Compassion is a sentiment by which an individual feels emotionally the suffering of others and tries to alleviate pain. In the fifth century BC the sophist Gorgias used the ‘word’ as a tool of persuasion which derives, not from a Socratic dialogue, but from a skillful motion of feelings. The ‘word’ does not serve to know or to arrange moral action, but it is a persuasive art used for the purpose of establishing a political power for sharing passions in the listener that makes him believe in the poetic deception of the orator. He, says Gorgias, is "better" than those who do not deceive, because the orator is able to create an "aesthetic truth", and "it is wiser who is deceived than those who are not," because through compassion he participates emotionally in this intense truth.
The rejection - instead - of compassion as a political tool is typical of stoicism which breaks down the old political tradition of the Greek world that appealed to this feeling to cure the ills of mankind. Yet the interest for politics originated in the Stoics because of their cosmopolitan dimension, which springs from that very feeling of compassion and participation in world events of ‘sympatheia’, that is of the intimate connection between the human sphere and that of the 'Cosmic Soul’: they are subjects of a universal homeland; there is no event that does not affect and involve them.
It is true that through the feeling of compassion we would be aware of the suffering, for example of a slave, giving birth to our desire to free him but compassion attaches importance to external circumstances as if human dignity is not viable ... Wisdom is what is enough to make men free. (See the works by Martha Craven Nussbaum, for example “Plato's Republic : the good society and the deformation of desire).
How compassion gives strength to the philosophical message is clear in the poetry of Lucretius, the Roman poet and philosopher who - with poetic art - makes the Epicurean thought penetrate not only into the mind but also into the hearts of men. All the poetry of Lucretius is inspired by the consideration of a cosmic pain that led him to sympathize especially with the fate of the unwise man, who lacking the truth revealed by Epicurus, drags a useless and absurd life in trouble and boredom to get lost into ‘nothing’.
The importance of compassion in the formation of morality has been the subject of analysis of the philosophers of the eighteenth century that can generally be identified into two currents: a first one that bases moral judgment on reason and a second one that researches into the origins and passions of human feelings. The debate is also about the innate presence of moral sense, or its assimilation after birth as a cultural element.
The rejection of any feeling of compassion in the moral sphere distinguishes the Kantian ethics. Kant himself tells us that for some time he was attracted by the moral principles of the British sentimentalists that then he left unsatisfied because their method of inquiry was reduced to a simple psychological analysis and because their excessive optimism did prevent what for him was the essential element of morality: compulsion.
Moreover, it is affirmed the independence of the moral act from science and its irreducibility to the feeling that will never be confused with morality. The feeling of compassion is something impulsive, weak, erratic on which morality cannot rely.
Compassion has long had a problematic standing in the study of emotion. It has been most typically ignored in emotion taxonomies, and when considered, treated as empathic distress, or as sub type or blend of sadness and love. Compassion is to arise out of distinct appraisal processes, to have distinct display behaviors, distinct experiences, and an approach-related physiological response. The state like experience of compassion, and the trait like tendency to feel compassion, fall under the purview of three evolutionary arguments: that compassion evolved as part of a care giving response to vulnerable offspring, that compassionate individuals were preferred in mate selection processes, and that compassion emerged as a desirable trait in cooperative relations between non-kin.
In short, Yes.
Wisdom does not change the actions of the past it only broadens the possibility of a more dignified outcome in the future.
We as a society have done a reprehensible job of helping one another. here is an example of what I mean. In the USA we through away enough food every day to feed the parts of the word that are starving to death. Here we also use 30% of the worlds natural resources yet we are only 5% of the population.
With the wisdom and dignity that we should have, no one should ever go hungry. Wisdom should show us how in the past treating people like slaves, or servants, or as if we are better than them in some way has only lead to unrest, violence, mistrust, and war. The Human condition has not helped us understand that we are all parts of one society. The wisdom of the past has not been given to the future generations and therefore we end up in this never ending loop of relearning what it took our parents a live time to learn and not pass it along to the next generation.
Wisdom is only wisdom if it is used by the next generation. I am a fan of history and I study it a lot in my science. I find many unanswered questions in history. The one that bugs me the most is why we did not learn from the past what not to do...
..'
maybe bugs you George but not me and the answer is:
Because we are all emotion-driven entities.
Wisdom and compassion is a well treated subject in Eastern philosophies Chinese .mainly.
Only when we live
in harmony with the Tao
will harmony come.
There is no other way.
Only when compassion and wisdom
flow in abundance
from emptiness and silence
will cruelty fail
and mercy prevail.
(The Tao is Tao, 42)
Dear Constantine, I have appreciated and thank you for your inspired comments. If I may, I’d add the following reflection: Compassion appears as an instructive tool in the educational project of Rousseau: to develop adolescent moral formation must make him feel experiences that arouse in him compassion, the ability to share the suffering of others.
This theory shared by David Hume, according to whom all our rational and moral activities have a common origin in the sentimental attitudes.
"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of passions, and can not claim in any case a different function than to serve and obey them."
Best regards, Gianrocco
Dear Gianrocco
To my opinion to be able to share the distress (compassion) of others is a cognitive faculty of consciousness
have a nice day Professor
As I want to see in your introduction Mr Tucci, co-passion can be “a … power for sharing passions with (in) the listener” or may be an “intimate connection” between general-humans and general-souls. A question ¿you only share pain and suffering? and/or ¿also pleasure and satis-factions (being plenty-of-facts)? If the second happens the formation of morality cannot depart exclusively from compassion of suffering.
