boyd, richard - pity's pathologies portrayed

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Political Theory

http://ptx.sagepub.com/content/32/4/519Theonline version of this article can be foundat:

DOI: 10.1177/0090591703258118

2004 32: 519Political TheoryRichard Boyd

Pity's Pathologies Portrayed : Rousseau and the Limits of Democratic Compassion

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by affluence, technology, and a highly refined social conscience? Liberal

democracy rightly puts cruelty first, in the words of Judith Shklar, when it

sides with compassion against a pitiless disregard for humanity.1

And yet, ironically, this idea that democracy equals compassion has been

advanced more often by democracys critics than by its defenders. In the

midst of his criticisms, Alexis de Tocqueville admitted that

in democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general

compassion for all the human race. One never sees them inflict pointless suffering, and

they aregladto relievethe sorrows ofothers when they cando so without much troubleto

themselves.2

Treating this general compassion as a vice, rather than a redeeming virtue

of moderndemocracy, FriedrichNietzschediagnosedpity as a kind of demo-cratic sickness or nausea.3 Carl Schmitt similarly complained that the

excessive humanity of modern democracies sapped them of the will to

uphold the friend-and-enemy distinction even to the point of obliterating

the concept of the political altogether.4

Notwithstanding these and othernoteworthy criticisms of democracies as

indiscriminately compassionate,paralyzed by their sensitivity to the pointof

being kind when they should be cruel, and consequently cruel when they

should be kind, remarkably few contemporary democratic theorists have

actually appealed to compassion.5 As Nancy Hirschmann has observed, the

concept of sympathy is not a major player in the world of political theory,

which is generallymore concernedwith justice, freedom or rights.6 Influen-

tial democratic theorists like Jrgen Habermas, Amy Gutmann and Dennis

Thompson,andBenjaminBarber saylittle about theplaceof compassion inademocracy, and indeed seem suspicious of the role of affect or emotion in

political life more generally.7 Among the few who explicitly make compas-

sion central to democratic theory and practice are feminist theorists like

Carol Gilligan or Joan Tronto who envision an ethic of care as an alterna-

tive to an overly rationalistic emphasis on legalism or justice.8 And certain

communitarian critics of liberalism seem to call for a more compassionate

society, if onlyby implication,when theyfault the liberal individuals alleged

indifference to fellow citizens and lack of deeper emotional commitments to

public life.9

This disconnect between our intuitive sense that democracies are, or at

least ought to be, distinguished by their compassion and theapparent neglect

of compassion by democratic theorists proper brings to mind the case of Jean-

Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau is widely hailed for his commitments to both

compassionandpolitical democracy.10 However, like so many other para-

doxes of Rousseaus political theory, we should be wary of assuming that

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these twovalues areeasilycombined with oneanother. His ambivalent treat-

ment of compassion serves as a starting point for this articles twomain lines

of analysis.Thefirst is todraw attentionto theproblematic, indeedpathologi-

cal status of pity in Rousseaus system. This essay challenges the dominant

scholarlyviewthat pity isa pleasurable sentimentthat inclinesus to theaid of

our fellow man; instead, insofar as pity collapses back into self-preservation,

it leads just as easily to aversion and avoidance. Rather than a pathway to the

rediscoveryof our natural wholeness, pity serves as a dispiriting reminder of

the profounddependency of thehuman condition.11 These ambivalent aspects

of pity make it, in Rousseaus view, unsuitable for grounding the democratic

political theory he develops in theSocial Contract(SC).

The second and broader claim is that, following Rousseaus lead, we too

should be cautious about trying to incorporate compassion more formallyinto contemporarydemocratic theory. If we think of liberal democracy notso

much as a set of political institutions circumscribed by the limits of human

sympathy, but rather, following George Kateb, as premised on an implicit

recognition of moral equality, and in terms of the valorization of will and

individual agency, as Richard Flathman has suggested, then Rousseaus idea

of compassion comes up short on both counts.12 Although it is founded on the

apprehension of the identity of our natures as fellow-creatures (semblables),

even in Rousseaus account pity is inevitably bound up with relational differ-

ences that are thevery antithesis of natural equality. Trying to make compas-

sion central to democratic theory reifies the very distinctions it aims to over-

come,inviting whatWilliam Connollydescribesas thedialecticalproblem of

identity/differencewhereby anyvirtue creates a categoryof otherness or

difference in those who do not possess it.13 Rousseaus treatment of com-passion also deepens the tension between human beings as actorsin the

dual sense of playing a role and of agents engaging in conductand those

who passively experience the emotion of pity only as reluctant spectators.

In all these respects, Rousseaus treatment of pity underscores the moral

discrepancies between compassionconjured up by the sentiments of the

heartand liberal democratic demands for equal treatment and willful

agency.

II. THE NATURAL GROUNDING OF PITY

In the Second Discourse (SD), Rousseau distinguishes two faculties

anterior to reason that arepresent in natural man: self-preservation (amourde soi)andpity(piti), thelatter of whichinspiresin us a natural repugnance

to see any sensitive being suffer, principally our fellow-men (SD, p. 95).14

Boyd / ROUSSEAU AND THE LIMITS OF DEMOCRATIC COMPASSION 521



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These faculties are presocial; they entail no necessity of introducing that

[faculty] of sociability. Important for Rousseaus broader argument is the

fact that these faculties are negative, in the sense that they are insufficient to

incline us toward the society of others. Although they presumably imply

duties toward other sensitive beings, including animals, the sum total of

these issimplyto refrain fromharming or mistreating another(SD,p.96).

This inner impulse of commiseration is dictatedby ourcommonsensi-

tivity, rather than by the belated lessons of reason. We share this sensitivity

with animals, which entitles them to be brought within the province of natu-

ral right.Nonetheless, beingdevoid of intellectand freedom, they [animals]

cannotrecognize this law (SD, p. 96). What begins asan otherwiseflattering

contrast between menand beastsgives wayto a deeperproblem: foralthough

all individuals possess this immanent sensitivity inclining them toward com-passion, they, like beasts, may be incapable of attending to its dictates until

they possess those perfected faculties of intellect and freedom that Rous-

seau denies natural man. In this rendering, pity and compassion toward oth-

erscan bear fruitonly once theprocess of human developmenthas begun.We

mustfirst acquire themoral liberty, self-consciousness, imagination, and rea-

son Rousseau grudgingly acknowledges as necessary for us to rise above the

level of a stupid, limited animal and to become an intelligent being and a

man (SC, I, viii, p. 57).

