887). Nietzsche does not stand alone as a critic of pity. Descartes, Spinoza, Plato, and the Stoics all find fault with the emotion.

5 Nietzsche 1901, sec. 368. 6 Nietzsche 1873, sec. 18; see also secs. 133-4, and Nietzsche 1886, sec. 199.

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thinks he is, he usually is not. When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. He rather lies than tells the truth: it requires more spirit and will. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame, his own justice that is beyond appeal.”7 Nietzsche’s proposals, as revealed in these remarks, are radical. Not only is pity

dismissed as a virtue of the herd, a weakness that infects and diminishes those offering and receiving it, but so also are sympathy and other forms of human tenderness. So seen, Nietzsche’ repudiation of pity is part of his ambitious transvaluation of values beyond good and evil.

Our own suspicions of pity do not bring all this with it. As noted earlier, our suspicions do not arise out of a lack of sympathy for others, a hardened heart, a repudiation of compassion, clemency or mercy. Rather, they concern pity itself. Unsurprisingly, then, much that Nietzsche approves of is simply repellent to us: few are interested in the great man, the isolated self, or treating others as tools or servants, or making something of them. But if our reservations cannot be founded on these parts of Nietzsche’s repudiation, there are shared concerns: that pitying affronts and demeans the person pitied; that while seeming to do good for another pity only serves one’s own good; that the pitying relationship hinders pitied persons making something of themselves, and, in turn, a valuable relationship with them. Our doubts about pity often concern a failure to respect the pitied person’s autonomy, thereby condescending to the person pitied, and casting him or her in a subservient position. This not only diminishes them, but also any relationship with them, and gives a false kind of superiority to those who feel pity.

While our own concerns for pity and Nietzsche’s prove quite different in places, the fact and nature of shared concerns indicates how deeply rooted are some of our current suspicions. We would be unwise to dismiss these suspicions as ephemera, the latest cultural whim, but should be wary of pity, concerned that it has become inappropriate, and has done so because it damages both those who give and those who receive pity. 3. Aristotle’s Endorsement of Pity

Since our suspicions of pity arise against the background of pity as a valuable reaction to the suffering of others, we might better comprehend our situation and the options available to us with a fuller appreciation of that background. One source of pity as a valuable reaction is ancient Greece. Homer, the tragedians, and others portrayed circumstances in which pity was sought, offered, given and received – where these were understood as vital strands in the fabric of ethical life, ones to be relied upon when disaster struck.8 Rather than taken to condescend or diminish, pity was to help restore damaged others, and to help preserve the moral community.

Aristotle’s depiction of pity can help us understand this. In his Rhetoric, he characterises pity as follows:

7 Nietzsche 1901, sec. 962. 8 See, for example, Stevens 1944, and Williams 1992, 71-73.

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“Let pity be [defined as] a certain pain at an apparently destructive or painful evil happening to one who does not deserve it and which a person might expect himself or one of his own to suffer, and this when it seems close at hand […].”9

The apparently destructive or painful evils that Aristotle has in mind have magnitude, and include deaths, torments, diseases, and the scarcity of friends.

On Aristotle’s picture, in being moved to pity, one recognises and (by virtue of being pained) displays concern for another’s terrible situation, an apparently destructive or painful evil that is undeserved. That someone is moved to feel pity reveals the importance of the person pitied and their plight to the person feeling pity. In this pitying is neither diminishing nor demeaning of the person pitied; it renders neither the person pitied subservient, nor the person feeling pity superior. Rather, it expresses concern for and solidarity with another, doing so because of the magnitude and unfairness of what that person must endure. Where warranted, it is an apt recognition of and a concerned response to the undeserved suffering of someone by a concerned other. At the same time, it displays insight into another’s plight. For, in being moved to pity, particular features of another’s situation are registered, taken to be salient and important – as undeserved destructive or painful evils in our lives surely are.

Expressions of pity reveal these concerns to the person suffering and to the community more generally. With regard to the community, the expression of pity is a public acknowledging that here is something unfortunate, undeserved, and worthy of human concern. Its expression may foster pity in others, moving them to be likewise concerned for the person suffering. From the perspective of the recipient of pity, another’s expression of pity reveals that person’s insight into one’s ongoing suffering, its unfairness, and one’s importance to the person feeling pity. Another’s solidarity with one in this suffering is displayed. To be sure, the sufferings brought on by the undeserved disaster are not ameliorated hereby (though see section four), but one is not left alone in his or her misery: others are concerned for one, what one must endure, and are expressing their concern.

Pity on this understanding, then, can be appropriate to another’s situation and of benefit. Moreover, by virtue of being an emotional response (rather than, say, a deliberated one), pity’s expression of concern is more immediate. When this expression is felt in appropriate ways, it betrays heartfelt commitment to the person suffering, taking both the person and his or her situation seriously. Here, not to feel pity would demean. For not to feel pity in these circumstances is not to be distressed by another’s suffering. So doing would fail to appreciate that person, what she or he was undergoing and properly deserved, or would grasp these but be so unconcerned for them as to remain undisturbed, leaving the person isolated in their misery.