What about the two currents: Without feelings based on reasoning, with feelings between pain and pleasure.(hybris?) One should ask ¿reasoning is the pleasure of reasoning (sophrosyne?)? When "strong" reasons are shared, that results in currents or schools of thought. When opposed, feelings appear, an opposed current emerge; again based on the pleasure of reasoning. One could say that kanthian ethics is compulsion of (for) reasoning, with magnificent feelings like “the stars over my head and the law in my heart”. Final thought ¿Can compassion be co-passion of joy?
Hubris, Ate, and Nemesis are three minor Greek deities, mostly remembered today for their function in ancient Greek drama. Hubris symbolizes arrogance, and deviation from virtue. Ate refers to an act of folly, a direct consequence of hubris, which provokes the wrath of gods and precipitates their intervention. Nemesis is the retribution of divine justice,painful, but necessary to restore world balance and order.
Sophrosyne is a rare combination of cognition and emotions to be "Sophron"one must be able to stand over some intereacting and conflicting situations
Compassion is already said is an emotion it emerges as a state of mind and cannot be split into two constituents "joy and some-thing else"
Thanks, but I would ask "... already said..." by whom? ¿Definite said by Hubris, Ate, Nemesis or someone else? ¿May be Sophron?
By virtue of this conversation..
Sophrosyne is a moon of Cognition
Dear Roberto and Constantine,
thank you for your contributions. Now, from: The Four Sublime States: Contemplations on Love, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity, by Nyanaponika Thera I quote the following passage: "Compassion prevents love and sympathetic joy from turning into states of self-satisfied complacency within a jealously-guarded petty happiness. Compassion stirs and urges love to widen its sphere; it stirs and urges sympathetic joy to search for fresh nourishment. Thus it helps both of them to grow into truly boundless states (appamañña)".
Best regards, Gianrocco.
Respetados Gianrocco y Constantine, gracias!!
I agree, and I believe that love is composed and is a balance of the joy of the feelings between one (me) and the other; my self esteem and to the other, and vice versa. Perhaps, the same as compassion, what stirs and prevents.
And of course I agree the sunsets at Ios should be as beautiful as the sunrises in Los Llanos Orientales!!!
And, thanks for “the nice treatment of the themes”!!!!
Roberto
Interesting question(s)!
Intuitively I would say that all depends how we use our wisdom and our feelings. So, perhaps, it would be more productive to focus on algorithms of behavior instead of the reasons for these behaviors. I would think (intuitively) that kindness is a behavioral factor that could make all living things free. Of course being kind to others may involve wisdom and feelings but in a somewhat outcome-controlled manner. We just want to be maximally kind to others on the case by case basis.
I realize paradoxes are possible if we would be kind to those who have different goals in mind; So kindness would need to be widespread universal behavioral rule; just like some of us teach our children to behave.
On what is Compassion. or Wisdom in Human relations
Compassion is that mysterious capacity within each of us that makes it possible for suffering that is neither our own nor of our concern, to affect us as though it were. It is that instinctive and selfless insight that reveals to us the existence of our own true being in every living creature.
Compassion is the tie that binds every human being to each other and to the mystery of creation. It is the common thread of all religions, meditations, and community structures. Compassion does not acknowledge the artificial social, economic, and religious barriers we place between ourselves and others. It acknowledges the common cry of human longings, aspirations, and tragedies. When a reflex reaction causes us to help a stranger, with no motivation other than that person is in need, or maybe in peril of his life, our compassion is in action.
@Constantine
These (or those) of us who are exposed to compassion of others often feel disrespected and insulted. They will not be compassionate back. Personal dignity and social stereotypes make compassion a tool of division, not integration. Kindness, with or without emotions, would eliminate superiority of givers of compassion over the takers. They would just exercise kindness to each other, including respect for each other personal dignity as well as respect for each other wisdom or lack thereof.
When we watch a boxing match and that we identify with one of the two boxers. We very often boxe like that boxer with our arms in front of the TV. When that boxer receives puches we almost feel them etc... Our perception of the TV screen which is auditive and visual is also a body simulation and emotions simulation and not restricted to the auditive and the visual. We partially re-enact the boxer experience with all our body and our emotions. Perception is mammal is not a purely sense data analysis but is a total embodied re-enactment of an experience from the sense data clues. The transition from our primate ancestor to the homo sapiens is a transition from a situation where body re-enactment is subserving learning and perception and totally out of conscious control to a situation where some personal and social control of body re-enactment. All the basic mammalian re-enactment capacities thus became a basis for the re-enactment of narrative totally independly of the current sense data. This capacity is obvious when we experience pareidolia. The re-enactment of narrative is a generic capacity to self-enact all kind of narrative whose all characters are re-enact by our own mammalian re-enactment capacity. Empaty is this fundamental human self-control capacity to re-enact all characters, those there , those imagine and even natural process which are anthropomophically re-enacted. We can only exercice this capacity when we open ourself and love. Killing others is primary blocking and killing what make us human.
Compassion is given or should be given without seeking for reward for its an emotion it is a mark of dignity and respect towards nature and more precisely toward Ethics regarding humans and most living creatures on earth
Dear Andrzej,
from the ethical side the recognition of mutual human value ensures that communication takes different meanings of friendship, kindness, cooperation that is for the good in view of the spiritual progress of each other.
Best regards, Gianrocco
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