Being able to accessournatural sensitivitypresumes that we have already

becomemoralbeings, possessing souls, free will, moral agency, andpresum-

ably also some elementary faculty of reason (SD, p. 114). In order to feel

compassion we must already have become moral agents. Yet as we discover

later inRousseaus treatment, it is this very process of developmentitself,andespecially our acquisition of a highly cultivated faculty of abstract ratiocina-

tion, that renders us incapable of any longer attending to this sensible voice

within our nature. With reason come vanity, self-consciousness, and cruelty

(SD, Note O, p. 222). Rousseaus treatment leads us almost immediately to

doubt that modern society and its accomplishments will in any way allow us

to make good on that faculty of pity for other sensible beings.

Rousseauobserves,albeitin theform of a conditional objection, that com-

miseration isobscureandstrong insavageman, developed but feeblein civil

man (SD, p. 132). At least the modern condition allows the potential for, if

not the likelihood of, this more developed social conscience. But under

what conditions might this otherwise feeble voice of pity become accessi-

ble to us? As we see in both the Second Discourse andEmile (E), whether or

not we heed this voice of sympathy hinges on our ability to recognize andidentify with another. Pity hinges on the problem of recognition or what

Rousseau himself calls identification (SD, p. 132). Yet thedifficultyof rec-




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ognizing something of ones self in another is exacerbated by the growing

inequalities of civil society. Because commiseration will be all the more

energetic as theobserving animalidentifieshimself more intimately with the

suffering animal, it follows that this identification must have been infi-

nitely closer in the state of nature than in the state of reasoning (SD, p. 132).

Natural sensitivity and other common features of natural equality are over-

whelmed by manifold conventional differences, to the point where individu-

als are so different from one another that they can scarcely recognize any

common humanity beneath the layers of acculturation. This is a lamentable

consequence of thegrowth of reason, which engenders vanity andturns

man back upon himself, preventing him from identifying himself with the

man who is being assassinated (SD, p. 132).

Butif reasonbearssome responsibility forrobbing us of themore elemen-talability to identify with another by apprehending thenatural sensibility we

all share, it also supplies us with the surrogate faculty of imagination. As

Rousseau distinguishes, Imagination, which causes so much havoc among

us, does not speak to savage hearts (SD, p. 135). Only once we have gone

some distance along the philosophical anthropology of mankind can we

identifywith another by imaginingourselves inhisposition, soas tocommis-

erate with his pain or rejoice in his happiness. Although the details of this

identification are blurry, Rousseau does suggest an important difference

between theobscure andstrong sentiment of natural pity and that compas-

sion that is developed but feeble in civilized man.15

Presumably, the natural pity of the state of nature depended only on our

ability to hear its gentle voice wholly within ourselves (SD, p. 133). How-

ever, what Rousseau describes as compassion is no longer a sentiment con-tingent on our natural wholeness and self-sufficiency, requiring neither wis-

dom nor self-knowledge. Instead, it is a force that, moderating in each

individual the activity of love of ones self, demands that we look outward

and consciously attempt to see the world through the eyes of another ( SD,

p. 133). Imagination apparently moderates the influence or activity of

self-love neither by conquering or repressing it, nor by restoring our natural

wholeness, aswemight imagine, but bydrawing us further outof ourselves:

To become sensitive and pitying,the childmust know that there are beings like him who

suffer what he has suffered, who feel the pains he has felt . . . how do we let ourselves be

moved by pity if not by transporting ourselves outside of ourselves and identifying with

thesufferinganimal, byleaving. . . ourown beingto take onhisbeing. (E, IV, pp.222-23)

Unlike the natural wholeness and self-sufficiency that Rousseau else-

where recommends as uniquely commensurate to the natural goodness of




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insists that the compassionate presumably acquire something even more

valuable. For thevery possibilityof tasting thesweetest human sentiments

requires that some should suffer in order for others to experience happiness:

Pity is sweet because, in putting ourselves in the place of the one who suf-

fers, we nevertheless feel the pleasure of not suffering as he does (E, IV,

p. 221).

Maybe thebest evidence of this voyeuristic, pleasurable aspect of com-

passion is Rousseaus stipulation that the sad spectacle of human suffering

ought to be used, but not overused, as an object lesson in Emiles education,

lest he become callous by an early overexposure to human misery. Rousseau

raises as a possibility, and then summarily dismisses, the life of a Mother

Theresa, who rushes from hospital to hospital and from sickroom to sick-

room, as too likely to obscure human sentimentality: The object is not tomake your pupil a male nurse or a brother of charity, not to afflict his sight

with constant objects of pain and suffering. . . . He must be touched and not

hardened by thesightof human miseries (E, IV, p. 231). This isagain tosug-

gest that human suffering should be attended to not so much out of a desire to

relieve those who suffer but instead for the development of Emiles charac-

ter.20 Describing human suffering as an object, sight, scene, impres-

sion, picture, or spectaclerevealsit tobe,likenature, anobjectto bepor-

trayed, instrumentalized, and manipulated in the interest of human conve-

nience (E, IV, pp. 222, 226, 227, 230-32). Suffering is neither simply

inevitable nor lamentable. It exists for the sake of sensitive spectators like

Emile to develop their highest human faculties.21

In fairness,Rousseau does appear to be genuinelymoved by thecondition

of sufferinghumanity. That he shouldbe so intentto definecrueltyas thepre-eminent human vice testifies to his sentimentality and humanism. But in the

end, human suffering becomes a kind of spectacle to be controlled,

showcased, and manipulated for the edification of the few. Let him see, let

him feel the human calamities, Rousseau admonishes (E, IV, p. 224). Like

the syphillitics whose suffering becomes an object lesson for the prodigal

son, sufferinghumanity exists for thesake of Emiles educationandeventual

happiness, and not vice versa (E, IV, p. 231). All this seems bad enough. But

Rousseau goes further still: whatever limited prospects we retain for human

happiness can be attainedonly when, after immersing ones self in anothers

misery, we return to our selves and experience sublime pleasure in the real-

ization that we do not share the others misfortunes. Only this voyeuristic

thrill can possibly make us happy with our lot. The resultant sweet sensa-

tion of pleasure, according to Rousseau, is the negative, paradoxical versionof that frail happiness that consists only in the absence of suffering (E, IV,




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p. 221;SD, p. 132). Yet its very sweetness appears to be parasitical on the

suffering of another, just as the contentment and status of the master rests on

the subordination of the slave.

Tragically, Emile can find the key to happiness only in viewing (but not

actingupon) the sufferings of others. In part, this is theunfortunate corollary

to Rousseaus pessimism: livingin civil society ensures thatwe cannot regard

the good fortune of others without falling prey to the vices of vanity, envy,

and jealousy (E, IV, pp. 228-30). Seeing another happy appeals to the lowest

forms of our imagination. Yet the perversity of Rousseaus alternative is that

while denying the vicarious pleasures of the friend or lover, who experience

pleasure by partaking in the happiness of others, Rousseaus compassionate

soul becomes a kind of moral voyeur. After imagininghimself in theplace of

suffering humanity he achieves the heady rush of sweet relational happi-ness that comes upon returning to his own superior condition.

