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Accordingly, what issues from compassion holds genuine moral worth,
but what proceeds from egoism or malice holds none.
Schopenhauer dislikes the idea that an emotionally generous person
might receive more compassion from neighbors than an emotionally
stingy one. Schopenhauer embraces the force of the thought that if I had
been subjected to a particular misfortune, I would need or at least appreci-
ate the compassion of others. By counteracting selfish and malicious mo-
tives, compassion prevents me from causing another to suffer. Compassion
also works positively by inciting me to help another (OBM, p. 148).
A simplification of Schopenhauer s position is that sympathy is the
only moral motive. Moral value is identified with the motive of sympathy:
to act sympathetically is to act morally and to act without sympathy is to
act neutrally or immorally (OBM, pp. 120 198). Schopenhauer s underly-
ing supposition that sympathy is instinctive has troubled many philoso-
phers. Hobbes for one held that any apparently unselfish sympathy can be
more accurately described as disguised self-interest. Nietzsche later agreed
with him.
Freud shares with Hobbes a deeply negative view of human nature.
With his extreme version of original sin (according to which the abject
corruption of humanity is incurable), Augustine can be said to prefigure
Freud (it is curious that mainstream Judaism, with which Freud identified
culturally, has little to say about original sin). In different ways, Augustine,
Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Freud raised the question of whether we are psy-
chologically capable of being moral. Much contemporary discussion in
economics,23 psychology, and ethics reflects uncertainty over this question.
Economics has affected how philosophers and psychologists think
about emotions. The economic mindset offers a middle way between
cheery and dismal views of human nature. According to this way of think-
Wicked Feelings 99
ing, those who labor are entitled to pay, and those who can pay are enti-
tled to the labor of others. Applied to emotional resources, the logic of
reciprocity justifies both giving to others who have previously given to us
and expecting others to return our gifts. Candace Clark has combined and
refined various articulations of this mindset in an engaging work, Misery
and Company: Sympathy in Everyday Life.24 A person who follows the
etiquette of sympathy by limiting demands for sympathy, repaying so-
cial debts, and so on can expect sympathy from others. A person who
has overdrawn, or failed to replenish sympathy margins (cashed in too
many sympathy credits) may find others refusing to sympathize, especially
if the grounds are not compelling. A person careful not to overdraw his
account may find that others sympathize with him, even when he is to
blame for his plight. Of course, Schopenhauer would discount the whole
idea of a sympathy margin as an instance of egoism.
For Schopenhauer, emotional well-being hinges on social attachment.
He fears the implications of social detachment and theorizes sympathy as
not only a natural but an inevitable human response to suffering. He con-
tends that a person who finds pleasure in the suffering of another must
pay for that pleasure with the pain that accompanies the inevitable
stings or pangs of conscience (WWR, I, pp. 341, 354). Not unlike
catching a cold from someone else, these pangs lead us to participate in
the suffering of others. Schopenhauer thus adds a new twist to the idea
that misery loves company, despite the apparent contradiction between
this commonplace and his idea that evil persons (who are by definition
miserable) are unrepentant in some permanent way.
Sympathy amounts to an infection for Schopenhauer; to him, such an
emotional reaction seems analogous to the movements of flocks of sheep
or football crowds. The contagiousness of a virus or disease certainly
makes sense, but what does it mean to speak of the contagiousness of an
emotion? When I begin to suffer with another over his or her problem, it
is correct to say that we experience the same feeling. Seeing a movie with
other people who are laughing can make us react quite differently from
seeing it with others who are sneering, for example. An interesting feature
of Schopenhauer s view of sympathy rests in its insight that intoxication
by such mass emotions as racial hatred, religious enthusiasm, and raving
depends on an innate susceptibility to infection.
100 When Bad Things Happen to Other People
Schopenhauer sees suffering as something that should be shared, in part
because he assigns moral value to sympathy. Whether this moral value is
unconditional, however, is questionable. Max Scheler argues in The Nature
of Sympathy that fellow feeling cannot be a fundamental moral value.
He maintains that the ethics of sympathy does not attribute moral value
primarily to the being and attitude of persons as such, but seeks to derive
moral value from the attitude of the spectator and in so doing invariably
presupposes what it is trying to deduce because the sharing of another s
pleasure can only be moral when the latter is itself moral, and warranted
by the context which evokes it. Just as some pleasure is not in itself moral,
so some sympathy may not qualify as moral. Scheler calls our attention to
the appropriateness of sharing others suffering. Maybe it s sometimes
moral not to sympathize with others when bad things befall them.
The Appropriateness of Sympathy
Withholding sympathy differs from celebrating misfortune. Why would
we withhold sympathy? Can sympathy ever be inappropriate? Just as it is
sometimes fitting to offer sympathy, in some contexts it is appropriate to
withhold or restrict it.
Sympathy and pity have mistakenly been equated. Both emotions de-
pend on an unpleasant sharing of the pain or suffering of another person.
Pity involves three separate beliefs: first, that the suffering in question is
significant (Aristotle offers as examples loss of friends, loss of city, loss of
opportunities, sickness, old age, and childlessness); second, that the person
does not deserve his or her suffering; and third, the belief that such suffer-
ing could happen to oneself. Some thinkers object to the inclusion of this
third belief on the menu of pity, and have argued that pity requires a dis-
tance between pitier and pitied that is foreign to compassion. They argue
that pity arises instead from perceived inequality between persons, from a
belief that the suffering of another simply could not befall them because of
their character or conduct (or both). This objection carries some weight,
for although we usually welcome compassion, we rarely appreciate pity.
That pity is rarely welcomed by those to whom it is directed means
that it differs from other emotions closely associated with virtue, such as
gratitude or compassion. The prospect of becoming an object of pity is
Wicked Feelings 101
alarming in part because we suspect that being on the receiving end of
that emotion could make matters worse. We consequently regard an aver-
sion to being pitied as morally commendable. That the same cannot be
said of sympathy means that pity is more likely to be judged inappropriate
than is sympathy.
Pity, which Schopenhauer problematically treats as sympathy, emerges
as the opposite of Schadenfreude, for in such a state we not only lament
the suffering we witness in another, we actively participate in it. The fact
that Schopenhauer considers pity a virtue indicates further opposition to
Schadenfreude as well as a point of intersection with a central feature of
Christian morality. Though his thought is atheistic, he borrows certain el-
ements from Indian and Christian sources in such a way as to provide
grist for the mill of those who would portray Schopenhauer as a noble,
quasi-Christian moralist (this is not my aim). He says, for example:
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