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Rousseau's Discriminating Defense of Compassion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2007

JONATHAN MARKS
JONATHAN MARKS
Affiliation:
Ursinus College
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Abstract

Political theorists from Martha Nussbaum to Amitai Etzioni appeal to compassion as a basis that liberalism otherwise lacks for refraining from exploiting and even for helping others. However, critics like Clifford Orwin and Richard Boyd have raised this question: is compassion too weak and undiscriminating to rely on in politics? Jean-Jacques Rousseau's account of compassion helps answer it. Rousseau understands compassion as a useful manifestation of the otherwise dangerous desire to extend the self and show signs of power. Consequently, he considers compassion's relative weakness a strength and explains how it can be supplemented and complemented by other, independent motives for serving others, including gratitude, friendship, and obligation. Compassion's weakness also makes it less likely than self-love, narrowly conceived, to overwhelm reason. Rousseau excels compassion's contemporary defenders in his awareness of the complex relationship between compassion and other social passions and of the dangers that his understanding of compassion addresses.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 101 , Issue 4 , November 2007 , pp. 727 - 739
Copyright
© 2007 by the American Political Science Association

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