IV. PITY AND PERFORMANCE:

COMPASSION AND THE RELUCTANT SPECTATOR

Rousseau repeatedly emphasizes the visual aspects of suffering humanity

the salutary effects of witnessing it, if notof actingupon it.One must, he

notes, have seen corpses to feel the agonies of the dying (E, IV, p. 226). At

first glance, the theater promises an alternative to this view of human suffer-

ing as a slaughter bench of history whose ultimate goal is to foster perfection

and happiness in the sentimental few. In the theater, at the very least, the

object lesson of human suffering may stoke the fires of human imaginationwithout requiring real persons to suffer: itis there that they go to forget their

friends, neighbors and relations in order to concern themselves with fables in

order to cry for the misfortunes of the dead, or to laugh at the expense of the

living (Politics and theArts: Letterto M. DAlembert on theTheatre [LDT],

p. 17).

But this quote is also suggestive of how the theater may function as an

escape fromeverydaymoralobligations.Rather thanprotecting an otherwise

virtuous society from the corrupting influence of the arts, as Rousseau is

often read, his criticism of the theater may also be taken as a further indict-

ment of the lack of compassion in bourgeois society.22 In bourgeois society,

after all, we are all actors and spectators.23 From the elementary songs and

dances in the Second Discourse that give rise to vanity andaffectationwe are

soon confronted by a world where tobe and to seem to be became two alto-gether different things (SD, pp. 149, 155). Living mediated lives in bour-

geois society means that oursense of self comes only through theeyes of oth-




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ers. We are constantly engaged in performance and dissimulation. As a

microcosm of this imaginary world of performance, the theater epitomizes

this alien,bourgeoisconditionof seemingrather than being. Thetheater,

in the words of David Marshall, teaches people how to become spectators,

how to act like spectators.24

Despite theseapparentcontinuities between theworldof spectacleand the

politics of the ordinary, the force of Rousseaus criticism rests on stressing

the discrepancy between our moral position as spectators and our status as

political actors in everyday life. Rousseau disparages the false sensitivity of

average theatergoers whoaremoved by pity for those whosufferat thehands

of a fictional tyrant while they themselves would aggravate hisenemys tor-

ments even more if allowed for even a moment to take the tyrants place.

Like bloodthirsty Sulla, so sensitive to evils he had not caused (and hencepresumably indifferent to those he has?) they aremoved by a love of human-

ityin theabstractthat they areincapable of conjuringup in theparticular (SD,

p. 131).

Rousseaus examples of the tyrants Sulla and Alexander of Pherae sug-

gest, optimistically, that even the hardest of heartsliteral tyrantscan still

be moved by human suffering. And yet the very extremity of Rousseaus

examples goes to suggest an even more damning criticism of the quotidian.

Thefact that wesoeasily cryat this imaginaryspectacle implies a criticismof

the sentimentality of modern civilization, where the cultivation of the fine

arts takes the place of the more authentic natural sentiments of pity or com-

passion. In our everyday conduct we are untroubled by our own propensity

for cruelty. This gross disparity between the love of humanity in the abstract

and callousness toward real particular beings in the here-and-now is hardlyconfined to the likes of Sulla and Alexander of Pherae. Modern compassion

mayprove, as Rousseau suggestedit would, simultaneously developed but

feeble. As moral spectators we unavoidably feel pity when we witness suf-

fering, but in everyday life we are unlikely to act upon these feelings.25

Even if we ignore Rousseaus complaints about these sentiments as

effeminate or corrosive of civic virtue, this sentimentalism invites problems

on itsownterms.26 No doubt theeasewith which we identifywith thetortured

character, and readily imagine ourselves in her place, is due in part to the

romance of the theater. When performed in the theater the suffering of

humanity becomes dramatic, romantic, andsympathetic.By wayof contrast,

Rousseau himself admits that the suffering of the mass of humanity is ugly

(E, IV, p. 225). One danger of blurring the line between theperformative and

personal dimensions of suffering is that misery comes to be seen as the stuffof fiction.Sufferinghumanitybecomes an abstract, imaginarycategoryiden-

tified with charismatic actors rather than the particular individuals we know




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in everyday life. Insofar as the suffering of real human beings is never so

glamorous, noble, or epic as its romanticized theatrical counterpart, we may

become less able than ever to sympathize with it. The continual emotion

which is felt in thetheatreexcites us,enervates us,enfeeblesus, andmakes us

less able to resist our passions. And the sterile interest taken in virtue serves

only to satisfy our vanity without obliging us topractice it (LDT, p.57). The

pathologies of this kind of escapism are easy to anticipate. In everyday life

we areactors in the sense that we pretend and dissimulate,but merelypas-

sive spectators when the practice of compassion is actually called for. We

lack agency and will. Worse still: like those animals that are reluctant to pass

near a dead member of their species, real suffering yields a kind of aversion.

We may flock to the theaters to viewthe heady rush of human suffering, trag-

edy, and commiseration, but in our own lives, like Rousseaus animals, weavert our eyes and cross to the other side of the street. Leaving the theater we

ignore the homeless outside the door.

V. PITY AS AVERSION AND AVOIDANCE

Rousseaus point hingeson themoralcontradictionbetween ourdelight in

witnessing sufferingin the theater andour revulsion when confronted by it in

reality. And yet this dissonance itself presupposes two mutually exclusive

accounts of the moral psychology of pity. There is on the one hand Rous-

seaus description of compassion as being thesweetestof sentiments.27 We

feel an undeniable, vicarious pleasure in imaginingour self in theposition of

another who suffers and then returning to our own more enviable position.Andyetthisnotionof compassion as being a pleasurable sensationone that

persons mightselfishly seek outstands in stark contrast with theaccount of

pity to which we have just alluded. Pity, in this other view, is among the most

unpleasant of sentiments insofar as it reminds us that we, too, might sufferor

even perish. Theissue is notwhether we aremore or less capable of attending

to the natural voice of compassion in modern society; rather, it is the sub-

stance of what those sentiments suggest to us that may prove most troubling

of all.28

Rousseau beginshis discussion of natural pity on a curious note by setting

aside oneof themost conspicuous examplesof sympathy, Withoutspeaking

of thetenderness of mothers for their young, andof theperils they must brave

in order to guard them, only to posit the more ambiguous example of the

aversive behavior of feral animals (SD, p. 130). Could his implicit rejectionof the analogy between pity and maternal affection be because to label this

sentiment pity would ask too much of pity, suggesting the very fact that




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Rousseau aims to deny, namely, the existence of some kind of natural socia-

bility? Or because, in what becomes Rousseaus ironically Hobbesianworld-

view, the care a mother lavishes upon her child is not in fact an act of natural

sympathy at all, but simply thebiological necessityof dispensing milk belat-

edly sentimentalized out of habit or convenience (SD, p. 121, cf. pp. 108-9,

142, 146-48, 191-92n.)?29

Rousseaus subsequent observations about the daily repugnance of

horsesto trample a living body underfoot or theuneasiness of ananimalto

pass near a dead animal of its specieshardly yield a society of simple souls

eagerly rushing to theaidof others. Instead they aresuggestive of themecha-

nisms of aversionor avoidance (SD, p. 130). Connecting pity with the lowing

of animals in the presence of death does more than just highlight the prob-

lems of a modern society where pity has been lost or corrupted. The deeperand more troubling suggestion is that aversion and avoidance may be rooted

in the elemental sentiment of pity itself:

[Emile] willbeginto havegut reactionsat the soundsof complaints andcries, the sightof

bloodflowing will make himavert hiseyes;the convulsions of a dyinganimal will cause

him an ineffable distress before he knows whence come these new movements within

him. (E, IV, p. 222)

This uneasiness when confronted by signs of our own vulnerability is

enough to make us want to shun the suffering altogether. Rousseaus exam-

ples of feral animals and the lowing of cattle entering the stockyards stress

that pity has less to do with a compassionate concern for thewelfare of others

than with the even more elemental sentiment of self-preservation.30 Rather

than pity successfully moderating or regulating the activity of our self-

love, as Rousseau suggests, his examples reinforce the notion that pity only

collapses back into this most elemental Hobbesian faculty of self-preserva-

tion. Moderating the activity of our self-regard is different from extin-

guishing thatself-regard altogether. Whatever pity theseanimals feel is not

for other dead or injured animals, but stems from therecognition of a similar,

and indeed inevitable, mortality in themselves (E, IV, pp. 226-27).31 As

Derrida notes,

We neither cannor shouldfeelthe pain ofothers immediatelyand absolutely, forsuchan

interiorization or identification would be dangerous and destructive. That is why the

imagination, the reflection, and the judgment that arouse pity also limit its power and

hold the suffering of the other at a certain distance.32

Looking more closely at Rousseaus invocation of pity explodes the care-

ful theoretical distance he seeks to maintain between solicitude for others, or




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pity, and self-regard,or amour de soi.33 Incapableof imaginingor fearing

death in theabstract, animals cannonethelesssensetheirmortalitywhen con-

fronted by its immediatepresence (SD, p. 130). Natural man would retreat in

fear at the least prospect of suffering harm rather than risk the dangers of

communingwith other sensiblebeings(SD, pp. 107,129). Far froma primor-

dial dose of natural sociability, theemotion of pity makes Rousseaus natural

beings less inclined toward society than even Hobbess emphasis on mans

desirefor fameandrecognition,which may, after all, prove thestrongest psy-

chological impetus of all for individuals to seek the company of others and

departthe Hobbesianstateof nature.34 Ironically, then, itis by makinghis nat-

ural psychology more purely Hobbesian even than Hobbes that Rousseau

differentiates his natural condition from a state of war.35

Similarly, although pity will dissuade every robust savage from robbinga weak child or an infirmold manof hishard-earnedsubsistence, this is only

if or so long as, he himself hopes to be able to find his own elsewhere

(SD, p. 133). This statement is proscriptive or negative (notice: this is not the

same as the positive disposition which carries us without reflection to the

aid of those we see suffering) as well as conditional. Whatever small mea-

sure of self-restraint is imposed by pity (Do what is good for you with as lit-

tleharm as possible to others) remains hostage to conditions of scarcity and

to subjective judgments about the dangers of this forbearance to ones own

self-preservation.Andyetby depriving natural manof thefacultiesof reason

and judgment that Hobbes and Locke allowed him, Rousseau seems to call

into question just howsubstantialare thekindsof mercythat pity might yield.

Ultimately, pity does not so much moderate self-love as deepen and rein-

force thenatural self-regardthat leads us toavoiddanger,pain,or sufferinginourselves and in others.36 So the very same pity Rousseau depends upon to

dissuade natural man from unnecessarily harming another also discourages

him from willfully intervening on behalf of another suffering being.

This permeable line between natural sensitivity and self-regard is further

blurred in Rousseaus example of the prisoner-spectator. Does Mandevilles

prisoner suffer because of the intrinsic horror of a wild beast tearing a child

from hismothers breast, breaking hisweak limbs in itsmurderous teeth,and

ripping apart thepalpitatingentrailsof this childin thestreet beneath hiscell

(SD, p. 131)? Or rather does his horrible agitation stem from the fact that,

being imprisoned, he has no place to turn and hence cannot avert his gaze? It

is significant that Rousseaus presentation of this pathetic image actually

servesto redirect ourown sympathyawayfrom thesufferingsof thechildand

mother and toward the prisoner-witness. We are asked to consider Whatanguish musthesuffer, when, being confined, this witness is forced to




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Therearealso therequisite democratic values of individual will andpoliti-

cal agency to be taken into account. At its best, pity may awaken our natural

repugnance to seeing human misery. But we have seen that this need not

incline us to do anything much about remedying it. Avoidance proves the

unfortunate side effect even of the refined modern compassion grounded in

pity that Rousseau elsewhere praises. In hisReveries(RSW), he tells of his

initial delight in giving alms to a lame, homeless child he regularly passedon

hiswalks. Andyetaftertimethis pleasure,having graduallybecome a habit,

was inextricably transformed into a kind of duty that Rousseau finds oner-

ous and takes special pains toavoid by changing his usual route (RSW, p. 74).

So long as the act of compassion involves only the heart ityields the sweetest

of pleasures. Once transformed into duty by habituation,as Rousseau alleges

it must inevitably be, it quickly loses its charm and becomes burdensome:Constraint, though in harmony with my desire, suffices to annihilate it and

to change it into repugnance, even into aversion, as soon as it functions too

strongly (RSW, p. 77).

Rousseau alludes to the special, permanent relationship that develops

between benefactor and sufferer. Among the natural effects of the rela-

tionship are that a single, heartfelt act of kindness engenders further obli-

gations. Knowing this full well, however, Rousseau admits that he has often

abstained from a good actionI hadthe desireand thepowerto do,frightened

of the subjection I would submit myself to afterward if I yielded to it without

reflection (RSW, p. 78). This suggests allsorts of thingsaboutobligation and

dependency. One of the reasons Rousseau wishes to cultivate pity in Emile is

to make him aware of his dependence on others. Imagination yields the rec-

ognition that no single being is self-sufficient. Against all his best intentionsRousseaus portrayal of this dependency leads ineluctably toward a conclu-

sion he adamantly denies: because all alike experience misery and misfor-

tune, to be human is by definition to be dependent upon others. Looking

beyond themirageof human autonomy suggestedby the liberal fiction of the

rights-bearing individual, or indeed the Rousseauian rhetoric of the nobility

of savage freedom, Rousseaus individual, rightly thinking, arrives at an

almost Christian recognition of his natural indebtedness and the burdens of

the human condition. Pity is, as Rousseau observes, a disposition that is

appropriate to beings as weak and as subject to as many ills as we are (SD,

p. 130).Still, beingaware of ones hypothetical conditionof dependency, like

Emile, is very different than actually living up to the reciprocal obligations

this would apparently impose upon us. Instead, dependency and obligation

are moral duties to be fled simply because they are duties. Our lamentableconditionof natural andconventionaldependency canhardlybe improved




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andis in fact only deepenedwhen we engender further obligations by help-

ing others.