The foregoing speaks to a cultural milieu in which pity was deemed appropriate, using Aristotle’s account of pity to show how this could be so. Here appropriate pity

9 On Rhetoric,1385b13-15 (Aristotle 1991, II.8.2).

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occurs without requiring condescension toward or diminishment of the person suffering. It is restorative rather than damaging.

It is intriguing, then, that at his trial, having offered his arguments and been found guilty, Socrates shunned an appeal to pity, indicating that he would not resort to pity, tears or bring out his children to evoke the sympathy of his audience.10 Consistent with this, the arguments in his defence made no explicit or even tacit appeal to or use of pity. This is striking when we consider that had Socrates made some such appeal, he was likely to have suffered a lesser sentence and to have lived. Were this to have happened, it would have been better and more just in the sense that Socrates’ conviction and sentence did bring significant suffering to one who did not deserve it. Yet, appealing to pity was not worth it in Socrates’ eyes. His refusal to go along with expected conventions, his repudiation of displays of tears and the humiliation of his family, suggests that Socrates sees in an appeal to pity a demeaning of himself, his life and his family.

Socrates’ repudiation of pity, then, is worth reflecting on, not with aims of impugning Socrates, or with hopes of discerning (or here even seeking) the historical reasons for Socrates’ proceeding as he did. Rather, puzzling over Socrates’ repudiation of pity in the context of pity as an appropriate passion will allow us to test and further explore pity’s appropriateness, its limits, as well as plausible bases for giving, accepting, seeking, and repudiating it. We can get a better sense of the limits of pity, and its appropriateness, something that can help illumine our own understanding of similar matters.

Given these aims, two issues will be excluded from our investigation. First, we will not engage Plato’s antipathy toward the passions or his philosophical concerns more generally.11 For though both are interesting, they take us away from our present concern, namely the refusal of pity in the context of pity as an appropriate passion. Second, the concern that formal appeals to pity in the Athenian courts often descended to grovelling and self-abasement will be set aside.12 For while they often did, Socrates need not have descended in order to make the appeal.

One reason to suspect the appropriateness of pity, and credit Socrates’ repudiation

of it concerns the scope of the preceding argument. For while the defence of pity has worked with a general account of the emotion, and sought to discern the importance of

10 Apology 24b-35c (Plato 1997). The following references to Plato’s works refer to this edition. 11 Plato’s distrust of the passions finds various expressions, but notably in the Phaedo and

Republic, where worries centre on their distorting nature, their inferior grasp of and response to reality. In addition, Plato seems to have special concerns for pity. For example, Plato has Socrates worry about pity felt for characters in a poem, lest the pitying part be transferred, nourished and strengthened, turning what ought to wither and be ruled into rulers (Republic 606). Still, it is not all one-sided. Plato seems to allow for the pity of others. While many of these allowances may only reflect common parlance (e.g. Republic 336e10, 516c6, 518b2, 539a7-8), not all do. For example, in speaking of fostering of virtue, Protagoras observes that we feel pity for afflictions due to nature or luck (Protagoras 323d-324c. See also Laws 731c8).

12 See Johnstone 1999, chapter 6 for more on the nature of appeals to pity in Athenian courts.

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the values inherent in it, it remains a defence of pity in particular circumstances rather than a full defence of pity.

There is a point here, but one that should remind us that the defence of pity as an appropriate passion is not a defence of its appropriateness in all of its manifestations. Pity can be an appropriate passion, but remain inappropriate in many situations; and even where appropriate to a situation, it can be felt in inappropriate ways. For example, pity felt for life’s ordinary struggles where these are misconstrued as undeserved misfortune is inappropriate pity; mawkish pity is pity inappropriately felt by being overly sentimental; self-pity is a form of the emotion so given to indulgence and feeling sorry for oneself that it is typically inappropriate.

In view of this, it may be that many of our cultural milieu’s concerns for pity are well founded. Perhaps, the same is true of Socrates’ reservations. Even if so, they do not repudiate pity as an appropriate passion to feel. As with Aristotle’s view of the emotions generally, a defence of appropriate pity is a defence of it as a passion that is valuable when apt and felt aptly – where that speaks both to the situation in which it is felt and its manner of manifestation. It is within these confines and with the foregoing depiction of pity, that pity is said to be appropriate to feel, and appears appropriate to Socrates’ situation.

A different concern focuses on the recipient of pity. Even if one grants that

foregoing considerations show why pity can be appropriate to feel, and even that feeling pity for Socrates can be countenanced, this does not thereby establish that Socrates should accept or welcome, much less seek pity. Perhaps we have a clash of perspectives: where, from an outsider’s point of view, feeling pity can be appropriate and due recognition; but also where, from the point of view of the person suffering, pity can remain unwelcome and inappropriate. If so, then while one can defend the response of pity to another’s plight, pity for that plight remains something that we should suppress and be reluctant to offer.

