On Compassion: The Good Beyond Values

• Authors: Heikkerö Topi
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper is a dialogue that considers compassion as a grounding for ethics. Its ap-proach is thematic but it draws significantly from Arthur Schopenhauer’s account of compassion (Mitleid). In Schopenhauer’s thought, values (Werthe) are functions of a subject’s willing and therefore inevitably tied to an ego-centric viewpoint. Real ethics needs to find a good beyond subjective valuations. Schopenhauer finds an ethical phe-nomenon beyond values in Mitleid, “suffering-together,” compassion. Compassion is a pre-reflective benevolent feeling toward another’s suffering. Compassion can occur only if the ego-world duality is overcome at least to some extent. In this way compas-sion is a metaphysical sentiment.

Keywords

EN

Agape; compassion; René Descartes; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Mitleid; Friedrich Nietzsche; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Arthur Schopenhauer; pity; values

• Publisher: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk; Fundacja Filozofia Na Rzecz Dialogu
• Journal: Dialogue and Universalism
• Year: 2017
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 189-201

Contributors

author

Heikkerö Topi

• St. John’s College in Santa Fe, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino de Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM, 87505-4599, New Mexico, USA