Rousseaus criticism of the dialectic of compassion and dependency

strikes familiar, contemporary chords. First, in our role as benefactors we

shouldresist thetug of ourheartand withholdcompassion because it subjects

us to additional, unwanted obligations in the future: whether it is jumping in

to stop a crimeor only phoning thepolice,dont getinvolved lest youbecome

further entangled. Andsecond, theaspiration to eliminate dependencyin oth-

ers provides a convenient justification for denying those who seek our help.

Better that we do the hard thing and refuse them now lest we render them

dependent on us in the future.41 The awful paradox is that a life in which we

studiously strive for autonomy and avoid forging dependenciesboth for

ourselvesand in othersseems fully compatiblewithRousseaus account ofpity.

More than just illustrations of his own misanthropy, Rousseaus discus-

sion here underscores an important point about the moral theory of compas-

sion. Inorder forcompassion tohaveany moral significance, itmust beheart-

felt. We must actually feel compassion. Otherwise, one is simply being

forced to perform actions that she experiences as onerous and alien. And yet

if a kind action is done only because it is expected, or in the last resort, com-

pelled by Good Samaritan laws, howcan oneexpect anything other than that

it will be resented? Rousseaus discussion would seem to reveal both thevir-

tues and vices of compassion. Compassion is admirable in that it transcends

our ordinary rationalistic concerns with justice, statistics, or even utilitarian

consequences. Getting to know just one family on welfare may do more to

stir us than volumes full of poverty statistics. This explains why it is oftenhard to swallow the more abstract notion that charity to others around the

worldmayhavemoresalutaryconsequencesthanhelping thoseweknow and

seein ourown nationor community. Andyetif compassion is tobe dispensed

only on a sentimental whim, or worse yet, withheld for fear of engendering

further obligations and dependencies, it loses whatever power it might have

as a source of democratic community.42 If forwhatever reasonourheartdoes-

nt moveus, we may eitherfail toact,like Rousseau, or act onlyout of resent-

ment for being required to play a role or honor an obligation we have not

imposed upon ourselves.

VI. PITYS PLACE IN THE DEMOCRATIC POLITY

Imagining ourselves in the position of another creates challenges for dif-

ferent groups. For the lower classes this imaginary flight of fancy is easier.




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consideration as fellow sensible beings. Judith Shklar has aptly noted that

once anyrecognitionof theidentityof our natures hasbeen obscured,cruelty

cannot be far behind.44

But thinking about the kinds of differences that usually evoke pity raises

fundamental questions about whether pity canever take place simplyby rec-

ognizing the identity of our common natures. Instead, as Connolly has sug-

gested, doesnt pity (ostensibly grounded inidentit) inevitably entail some

reference to difference?45 Colored by self-consciousness and invidious com-

parisons with the other, modern pity can assume many forms. Compassion

may thinly disguise condescension. These poor suffering souls deserve our

pity because we are stronger, more intelligent, wealthier, or more fortunate

than they. Even at its best, this bond of commiseration rests upon the very

sorts of relational differences Rousseau is concerned to extirpate.As Rousseau wonders, what are generosity, clemency, humanity, if not

pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to the human species in general

(SD, p. 131)? Here at long last are examples of the modern ages ability to

marshal the sentiment of pity toward concrete, positive ends. Yet it is note-

worthy that Rousseau raises this as a rhetorical, perhaps even purposefully

ironic question that he is reluctant to answer in the affirmative. Are these

accomplishments of modern compassionreally thedeveloped andgeneral-

ized versions of the elemental faculty of pity that remains obscure in sav-

ageman?Andinwhat respect is theirdevelopedstatus incivilsocietycom-

patible with his complaints about their alleged feebleness?

Rousseaus categories apply not to concrete, particular individuals qua

individuals but instead as members of abstract groups. In this formulation,

we pity the weak not as equal, fellow sensible beings but because of theirconditionof weakness,which Rousseau elsewhere insists is an unnaturaldif-

ference. Thestatus of guiltwith itsconventionalnotions of criminality or

moral approbation and disapprobationis what evokes our sympathy. And

even in the case of the universal love for all of humanity, compassion is

awarded based on the recipients membership in the highlyabstract category

of humanity, rather than by her particular, concrete presence as a fellow

sentient being.46 Such abstract and conventional categories as Rousseau

invokes are irrelevant to and beyond the conceptualization of natural man.

Pity may also be colored by vanity and invidious comparisons. The strong

pity the weak because they are beneath them. The guilty deserve clemency

from the guiltless because they are in some respect their moral superiors.

Thinking long and hard about these relational comparisonsand the secret

feelings of self-importance and righteousness they often disguiserevealsjust how much they color and inspire much of what passes for pity in modern

society.47 Pity is either so universal as to be based on membership in abstract




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native, sentimental souls like Emile who livewithincivil society butare not a

part of it. Yet this is an individual rather than a political response to the ail-

ments of civil society. Rousseau also holds out the prospects of a more gen-

eral, political solution to modern alienation and dependency in the compen-

satory realm of citizenship. Whatever conventional differences divide us,

there is at least one respect in which all remain equal and free. Citizenship,

such as Rousseau describes in theFirst Discourseand theSocial Contract,

offers a much-needed ground of commonality whereby love of ones fellow

citizens presumably displaces love of self. At first glance, it seems that the

generalization of compassion might be an important part of this enterprise,

forming the constitutive bond of citizenship that is written not in laws but in

the hearts of citizens.56 But reinstating pity as a conventional and publicas

opposed to a natural and privatevirtue raises further difficulties.It is unclear howan ultimately privatevirtuelikepity might begeneralized

into the imaginary realm of the public sphere without surrendering the

intensely personal sensibilities that gave it its original force. As difficult as it