There is a point to this objection as well. An argument defending the aptness of feeling pity, does not itself establish the value of receiving pity, or that someone pitied should accept or welcome (much less, seek) pity. Further, while our earlier discussion of pity on Aristotle’s conception did indicate in a general terms a place for receiving pity as well as offering it, it may be the case that Socrates’ situation provides reason to doubt the appropriateness of receiving pity.

Socrates’ concerns seem to revolve on matters of honour, disgrace and shame being brought upon him and his family.13 Accordingly, he repudiates pity. His concerns that shame and dishonour come about through pity underscore our own concerns about a diminished self and condescension brought about by being pitied. If being pitied or seeking it does bring shame or dishonour to one seeking or receiving pity, then a repudiation of pity when directed to oneself, and a condemnation of it when directed toward others is wholly justified – even where pity may be “warranted” by

13 Apology 35a-b.

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circumstances. For, on this understanding, being pitied or seeking it will demean the person pitied.

Is being pitied shameful? Need it bring shame or dishonour to a person pitied? Shame and pity are different. Shame is not implicated by the presence of pity,

certainly not in any straightforward way – as the Rhetoric’s understanding of shame can help us to see.

“Let shame be [defined as] a sort of pain and agitation concerning the class of evils, whether present or past or future, that seems to bring a person into disrespect and shamelessness a belittling and indifference about these same things.”14

Whereas pity’s domain is undeserved destructive or painful evils, shame is centred on matters of disrespect or disgrace. Undeserved destructive or painful evils are hard, unfortunate and unfair, but poorly grasped as themselves involving or connoting disrespect or disgrace. Indeed, to misunderstand pity in this way would be pernicious, by miscasting the unfortunate as ethically failing. It is, then, morally important that the two domains and related emotions remain distinct and distinguished.

So seen, petitioning, receiving, or claiming pity would imply that one has suffered disaster undeservedly. To receive and accept pity would acknowledge such disaster, and make room for the support from and solidarity of others in one’s plight. In this, there is no shame, no disrespect, no disgrace, with no ethical failure present or implied. If so, by limiting matters to pity, the implication is that of undeserved suffering, not that of shame or disgrace. In this regard, then, Socrates has no reason to object to being pitied, where warranted, though we understand concerns for disrespect, disgrace and shame.15

Matters can become more complicated. While the shameful (i.e. disgraceful) and the pitiable (i.e. undeserved suffering) are different, it remains possible that there is something diminishing in asking for pity, a subservience of the self that diminishes. Consider by way of analogy how diminishing it can be to ask or to have to ask a friend or lover to do what should naturally be done in friendship or through love. Some things that should be given are tarnished and even destroyed when they are asked for, or (worse) when they have to be asked for. Thus, concerning friendship or love, having to ask for help and asking for it can be a lowering and diminishing of the self, a humbling — something that damages the petitioner and the ongoing relationship. For a friend as a friend, and a lover as a lover, should know: one should not have to ask.16

14 1383b11-15 (Aristotle 1991, II.6.2) 15 Socrates might simply not wish the support of others, and so not want their pity. I will return to

this possibility in section five of the essay. 16 I do not mean to suggest that any asking within friendship or love involves loss. There are

many things that we cannot expect a friend or lover to know or to be concerned with. Where so, asking may be needed. Failing to ask where it is needed is itself a failure towards one’s friend or lover by virtue of unfairly cutting them out, and unilaterally limiting the relationship.

Nor do I mean to deny that asking, even where one should not have to, can be the right way to proceed. Presumably, in some cases, it will be better to ask; in others, not — where the determination of these matters has to do with the particular friendship or love, and the situation.

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Are we to say something similar about pity? Is there shame or disgrace (and/or their appearance) in the asking, particularly when there is no failure on the part of the person asking? If there is, then there can be something diminishing in asking for pity, and pity given in response becomes tarnished. Moreover, as the analogy with friendship indicates, pity asked for would damage the petitioner and any ongoing relationship.

The case of Socrates is interesting not only because there is no failure on his part, but also because there is (we should grant) a failure on his jurors’ part. We are therefore imagining Socrates asking for pity for his undeserved disaster from the very ones who bring disaster upon him, and who mistakenly take him to deserve this disaster. Asking for or accepting pity from them, even if not formally an acknowledgement of disgrace or shame, could well have the appearance of the same. After all, Socrates’ jurors take him to warrant punishment, to be shamed and disgraced, and now (we imagine) they are to be petitioned, and petitioned by Socrates no less, to exercise generosity towards him by treating the same matter as a disaster that can also be pitied. Worse, all this is to come from those who do not acknowledge, and probably do not even suspect, that Socrates’ plight is underserved, and a product of their own failure of him.

