A Philosophical Happy Hour on pity, resentment, mercy, justice, vengeance, and the multitude of human weaknesses.
The two titular terms here present a conflict we have all doubtless encountered at one point or another: one person pitying another, and the pitied person reacting with resentment. Much could and ought to be said about resentment and the way it motivates actions—but here we will consider it primarily as a passion, and as one specifically evoked by the recognition of being pitied.
To understand this reaction, we must understand also the nature of pity. Aristotle in his Rhetoric (book 2, chapter 8), defines pity thus (1385b 13-16): “let pity be a certain pain at what is manifestly bad, and destructive or painful, and befalls someone who does not deserve it, which one might expect to suffer oneself (or somebody in one’s circle might do so), and this when it appears close at hand.” On the surface, this may not seem like something that would cause resentment in others. To feel pain for those suffering undeservedly? Certainly, this is natural and seems fitting.
And yet, the destructive pains we might expect to suffer ourselves may nevertheless be pains to which the pitied themselves cling. I may pity the person addicted to sex, because I can see how such spiritual destruction threatens myself; or the person who, out of excessive desire to say what is right, insists that he is correct even when he begins to suspect that he may be right—for this, too, is a temptation.
Simultaneously, the person who pities us must be someone who has not suffered that evil. In that very point of fact, therefore, he or she must have a moral superiority, if the pity is justified. Do we not feel something to have offended our pride, in realizing another pities us?
Let’s take up these and other questions as we read Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae, secunda secundae, q.30, a.2, which introduces some interesting observations into the question of pity and its place in the soul.
philosophical happy hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
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