mayseem, theact of imaginingwhat we share with a single, sensible individ-

ual requires considerably less of us than recognizing something of ourselves

in the abstract construct of an entire nation. And even if stretching pity to

encompass the abstract category of citizenship might conceivably yield

something likeHabermass constitutional patriotism, this Kantian concep-

tion of patriotism as somethingrational, abstract, andunemotional seems the

very antithesis of Rousseaus description of pity.57

Thedifficulty of seeingcompassion as a sourceof democratic community

is exacerbated by Rousseaus recurrent linkage between citizenship and mar-

tial virtue. His ultimate expression of citizenship embraces the Spartan idealof a citizen-soldier willing to fight for the political community. But presum-

ably such a citizen in the truest sense of the termone who kills and even

dies for his political communitymust be capable of bracketing the natural

sensitivity to see another suffer harm. Citizenship in its extreme guise of

friends andenemies demands that we repress thenaturalandsensible in favor

of a pitilessness that is profoundly unnatural to human beings. As Shklar has

observed, citizenship in large part rests on a suppression of the natural,

including most notably that natural faculty of pity.58

Furthermore, linking pity to citizenship and the public sphere serves only

to reintroduce the problem of difference at a higher level. Even if we could

stretch our natural sympathy to include all members of the political commu-

nity, thecategory of citizenship is by itsvery natureexclusionary. Inprefer-

ring one part of humanity to the rest, Tzvetan Todorov has observed, thecitizen transgresses a fundamental principle, thatof equality. Withoutexplic-

itly saying it, he accepts the notion that men are not equal.59 Too often, love




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of all members of our own political community is allied withressentiment

toward those of another. Pitys moral othersemergefull-blown in theform of

nationalism, xenophobia, and exclusion when one attempts to transpose

compassion onto the political sphere.

We should hardly be surprised, then, that Rousseaus political ideal of

democratic citizenship under the socialcontract does not rest on compassion

for others. Instead, as John Scott has argued, Rousseaus political thought

aims to restore the natural wholeness of the state of nature by instituting a

socialcontractwhoseexplicitgoal is toputevery citizen ina position ofper-

fect independence from all the others, while remaining excessively depen-

dent on the political community as a whole (SC, bk. 2, chap. 12, p. 77,

emphasis added).60

The irony is that pity carries within itself virtually all of the vices Rous-seau most criticizes in hismoral andpoliticaltheory: first, thefact that pity is

aversive means that it discourages willful agency; second, it rests inescap-

ably upon the very differences and inequalities that ultimately alienate and

separate us from ourselves andothers; and third, itspractice apparentlyentails

the creation of altogether new dependencies between otherwise autonomous

individuals. In fairness, these problems with compassion are not unforeseen

by those who envision a larger role for compassion in political theory. Joan

Tronto has misgivings about what she calls the otherness, paternalism,

and privileged irresponsibility of an ethic of care. Because

care arisesout of thefact that notall humansor othersor objects in theworld areequally

able,at all times, to take care ofthemselves. . . . The result is that those who receive care

are oftentransformedinto the other, and identifiedby whatevermarksthem as needingcare: their economic plight, their seeming disability, and so forth.61

Tronto further notes that the convenient fiction of human equality is just

thata fictionand thus a moral theory of compassion that takes these fun-

damental dependencies and inequalities into account maybe preferable to a

moral theory, that because it presumes that all people are equal, is unable

even to recognize them.62

The consequences of this last move are, I think, problematic for many of

the reasons Rousseau suggests. Even if the governing principle of political

equality is, as Tronto rightly notes, in some sense fictional, and the justice

of liberal political theoryis toooften sentimentally unaware of private differ-

ences and inequalities among citizens, it is unclear that as a consequence

these underlying differences should be made more morally relevant withrespect to the political sphere.63 The danger is that in trying to make political

theory more attentive to difference, especially by displacing the centrality of




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justice, rights, and equality, the political sphere may be tainted by the other-

ness,privilege, and paternalism that Tronto herself admits sometimesplague

an ethic of care, and which Rousseau earlier foresaw lurking in the emotions

of pity and compassion. Tronto is not interested in debating theproposition

that politics necessarily involves the corruptionof whatever moral principles

enter its arena, and she has a good sense of what these kinds of debates

obscure.64 But the difficulty raised by Rousseau would seem to be precisely

theopposite one: rather than compassion being corruptedby politics, thereal

danger is that the pathologies of pity, as described by Rousseau, might actu-

ally distort theideals of democratic politicallifewhen onetries to make com-

passion more central to democratic theory and practice. Hannah Arendt, for

example, complains that in its extreme political analogue, compassion may

even

shun the drawn-out wearisome processes of persuasion, negotiation and compromise,

which are theprocessesof lawand politics,and lendits voice to thesufferingitself,which

must claim for swift and direct action, that is, for action with the means of violence.65

Inspired instead by theKantian thrustof Rousseaus political theoryin the

social contract, contemporary democratic theorists have sought ways of

securing a kind of compensatorypoliticalequality that supercedes thediffer-

ences and inequalities of civil society and encourages more willful agency

and self-legislation on the part of citizens.66 We have seen why Rousseaus

account of political compassion is of little help on both of these scores.

Despite theallureof a kind of generalized compassion, which might, like the

ideal political citizenship of the social contract, serve as a way of transcend-ing the invidious distinctions of civil society, Rousseaus account of pity

seemingly founders on the problem of difference. What democratic political

life most needs is some groundfor equality or likeness that transcends differ-

ence. And yet we have seen that pity carries within itself thevery differences

it is supposed to transcend. Conversely, at those moments in democratic

political life when we aremost in need of theability to make judgmentsfor

example, in determining when cruelty needs to be met with force, or who

truly deserves our compassionpitys indiscriminacy becomes a stumbling

block.Finally, pitys negativeor aversive characterwould seem to beget only

reluctant spectators and thus does little to encourage the kind of political

agency and willful actors necessary for a truly democratic political life.




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NOTES

1. Judith Shklar,Ordinary Vices(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

2. Alexis de Tocqueville,Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Harper,

1988), vol. 2, pt. 3, 564. This generalized compassion perhaps stems, as Tracy Strong argues,

from the kind of equality and transparency that democracies alone permit. Tracy Strong,Jean-

JacquesRousseau and thePoliticsof theOrdinary(ThousandOaks,CA: Sage,1994),145-46.

3. Nietzsches complaints aboutmoderncompassionarecomplex.Most conspicuous is his

contempt for pity as a sickness or nausea endemic to democratic society. Friedrich Nietz-

sche,Genealogy of Morals, esp. Preface, 5-6; III, 14. But he also alludes to a kind of noble or

aristocraticmercy, borneof thepathosof distanceand theconsciousnessof power, as a fitting

attitude of the powerful toward the weak or parasites beneath them. Nietzsche,Genealogy, II,

10. Cf.Beyond Good and Evil, V, 201-2; VII, 225.

4. Carl Schmitt,The Concept of the Political (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University

Press, 1976), esp. pp. 28-29, 35-37, 54, 68.

