Nussbaum's Account of Compassion

Abstract

Martha Nussbaum, in her compelling new book in moral psychology, gives an account of the nature of compassion.1 This account is the topic of my contribution to this symposium. I believe it illuminates an important human emotion that we call 4compassion.' At the same time, I believe there is a different emotion that we also call 'compassion.' Recognizing these two forms of compassion leads to seeing that the general theory of emotions from which Nussbaum draws her account falls short of explaining all emotions. While my contribution concludes with this point, I intend it as probative rather than conclusive.2 Nussbaum's general theory is a modified version of the theory the ancient Stoics advanced. Its principal thesis is that emotions are evaluative judgments of a specific sort, and the main modification Nussbaum makes is to broaden the theory's conception of judgment so that it applies to the emotions of nonhuman animals and infants, or as I will say, beasts and babies. The ancient Stoics denied that beasts and babies were capable of emotions, for they conceived of the judgments they identified with emotions as affirmations of propositions and they denied that beasts and babies had linguistic capacities necessary for propositional thought. Consequently, if you're drawn to the Stoic theory but believe that other animals besides humans have emotions and that humans begin to experience emotions in infancy, you must either modify the Stoic conception of judgment or attribute linguistic capacities to beasts and babies. Nussbaum does the former. She accepts the view that some emotions do not involve propositional thought. Of course, any contemporary defender of the Stoic theory has to make some such modification if only to avoid propounding anachronistic ideas about beasts and babies. But Nussbaum has a further reason to make it.