Compassion and Moral Guidance

Chapter 3. Defining Compassion

Chapter three DefiningCompassion We should all agree that each of us is bound to show kindness to his parents and spouse and children, and to other kinsmen in a less degree; and to those who have rendered services to him, and any others whom he may have admitted to his intimacy and called friends; and to neighbors and to fellow-countrymen more than others; and perhaps we may say to those of our own race more than to black or yellow men, and generally to human beings in proportion to their affinity to ourselves. —Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics The epigraph points to several ideas that are fundamental to an understanding of compassion. First, it says we are bound. All of the models of compassion laid out in the previous chapter also suggest a bonding, one that is part and parcel of human existence. Second, it says that the nature of these bonds is dependent upon the social context in which they are situated. That our obligations to others rise commensurately with their relational proximity to us is an intuition common to Confucianism and to Sidgwick. Third, by revealing a conceit largely endemic to Sidgwick’s day—namely, the “our,” which suggests that the practitioners of philosophy (i.e., Sidgwick’s readers) are exclusively white—the passage reveals a failure to take seriously the perspectives of groups outside of the author’s own.1 The final phrase, laden with anthropocentrism, indicates the same failure. But the adoption of foreign perspectives is vitally important to the cultivation and exercise of compassion , as was indicated by the classical Daoist interpretation. It is a means by which sympathy or fellow-feeling is infused with wisdom to become jihi—wise compassion. Sidgwick, of course, is talking about kindness, not compassion, but we can see in his words a concern with much of what was discussed in chapter 2. 88 compassion and moral guidance It is now time to draw upon those ideas to lay down a philosophical account of what compassion is and how it works. Let compassion be defined as an attentiveness to suffering and satisfaction, coupled with the will to bring about the alleviation or cessation of suffering and the continuation and multiplication of satisfaction. Four things must be noted about this definition. First, it is of two parts, or what I shall call the two “moments” of compassion: the moment of attentiveness and the moment of will. This is in keeping with the notion of wise compassion (or alternatively, “compassionate wisdom”; if karunā and prajñā are two sides of the same coin, it does not matter which comes first). It is important to recognize that compassion begins with attentiveness, for this is compassion’s epistemic component. Second, this definition is not an attempt at essentializing compassion. It does not say that compassion is the same thing in all cultures. It only says that compassion has two moments, and that compassion is concerned with alleviating misery and multiplying happiness. Its bipartite nature separates compassion from traits like pity or sympathy, while its concern for satisfaction as well as suffering is necessary for providing moral guidance in all the ways it must (even if this necessary connotation has fallen out of the conversational usage of the word). The previous chapter demonstrated that Confucian compassion, Daoist compassion, and Buddhist compassion are not identical. There is no reason to believe that any of these would be identical to properly construed accounts of Muslim compassion or Jewish compassion. This definition says only that compassion, properly understood, is bipartite and is concerned with overall well-being. Third, although it speaks of suffering and satisfaction—the characteristic concerns of utilitarian ethics—this definition of compassion is not necessarily utilitarian in nature. One of the basic tenets of utilitarianism is that suffering is bad and satisfaction is good, and to maximize the latter while minimizing the former is defined as being morally right. Compassion as it has been defined in this context is also concerned with maximizing satisfaction and minimizing suffering, but it is not implicit in this definition that compassion is good because it maximizes utility or insofar as it does so. On this definition, compassion may be interpreted in purely utilitarian Defining Compassion 89 terms—according to which the maximization of utility is both compassionate and right—but it may also be interpreted otherwise. In other words, it may be that compassion is good...