5. On this latter point about how, notwithstanding their veneer of compassion, modern

democracies may still vent their cruelty upon those who are outside or alien, see Nietzsche,

Genealogy of Morals, I, 11, p. 40:

thesamemenwho areheldso sternly incheckinterpares ...andwhoontheotherhandin

their relations with one another show themselves so resourceful in consideration, self-

control,delicacy, loyalty, pride, andfriendshiponcetheygo outside,where thestrange,

thestrangeris found, they are not much better than uncaged beasts of prey.

6. NancyHirschman,Sympathy, EmpathyandObligation, in Feminist Interpretations of

David Hume, ed. Anne Jaap Jacobson (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,

2000), 174.

7. Jrgen Habermas, Citizenship and National Identity, inBetween Facts and Norms

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996); Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson,Democracy and

Disagreement(Cambridge, MA: Belknap,1996);BenjaminBarber, StrongDemocracy: Partici-

patoryPolitics for a New Age (Berkeley: Universityof California Press,1984).Fora treatmentof

the more general problem of affect in democratic theory, which raises questions about thischaracterization of Habermas and problematizes the strict antinomy between reason and affect,

see PatchenMarkell, MakingAffectSafe forDemocracy?PoliticalTheory28(2000):38-63.

8. Notably, Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1982); Joan Tronto,Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New

York:Routledge,1993). Thiscase has beenrecentlymade in similar termsbut without reference

to Rousseau by Maureen Whitebrook, Compassion as a Political Virtue,Political Studies50

(2002): 529-44.

9. Robert Bellah et al.,Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American

Life(New York: Harper & Row, 1985); Amitai Etzioni,The New Golden Rule: Community and

Morality in a Democratic Society(New York: Basic Books, 1996), esp. chap. 5.

10. Consider, for example, the widely differinginterpretationsthat make Rousseau into the

apostle of compassion: Allan Bloom, Introduction, inEmile, or On Education, ed. and trans.

Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books,1979), 17-20.Or, as LeoStrauss puts it,Compassionis

thepassionfrom whichall social virtuesderive.NaturalRight andHistory(Chicago:University

of ChicagoPress, 1953),270;and those others whoread Rousseauas theharbingerof contempo-rarydemocratic theory, JamesMiller,Rousseau: Dreamerof Democracy (NewHaven,CT: Yale

University Press, 1984).




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11. On naturalfreedom,wholeness,and goodnessas Rousseaus intendedgoals,see Strauss,

NaturalRight and History, 277-83.For a contraryviewof thenaturalness of humandependency,

see Joel Schwartz,The Sexual Politics of Jean-Jacques Rousseau(Chicago: University of Chi-

cago Press, 1984).

12. On thinking of liberal democracy as distinguished not by any particular set of political

institutions but in terms of its commitment to these procedures and the intrinsic value of moral

equality, see George Kateb,The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture(Ithaca,

NY: Cornell UniversityPress, 1992), esp.chaps. 2 and3; onwillfulness andindividualagencyas

essential to aliberaldemocracy, see Richard Flathman,Willful Liberalism: Voluntarism and

Individualismin Political Theory and Practice(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); as

essential for astrongdemocracy, see Barber,Strong Democracy, chap. 6.

13. William Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), esp. xxiv-xxv, 158-60, 172-73; William

Connolly,Why I Am Not a Secularist(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 144-

45.

14. Unless otherwise noted, citations from Rousseau are toThe First and Second Dis-courses, ed. Roger Masters (New York: St. Martins, 1964);On the Social Contract, ed. Roger

Masters andtrans.JudithR. Masters (New York:St. Martins, 1978);Emile,or OnEducation,ed.

and trans. Allan Bloom (NewYork:Basic Books, 1979); TheReveriesof theSolitaryWalker, ed.,

trans., and withan introductionby Charles Butterworth (NewYork: NewYorkUniversityPress,

1979); andPolitics and the Arts: Letter to M. DAlembert on the Theatre (Glencoe, IL: Free

Press, 1960).

15. Foran excellentdiscussion of hownaturalpity is activated by the imaginationand trans-

formed into compassion, see David Marshall,The Surprising Effects of Sympathy: Marivaux,

Diderot,Rousseau, and Mary Shelley(Chicago:University ofChicagoPress, 1988),148-52.See

also Jacques Derrida,Of Grammatology(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997),

182-87.

16. Compare Arthur Melzer,The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseaus

Thought(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 93.

17. Clifford Orwin, Rousseau and the Discovery of Political Compassion, inThe Legacy

of Rousseau, ed. Clifford Orwin and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1997), 309.

18. Contrast the reading of Mira Morgenstern, for whom the sweetness of pity derives at

leastin partfrom thediscoveryof individual empowerment and independence.Rousseauand the

Politics of Ambiguity(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 65, 68-69.

19. Rousseaus choice of the term commiseration is noteworthy. Literally, sharing the

misery of anotherthis may be the necessary condition for us to think about acting to relieve

that misery, but it is, as we will see below, far from a sufficient condition for this kind of willful

human agency.

20. Compare Alexis Philonenko, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la Pense du Malheur:

Apothose du Dsespoir(Paris: Librairie Philosophique, 1984), 183: Le malheur devient un

instrument de la pdagogie philosophique.

21. Compare Orwin, Rousseau and the Discovery, 302, 307-8: Within the context of

Emile, the greatest importance of compassion is not to society but to Emile himself. Cf. John

Charvet,The Social Problem in the Philosophy of Rousseau(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 1974), who assumes that the purpose of pity is to produce good for others and to

serve as the foundation of a new social order (see esp. pp. 83-93).




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22. Compare C. N. Dugan andTracy Strong,Music, Politics,Theaterand Representation,

in TheCambridge Companion to Rousseau, ed. PatrickRiley (Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUni-

versity Press, 2001), esp. 333, 339, 343.

23. Morgenstern has developed this point at greater length:Rousseau and the Politics of

Ambiguity, esp. 35-47.

24. Marshall,Surprising Effects of Sympathy, 142.

25. Cf. Elizabeth Wingrove,who interestinglysuggests that the theater representsnot just a

suspension of will, but a willing complicity in the crimes of others,Rousseaus Republican

Romance(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), esp. 175-76; for a more extended

discussionof theperformativeaspectof sympathyin the theater,see Marshall,SurprisingEffects

of Sympathy, esp. 143-48.

26. Christopher Kelly offers a concise account of Rousseaus ambivalence toward the arts.

Rousseau and the Case against (and for) the Arts, inThe Legacy of Rousseau, esp. 20-25.

27. Thereare major scholarlydebatesabout theconsistencyofRousseaus account ofpityas

either an immanent or an active virtue (or both), and my analysis addresses these controversies

implicitly. ButI am mainly concernedhere withthe related butdistinct questionof whether com-miseration is ultimately experienced as sweet or irksome.