Pity coming at the hands of his jurors, then, would suppose (wrongly) and project (mistakenly) disgrace and shame upon Socrates, not simply in their eyes but in the eyes of all involved. Were Socrates to have asked for pity from his jurors, he would do so in the knowledge of what is being supposed and projected. To ask for pity here, then, would give the impression both that he deserves to suffer, and his own acceptance of this.

Shame, as the Rhetoric’s definition seems to suggest, concerns not only the reality of disgrace, but also its appearance. Both are damaging by virtue of having the person seen as, read as disgraced, and accepting or at least acquiescing to the same. In this, shame involves a lowered self, a humbling and humiliation, both in the eyes of those involved and the community more generally. Thus, in the circumstances described, it would taint Socrates were he to ask for and then receive pity. If so, then it is because asking for pity from his jurors would be taken to involve disgrace and a lowering of himself and his family that we can appreciate Socrates’ refusal to seek pity. In refusing to seek pity Socrates is not being difficult, arrogant or foolhardy, but taking care of his soul, preventing it from even the taint of disgrace and shame. Indeed, one can see that even were Socrates not to ask for pity, but simply to receive it from his jurors, the supposition and projection of disgrace would remain, as would looking down upon him and condescension. Here, then, not only do we make sense of the inappropriateness of Socrates seeking pity, but also of his repudiation of it from his jurors.

In a way, we have come full circle. While initially questioning Socrates’

repudiation of pity, we now see that and how it can be appropriate. Nevertheless, we must be clear about what to draw from this. We have not been given reason to doubt the appropriateness of pity: the foregoing speaks of ignobility in asking for or receiving pity in particular circumstances, namely where the persons to be asked for or offering pity author the petitioner’s disaster, do so for no just reason, and without regret. Here matters of undeserved disaster come to have the appearance of disgrace. Seeking or accepting

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pity here is to accept disgrace. Not only can this give sense to some of what might lie behind our own suspicions of pity, and Nietzsche’s repudiation of it, but also it shows why Socrates might justifiably refuse (and refuse to seek) the pity of his jurors. Who is offering pity or from whom it is sought can prove crucial to the appropriateness of pity. However, all this is true in the context of the appropriateness of pity. Thus, while the question of who is offering pity can prove crucial to the appropriateness of pity, this does not impute any ignobility in pitying or being pitied generally. It does not diminish, for example, asking for (or receiving) pity from those who do not author one’s disaster, nor does it diminish simply offering pity where one does not author the disaster. While we can now better appreciate Socrates’ refusal to seek pity at his trial, we have not found thereby that pity (or even pity for Socrates) is simply inappropriate. Our earlier claims about the appropriateness of pity remain.

There is something further to be gained by reflecting on Socrates’ circumstances,

namely the way in which the demand for pity can become appropriate. I do not mean to suggest that Socrates should have to plead for pity or should have to humble himself before his jurors, or simply accept their pity. Rather, it is to suggest that the demand for pity can be appropriate where done in a way that leaves no doubt that the one demanding it has suffered undeservedly at the hands of those from whom pity is now demanded. In the face of such a demand, pity becomes the very least Socrates’ jurors could offer as a gesture to redress their injustice, and express regret. Had Socrates so demanded, not only would he have made the point that his suffering warrants pity, but also the failure of those who convicted him. At the same time, he would have offered his jurors an opportunity to begin to redeem themselves, and to begin to reconcile themselves with him. Socrates’ own suggestion that his punishment take the form of free maintenance at the state’s expense makes some of these points, though it would seem without a serious attempt to facilitate reconciliation between himself and his jurors.17

We see something similar in love and friendship when lovers or friends fail where they should succeed. For example, when friends or lovers express no love or offer no kindness where they should, then having to ask for such expressions can be humbling, and can diminish and discredit the petitioner. The petitioner is lowered and shamed by this. Yet, the demand that this be rectified, the demand that the love be expressed and the kindness be offered attempts to retrieve what is due, and seeks to restore a floundering friendship or love. To fail to act in response to these demands is to fail one’s friend or lover yet further. To fail to make the demand is to draw in, redefine, and perhaps walk away from an ongoing love or friendship. Drawing in, redefinition, walking away — each can be appropriate at times, even necessary. However, they come at the cost of being isolating; and they can weaken or destroy some of the most important relationships available to humans.18 Similar losses can occur where pity is deserved, sought, then

17 Apology 37a. 18 Lurking in the background may be a general worry that any petitioning of another can only

diminish the independency of persons, and their lives. So seen, asking a friend for help subtly diminishes

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demanded (and refused), or when the person suffering undeservedly turns away and makes no such demand. 4. A Conception of Pity Available to Us

The argument, so far, has used Aristotle’s conception of pity, and the situation of Socrates, to test the limits of pity as an appropriate emotion to feel, receive, petition, and even demand. The main challenge to pity as something valuable to give and receive has centred on the idea that receiving pity is contrary to a person’s honour or pride. For if so, there is inappropriateness in receiving pity, which, in turn, renders its offering problematic. The response has been that while asking for and receiving pity can conflict with honour and pride, they need not. If so, pity remains appropriate where handled well by those involved. Concerning those cases where pity’s general conditions of appropriateness appear to be met, but where asking for or receiving pity conflict with honour and pride, the difficulty resides in receiving it or asking for it from particular persons in particular situations, especially when their views go unchallenged. For pity coming from these persons condescends, and imputes a lowered self to those receiving pity. Given this, some sense is made of our own cultural concerns for pity, and, perhaps, some of Nietzsche’s and Socrates’. Still, in appropriate circumstances, pity on the conception articulated remains an appropriate emotion to ask for, feel and receive. Pity remains an appropriate passion.

