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Sympathy as the Basis of Compassion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Jos V.M. Welie
Jos V.M. Welie
Affiliation:
Director, CEREC Center of Southeast Florida, Ft. Lauderdale.
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Extract

On one side of his sign board, a nineteenth century surgeon depicted a physician operating on a patient's leg; the other side showed the Good Samaritan taking care of the victim's wounds. Christ's parable has often been quoted and depicted as a primary example of human compassion, to be followed by all persons and, a fortiori, by so-called professionals such as physicians and nurses. If we grant that the parable has not lost its narrative power for 20th century “postmodern” readers living in a “pluralistic” society, it merits a closer analysis.

Type
Special Section: Compassion: What Does It Really Mean?
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , Fall 1995 , pp. 476 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

Notes

1. The ideas and arguments presented in this article have been worked out in greater detail in the author's doctoral dissertation In the Face of Suffering. Prolegomena to a Philosophical Foundation of Clinical Ethics (1994, 350 pp.,Google Scholar paperback, Dfl. 40,00 or US$ 25.00 + postage) can be ordered by contacting Drs. Marian Poulissen, Dept. of Ethics, Philosophy & History of Medicine, Catholic University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, Netherlands, fax: +31 80 540254; or by contacting the author in the United States: Dr. Jos V.M. Welie, tel.: 305–424–9304.

2. Engelhardt, HT. Bioethics and Secular Humanism: The Search for a Common Morality. London/Philadelphia: SCM Press/Trinity Press International, 1991:xiv.Google Scholar

3. I will use the Greek term sympathy (which literally means the same as the Latin word compassion) to indicate this anthropological as opposed to moral quality. I use it in the literal sense of feeling together, feeling along with another human being, sharing a particular awareness or expe rience, etc. This philosophical understanding of sympathy, then, has less of an emotional connotation than would be common in English (as in saying to the widow of a recently deceased person “Please, accept my sympathy”) as well as in other languages (e.g., in Dutch sympathie means positive affection while a sympathiek persoon is a nice person).

4. Toombs, SK. The Meaning of Illness. A Phenomenological Account of the Different Perspectives of Physician and Patient. Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer. 1992:7–9Google Scholar; emphasis altered.

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6. See note 4. Toombs, . 1992:xv.Google Scholar

7. See note 4. Toombs, . 1992:xvi.Google Scholar

8. Toombs limits her account to somatic illness.

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13. See note 4. Toombs, . 1992:109.Google Scholar

14. Emphasis added.

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23. Smith presumes that it is possible on the basis of what seems to be an analogical inference from the external behavior of my fellow, via what I know about my own external behavior and its relationship to my own internal processes, to a conclusion about my fellow's internal processes. But this analogy is flawed because it already presumes that I know that my fellow will feel simi larly in similar situations (which presumption has yet to be proven).

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25. The term semi-fellow-feeling (which is not employed by Scheler himself) I have introduced because these two forms of fellow-feeling do not invoke in us a feeling like our fellow man's feeling, yet they do inform us about his feelings. In fact, such being informed about the nature of our fellow man's feelings according to Scheler is a necessary precondition to develop genuine fellow-feeling.

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27. See note 25. Scheler, . 1973:20.Google Scholar

28. Again, Scheler does not use the term pseudo-fellow-feeling, but he leaves no doubt about these two forms of fellow-feeling failing to provide insight in the otherness of my fellow.

29. It should be emphasized that the use of the Aristotelian distinction between various causes is not Scheler's but my own.

30. See note 25. Scheler, . 1973:48, 50, 56.Google Scholar

31. See note 25. Scheler, . 1973:42.Google Scholar

32. See note 25. Scheler, . 1973:93–4.Google Scholar Scheler does not mention Plotinus explicitly, but he does discuss the commonly adhered to Greek theorem of the impossibility of dissimilar beings to relate to another without an encompassing “world soul.” According to Scheler, the surplus value of this Greek theory (over Indian philosophy as well as Schopenhauer's) is its nontotalitarian character, thus allowing for genuine sympathy. Scheler takes the emotional identification (German Einsfühlung) of the Orphean mysteries to be a romantic countermovement against the more moderate original theorem.

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34. See note 25. Scheler, . 1973:25Google Scholar; note 1. Scheler blames his German contemporary Lipps (in the latter's theory of empathy, German Einfühlungstheorie) for overlooking this difference. Lipps, T. Leitfaden der Psychologie. 3rd ed.Leipzig: Verlag Wilhelm Engelmann, 1909.Google Scholar

35. See note 25. Scheler, . 1973:61–6.Google Scholar Scheler explicitly rejects a third explanation of pleasure from pain, that is, to grant suffering itself positive value.

36. See note 25. Scheler, , 1973:244Google Scholar; emphasis altered. A similar conclusion is reached by the French existentialist Gabriel Marcel: “[C]ontrary to those who would want to invoke analogical reasoning to account for belief in the existence of others, it must be said that I only constitute myself as interiority inasmuch as I take cognizance of the reality of those others.” Marcel, G. Présence et Immortalité. Paris: Flammarion. 1959:169Google Scholar; as translated by O'Malley, JB. The Fellowship of Being: An Essay on the Concert of Person in the Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1966:84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. See note 25. Scheler, . 1973:233.Google Scholar

38. This I take to also be an argument in favor of the term sympathy over empathy. Different authors such as Wyschogrod (1981), Wispé (1986), Chismar (1988), and Natsoulas (1988) suggest keeping both terms. However, their various definitions of the terms, which anyway do not coincide, leave standing the suggestive nature of their literal meaning. Scheler does not use the term empathy, but he rejects all models that are based on Einfühlung (such as Lipps' theory from 1909, see note 35) for being guilty of a faulty analogy, as well as the explanation of fellow-feeling in terms of Sympathy as the Basis of Compassion Einsfühlung. Wyschogrod, E. Empathy and sympathy as tactile encounter. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1981;6:25–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedWispé, L. The distinction between sympathy and empathy: to call forth a concept, a word is needed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1986;50(2):314–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarChismar, D. Empathy and sympathy: The important difference. The Journal of Value Inquiry 1988;22:257–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarNatsoulas, T. Sympathy, empathy, and the stream of consciousness. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 1988;18(2):169–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. See note 25. Scheler, . 1973:251.Google Scholar

40. See note 25. Scheler, . 1973:220.Google Scholar

41. Cassell, EJ. Recognizing suffering. Hastings Center Report 1991;21(3):24–31, at p. 27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

42. Cherry, C. Knowing, imagining and sympathizing. Ratio 1980;22:133–144, at p. 137.Google Scholar

43. Luijpen, W. Existentiële Fenomenologie. Utrecht/Antwerpen: Het Spectrum. 1964:201Google Scholar; emphasis added.

44. See note 39. Natsoulas, . 1988:171.Google Scholar

45. Contrary to Scheler, I would maintain that a good novel can only be written by a sympathic novelist rather than by one who is merely feeling along.