28. Cf. Melzer,Natural Goodness of Man, 16-17.

29. Contrastthe readingof MargaretOgrodnick,Instinctand Intimacy:PoliticalPhilosophy

and Autobiography in Rousseau(Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 137. If

my point here is correct, virtually all of what Jacques Derrida has written about the maternal

metaphor for compassion in Rousseau is wrong.There is little textual evidence in Rousseau to

suggest that children have a natural affection for their parents that is written into their hearts by

God. And in the above-cited passages in the Second Discourse, Rousseau makes it clear that

maternal or familial affection, likeromanticlove, arises onlyby habitor custom. Cf. Derrida, Of

Grammatology, 173-75.

30. Althoughher subsequentdiscussionleads ina different direction, thispoint is supported

by the following observationof ElizabethWingrove: Here the intensity of the spectators reac-

tion is rooted in itsinability to differentiate itself from other beings.Rousseaus Republican

Romance, 32.

31. Consider also Rousseaus example of the pongos,who take pains to cover the bodies oftheirdeadwithbranches orleavesso thattheydonthave tobe confrontedby itspresence.Second

Discourse, 205n, 208n.

32. Derrida,Of Grammatology, 190.

33. Compare the similar point made by Wingrove,Rousseaus Republican Romance, 35.

34. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (New York: Penguin, 1968), chap. 13,

pp. 184-85.

35. Compare Ernst Cassirer,The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. Peter Gay

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), 101:

According to Rousseau, Hobbes had quite rightly recognized that in the pure state of

nature there was no bond of sympathy binding the single individuals to each other. . . .

According to Rousseau, the only flaw in Hobbess psychology consisted in putting an

active egoism in the place of the purely passive egoism which prevails in the state of

nature.

See also Jean Starobinski,Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, trans.Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 298-99.




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To accept a gift is to admit ones inferiority; it is to incur an obligation to people whose

kindness is a way of signaling social distance while insincerely glossing it over. The

equality[Rousseau] wantsthe reciprocity of freemindsexcludes dependenceof any

kind, and in the first place the dependence created by the kindness of the benevolent.

48. Connolly,Identity/Difference, xiv.

49. Cf. Montaigne, On Cruelty, whose natural sensitivity extends even to plants! Michel

de Montaigne,The Complete Essays(London: Penguin, 1991), 488.

50. Rousseaus revelation of the self as an ungrounded and perfectible tabula rasa invites

dilemmasof difference andrecognitionunknown toearlier thinkers. Oncethe selfhas become in

Rousseaus hands nothingmore thanthe perfectiblereflectionof conventional differences and

cultural influences, truerecognitioncan takeplace onlyundertwo equallyunlikelysets ofcondi-

tions: either between equals in the pure state of nature or within civil society, when two selves

have been forgedby an identicalset ofsocial influences.Withthe adventof civilsociety, thefirst

possibility vanishesforever,and withthe continuous process of civilization,the likelihoodof the

latter diminishes by the day.51. Rousseau looks to be guilty of pursuing what Joan Tronto has criticized as a morality

first strategy by conceiving of pity as ultimately best confined to private relationshipsbetween

individualsrather thanconstitutiveofthe politicalbondsbetweencitizens.Tronto,MoralBound-

aries, 158.

52. Here,I have inmind certaincommunitariancriticsof liberalism suchas Robert Bellah,

Amitai Etzioni, Michael Sandel, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Even if they do not explicitly or uni-

formlycallfor more compassion (ormoredemocracy!)as a remedyfor these ailmentsof liberal-

ism, they have presented a challenging criticism of the excessive thinness, legalism, neutrality,

and sentimental inertness of liberal political theory.

53. Cf. Orwin, Rousseau and the Discovery, esp. 298-99; Plattner,Rousseaus State of

Nature, 128-32.

54. By readingRousseauhere as a critic ofliberalismand theprimacy of private property,

self-interest,and individual rights, I do notmean tosuggest thathis critiquewasnotalso applica-

ble to aristocratic or courtly society.

55. Rousseaus stipulation that the sum of our obligations to our fellow citizens consists in

refraining from causing them undue suffering is compatible with even the least flattering criti-

cismsof contemporaryliberalsocietyby Bellah,MacIntyre,or Sandel.A market societycharac-

terized by self-interest, anomie, and atomization may prove the quintessential example of a

worldwherewe take nospecialpainsto be cruelto others. Emphasizingboththe thin obligations

of fellowcitizens to oneanother and therelativeunlikelihoodof even theseminimalduties being

recognized makes Rousseau among the most realistic of political theorists.

56. Cf. Melzer,Natural Goodness of Man, who suggests that an immanent human expan-

siveness to identify with others forms the basis of patriotism, political community, and justice

for Rousseau, esp. 170-71n. Compare Ogrodnick,Instinct and Intimacy, 135-38. Below, I raise

questions not just about this possibility for Rousseau, but also and more importantly whether

even this immanent expansiveness can overcome the problem of moral otherness.

57. Cf.JrgenHabermas,Citizenship andNationalIdentity, inTheorizingCitizenship,ed.

Ron Beiner (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). For a characterization of the

particularistic andaffective dimensionsof Rousseaus thoughtson patriotism, see MarcPlattner,

Rousseau and the Origins of Nationalism, inThe Legacy of Rousseau, esp. 187-93.

58. Judith Shklar,Men andCitizens:A Study of RousseausSocial Theory (Cambridge,UK:Cambridge University Press, 1969), 15-17, 21; Ogrodnick,Instinct and Intimacy, 139-45.




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59. Tzvetan Todorov,Frail Happiness: An Essay on Rousseau, trans. John T. Scott and

Robert D. Zaretsky (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 29.

60. John T. Scott, The Theodicy of theSecond Discourse: The Pure State of Nature and

Rousseaus Political Thought,American Political Science Review86 (1992): 708.

61. Tronto,Moral Boundaries, 145.

62. Ibid., 147.

63. One problemwithdoingso is compassionstendencyto eclipse civic equality. See espe-

cially Hannah Arendt,On Revolution(New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 90:

Measured against the immense sufferings of the immense majority of the people, the

impartialityof justice andlaw, theapplication ofthe same rules tothosewhosleepin pal-

aces and those who sleep under the bridges of Paris, was like a mockery.

64. Tronto,Moral Boundaries, 93.

65. Arendt,On Revolution. 86-87.

66. Habermas, Citizenship and National Identity, esp. 503-6; Barber,Strong Democracy,

esp. chaps. 6 and 8.

Richard Boyd is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin

Madison. He is the author of various journal articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-

century political thought and a forthcoming book titledUncivil Society: The Perils of

Pluralism and the Making of Modern Liberalism (2004).


boyd, richard - pity's pathologies portrayed

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