While these considerations show us something about a particular philosophical-cultural understanding of pity as an appropriate emotion, and provide one plausible basis for Socrates’ refusal of pity at his trial, how much does it reveal about us? After all, what preceded purposely spoke of an earlier cultural milieu – where pity was more firmly in place than it is in our own cultural melange. Moreover, it considered the problem of appropriate pity from Aristotle’s understanding of pity and shame. We may have learned something about the implications of pity on that articulation and in that general context, but have we learned anything helpful about pity in our own times?

If we look at Aristotle’s articulation of pity and our own understanding (using the definition from the OED as one representative understanding), we can see that while the

one’s self and one’s life. Asking for pity would do so too, and far less subtly. The remarks on friendship (above) are meant in a way that challenges the view that a request for help is diminishing. The position argued from is Aristotelian in the sense that it presumes that our independency as humans and the lives we live must be seen in terms of (rather than juxtaposed to) being dependent rational animals (to use A. MacIntyre’s happy expression (1999)). Aristotle articulates an ideal of a self-sufficient life as one that involves others variously connected to one (Nicomachean Ethics 1097b9-12 (Aristotle 1984); Politics 1253a2-6, 25-32 (Aristotle 1984)). The argument here works with a related ideal of an independent self and life in which reliance on various others is presumed and required within an independent life. On this view, independency is damaged when our reliance on others becomes inappropriate. Over-dependency by keeping one’s friends at one’s beck and call serves as one example. Interestingly, and for many, paradoxically, under-dependency is also inappropriate, by virtue of being isolating. Thus, one way that the independency of the self and one’s life is damaged is in failing to call upon a friend when one should. For by failing to ask where asking is appropriate one merely isolates the self rather than expresses one’s independency. Our independency is that of a social animal.

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two understandings differ, they do not do so in ways crucial to present concerns. For example, Aristotle’s definition does not speak of a desire to relieve, whereas the one quoted from the OED does. Still, Aristotle’s account can be expanded to accommodate a desire to relieve.

A greater difference concerns the sufferings pitied. Whereas Aristotle takes pity to be evaluatively structured, to concern undeserved destructive or painful evils, the OED speaks more broadly of misfortune and distress. In effect, Aristotle’s account concerns one species of pity as set out in the OED. No doubt, some will incline to the more generic articulation, while others will endorse Aristotle’s more specific articulation. But we need not further that debate here: Aristotle’s articulation is by no means strange; it is a conception of pity that is available to us. And that is sufficient for the present purpose of establishing a conception of pity that is available to us, and appropriate to feel.

We can make a similar point regarding the use of Aristotle’s account of shame. Aristotle’s conception is lean when contrasted with those elaborated in contemporary discussions. For example, Aristotle is only somewhat concerned for the place and status of an audience, and is innocent of our desire to differentiate shame from guilt.19 Yet, these differences and the leanness of Aristotle’s account are no disadvantage here. Aristotle’s conception is hardly an historical relic that speaks only of a by-gone time and understanding. His thought that shame centres on evils that seem to bring disgrace is a shared concern, even though we may want to give different and fuller accounts of these ideas. It is this shared concern that has been featured in the foregoing argument. Again, the notions of friendship, love, kindness deployed above are generic, and available to us.

If so, by looking to Aristotle’s conception of pity, its contrast with shame, and by using the example of Socrates to test matters, we speak to a conception of pity that is available to us and worth endorsing. Pity on this conception can be employed; we can bridge the ages, and not be concerned that we speak to what is now past. But as well as defending a conception of pity against current suspicions, we have noted legitimate concerns about the emotion. These have to do with particular manifestations of pity, but do not show pity to be an inappropriate passion. Further, the endorsement of pity is not an endorsement of pity on every plausible conception of it, but only on a particular conception of it. Here I have highlighted the Aristotelian conception, though the same conclusions can be reached regarding the more generic conception noted above. 5. Refusing Pity

Despite these arguments, we can anticipate that many will continue to shun and refuse the pity of others. What then? What are we to do, particularly since we have at least some control over our emotions and their expression? Moreover, what, if anything, does this indicate about pity, the bases for its refusal, and its appropriateness?

In the face of someone shunning pity, offering it because it is ‘warranted’ by circumstances would surely offend. For howsoever warranted it may be, and whatever benefits may accrue, offering pity here fails to respect another’s wishes concerning their

19 See, for example, Taylor 1985, chapters 3-4 and Williams 1999, Endnote 1.

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own lives. This is a significant infringement, particularly in our cultural milieu in which the autonomy of persons, their self-determination, their self-respect, and the respect for others are all highly valued. Thus, to the extent that the matter is under our control, pity should not be offered in these circumstances.

Reasons for holding back pity run deeper than the importance of respecting the wishes of others, especially about their own lives. They also concern the ways offering pity can intrude in another’s life. One part of the difficulty is that in receiving pity one is reminded of one’s suffering, something that can be unwelcome and prove unpleasant, and is liable to be so for those who would avert and shun pity. Here the expression of solidarity damages where it was meant to restore, distresses where it was meant to relieve. Further, pity for another serves to determine or fix a value on at least part of the pitied person’s life, indicating that here resides undeserved suffering, disaster. This determination by others can also be disturbing, and can disrupt and divert the pitied person’s own attempts at self-understanding, and her or his attempt to give their life meaning. Furthermore, it can affect the understanding and responses of outsiders. Pitying, then, freezes and renders salient a person’s plight as undeserved suffering, and can do so while the person is struggling to make more of it. All of this can be damaging to the person suffering.

Imagine someone feeling only pity toward a friend who suffers genuine and undeserved disaster in his or her life. No joys are taken in one’s friend’s successes; no pleasures taken in time spent together; no pride taken in one’s friend’s accomplishments or in the friendship itself. Here pitying so affects the appreciation of the friend that it relegates her or his life to that of disaster. Limiting one’s relationship with one’s friend in this way serves to undercut both the friend and the purported friendship, and, possibly, the views of others outside the friendship. It does so by limiting the friendship to pity’s concerns; it fails to find anything about the ‘friend’ important enough to respond to except their misery.

Even in the context of more varied emotional responses, pitying can prove problematic by freezing and rendering salient a particular meaning regarding the pitied person’s life. Someone I knew suffered a terrible disease, one that she knew and we knew would eventually defeat her, and end her life in a way that no one could possibly want. “No self-pity” was something of a personal mantra, and another’s pity would have appalled her. Although there is no shame or dishonour in being pitied, her likely repudiation of expressions of pity need not be thought misguided or inappropriate. In struggling to make her fate into a meaningful and valuable experience, in trying to turn what is a disaster in human affairs into something greater (even though defeat must surely come), others’ expressions of pity would have angered and frustrated her. It would have given and projected a significance that she was not only refusing to accept and fighting mightily to stave off for herself, but also was trying to vanquish for close and more distant others. For it seemed that an important element in her struggles was to get us to see her and her plight in quite different ways.

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In these circumstances, even though pity might be warranted, even though its expression serves as a commitment to and solidarity with another in her suffering, even though it might be the clear-eyed acknowledgment of how things are, it should not be expressed.20 For its expression fails to respect the person and her autonomy; it harms her attempt to create meaning in her life, and to make her life meaningful. Here the harm done in expressing pity greatly outstrips any merit that could come from its offering.

Still, these conclusions do not undercut earlier ones. The ongoing argument has attempted establish that pity can be an appropriate response in certain circumstances, not that it is required in those circumstances, not that if felt it must be expressed. The trajectory of my acquaintance’s life, and her guidance of it seem sufficient to warrant curtailing expressions of pity, and possibly pity itself. 21 At the same time, it would be a hard, inhumane heart that upon appreciating the plight of my acquaintance and her wishes remained unmoved.22 Pity is one possible response to these circumstances; others can be appropriate, including anger, despondency, and compassion. Given my acquaintance’s struggles, it would be preferable to be moved in one or more of these latter ways. Of course, whether one manages to control one’s emotions in such situations is only somewhat up to us. 23 One may find oneself feeling pity all the same. Where so, it is worth recalling that by so feeling we do not view the person as in any way pathetic, nor need our pity be in any tension with our admiration for the person.24 6. Explaining Our Conflicting Attitudes

20 I forego for the possibility that one’s reaction should be mixed, e.g. both pity and… It is not

that this complexity is not more appropriate, but that my acquaintance’s abhorrence was to pity in any form or degree. It is this repudiation that I want to consider here.

21 In large measure, this is so because of what she was trying to achieve. Her struggles to transform the meaning of her situation is but one relevant case. There can be various bases for taking one’s own or another’s suffering to be improperly responded to with pity. One might see the suffering as relatively trivial in light of other features of the life (cf. Phaedo 58eff), a divine test, of insufficient magnitude in view of what is happening to others, wrongly understood as suffering, etc. Whether these understandings or attempts to fashion oneself prove viable is important, but not the only relevant issue. It also matters that persons deserve to be respected in their pursuits, and that the failure to do so can harm those attempts and the persons themselves.

22 To suggest otherwise requires a) a more immediate and pervasive control of our emotions than seems plausible, and b) that the meaningfulness of events in one’s life is wholly determined by the meaningfulness one gives to them. The ‘wholly’ is unrealistic. Moreover, other things being equal, we seem better as humans when we appreciate the full complexity of our lives and the lives of others.

We should also keep in mind, as Blum has noted (1980 514), that problems of possible interference in the lives of others hold not just for pity, but for many forms of beneficence. Thus, the present concern that pity can interfere with others’ projects while important is not a telling problem for pity itself, but a problem of how to get one’s pity right.

23 Roberts’ 2003, 102-103 discussion of emotional self-control provides one plausible way to understand the emotional self-control here addressed, doing so without its exercise proving somehow irrational.

24 Pity can be even more affecting when it concerns the struggles of those we admire. This is often the case in Greek tragedy, as one sees in the struggles of Oedipus and Ajax.

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The argument offered, in defending pity as an appropriate emotion to feel, has also tried to understand our doubts about pity, seeking what is well placed in them. As well, it has tried to grasp what can lie behind a refusal to be pitied, and how to respond to this. Can we also make sense of our conflicting attitudes toward pity (see section 1)?

I observed that we were more reluctant to pity outside the theatre than inside it. Within the theatre, our pity concerns undeserved disaster in the life of a character. There can be no plausible expression of pity there that concerns or encumbers another person’s life. Accordingly, pity can be given freely for characters on stage. A similar explanation applies to pity’s continuing role as an appropriate emotion within popular song.

Our investigation of that and how pity’s expression can interfere with the project of making a meaningful life, helps make sense of a general squeamishness about pity outside the theatre’s doors. Further, this helps illuminate our greater hesitance to pity a friend’s ongoing disaster than an anonymous other’s miserable fate. For the closeness and bonds of friendship in the one case versus the relative anonymity in the other, together with the fact the friend’s disaster is ongoing and nearby (while the anonymous other’s disaster is now past) means that expressions of pity for the friend are more likely to interfere in her or his life. We are, then, more concerned for expressing pity in the case of the friend. So too, we can explain our comparative readiness to feel pity for animals subject to human experimentation. We do not think of caged animals subjected to human experimentation as involved in a project of making a meaningful life for themselves. Nor do we suppose that the social display of pity for them impinges upon them living their lives in fruitful ways. This allows us to feel pity whole-heartedly for such animals in their undeserved misery. 7. Pity or Compassion

A final matter. Even granting the foregoing, one might suggest that the term ‘pity’ now so connotes condescension that it is futile to try to recover or rehabilitate any version of it. Philippa Foot, for example, notes our dislike of being pitied, and suggests that it is what we call compassion that is respected and good.25 The suggestion, if taken as a

25 Foot 2001, 105-110. For similar reasons Nussbaum 2001, 301 prefers to speak of compassion.

Again, Roberts 2003, 294 ff. takes up compassion when speaking of this territory. Nussbaum additionally provides an ambitious and extensive analysis of compassion and its role

in our moral and political life. While it is not possible to comment in detail on that account here, it may be useful to highlight some major points of contact and contrast. Nussbaum does not differentiate compassion from pity, and takes up her discussion in terms of compassion. As we shall see, I find it valuable to differentiate the two. Further, whereas Nussbaum seeks to offer an analysis of compassion, one that makes it central and foundational to our moral repertoire, I am only concerned to make room for pity in that repertoire. Again, Nussbaum takes the nature of compassion and the emotions generally to be explained in terms of their cognitive content. The remarks I offer here are amenable but uncommitted to this. Both approaches are generally Aristotelian. However, whereas Nussbaum claims that we won’t feel compassion for another where the damage done is one’s own fault, I have argued that pity can be appropriate in these circumstances (section 3). Again, whereas Nussbaum builds a eudaimonstic judgement into compassion so that one’s compassion for another is linked to one’s eudaimonia, I do not see the necessity of this for pity, particularly with respect to distant others.

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recommendation about language usage, is unproblematic in its way: the expressions we use is not the central matter. What matters is that we be distressed by evils happening to those who do not deserve them, and that we can be unapologetic for being so moved. Still, it would be braver to appreciate that this is to feel pity, and that pity can be appropriate to life’s disasters. Speaking in this way recovers some otherwise lost language and makes the cultural continuity clearer, forcing us to appreciate what is and what is not well placed in such matters.

Moreover, there are formal differences between pity and compassion that deserve to be respected. If so, it becomes important to differentiate the two, and understand ourselves in terms of both emotions, rather than one or the other.

Lawrence Blum makes some interesting proposals for differentiating the two, suggesting that in pitying one holds oneself apart from the person pitied, taking the person suffering as fundamentally different from oneself. 26 Compassion, by contrast, allows for a shared sense of humanity, and acknowledges that the sufferings affecting the person could happen to any one. The root idea of compassion here seems to be that of suffering with another in their misfortune, whereas to pity is to be pained at a distance by another’s undeserved plight. So seen, pity is at home in the theatre, taking a spectator-like stance toward others. It is distant when contrasted to the comparative intimacy of suffering with another. Presumably, it is the comparative intimacy of compassion that leads Blum to speak of a shared sense of humanity, whereas the distance of a spectator-like stance suggests a fundamental difference between the person feeling pity and the person being pitied.

With reservations, Blum’s depictions offer a helpful contrast between the two emotions. Blum’s thoughts on “fundamental differences” and a “shared sense of humanity” must not be overplayed. For if pity requires “fundamental differences” it is that the other is suffering undeserved disaster, something that by virtue of feeling pity for that person is not at the same time the ongoing concern in one’s life.27 Again, while compassion does involve some kind of a sharing with others, it hardly requires or is limited to those that do so through a “shared sense of humanity.” A group of honoured peers, where the honouring is as peers, suffices for compassion.28 Still, these qualms about structure can be put to the side: Blum’s way of thinking about these emotions is valuable.29 The question becomes whether the differences in structure, particularly the

26 Blum 1980, 511-512. 27 Aristotle’s depiction of pity, for example, requires that the disaster pitied be something that the

person feeling pity can anticipate happening to him or herself (or ones close) in the not too distant future. So anticipating seems to help one adequately appreciate the disaster, rather than to suggest that what one is, in part, concerned for is one’s own prospects.

28 A shared sense of humanity as a general ethical concern is not an early or obvious development in moral thought or reality. For example, it does not seem to be prominent in the moral thought of the Ancient Greeks. Still, we need not doubt that compassion for others was felt, plausibly explained in terms of honoured peers of various sorts.

29 I suggest that there are further differences as well – though they do not particularly bear on matters here. Speaking of compassion emphasises a particular kind of benevolent attitude; it speaks more to what a person is, compassionate, centring less upon what one feels. By contrast, pity is more episodic,

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distance and spectator-like stance of pity versus the more intimate sharing of compassion, give reason to think that pity is an inappropriate passion and that compassion is a more appropriate response.

We are better off for both passions, and any inappropriateness properly concerns the occasion upon which or the manner in which we feel these passions. This can be seen most readily in terms of the boundaries of appropriate intimacy. If compassion is a more intimate emotional response, and pity is one that keeps a greater distance between the person feeling pity and the person pitied, then the appropriateness of pity versus compassion has very much to do with the appropriate boundaries between persons, or between persons in given situations. To be sure, to feel pain for the misery of others is passion at a greater distance than suffering with them. However, while intimacy amongst some is appropriate, it will be inappropriate amongst others. Strangers who claim to feel compassion for us in our suffering may be well motivated in their concern. In effect, their compassion attempts to bridge the distance between us, something that in our sorrow we may want or need. However, it may also prove wholly offensive and inappropriate. For by feeling compassion, by feeling with us, others insinuate themselves into our lives, and that may be both unwelcome and inappropriate by impinging upon our privacy, and what we wish to keep to ourselves and to those close to us. From some one wants greater distance, not intimacy. Pity would be more appropriate here, because it respects the distance between persons.30

This is not, however, a general argument for pity over compassion. For in different circumstances, for example amongst intimates, a reaction of pity, because it is more distant, can be offensive – just because it fails to acknowledge or express the intimacy between the persons. Here compassion would be the more appropriate response.

Compassion and pity are appropriate passions.31

and speaks more of feeling badly for another in their suffering. Its pain can be wholly overwhelming and crippling, but it would be unusual to say the same of compassion. In this and other respects compassion seems more able to take action. Again, pity seems to have a broader scope in the sense that one might pity the dead, the environment, whereas compassion for them, if possible, would require special explanation. Again, whereas one plausible understanding of pity concerns undeserved suffering (discussed above), and is most at home when these sufferings are devastating and the persons are helpless, compassion seems targeted at suffering in various guises and degrees, including the human condition generally.

30 A response that yet might be offered speaks to distance, holding that pity “looks down” upon the pitied or is degrading of her or him in some way (See Stocker/Hegeman 1996, 259). As we have seen by imagining the pity of Socrates’ jurors, those who pity may well look down in a degrading fashion. But where this is so, it is nothing inherent in pity itself. Pity, on the conception spoken of here, recognizes and is disturbed by underserved destructive or painful evils. To look down upon the same (in addition) takes the person to be unworthy somehow, perhaps even to deserve their suffering. Here one’s pity is conjoined with a further attitude, one that undercuts pity by seeing the matter as shameful. Looking down, then, is not a feature of pity. Thus, the criticism speaks to a pitying person’s response having gone awry through the presence of a further attitude, rather than a criticism of the moral appropriateness of pity.

31 I should like to thank Richard Bosley, Khadija Coxon, Michael A. Fox, Noa Latham, Mark Migotti, and Béla Szabados, as well as attendees at the Western Canadian Philosophical Association Meetings (Victoria, Canada 2004), at “Emotions, Others and Self” (Turku, Finland 2005), and at the

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