Learning to Map Compassion: A Project Rooted in the Humanities

Abstract

To understand the nature of compassion, I trace an arc from the Christian Scriptures, which are “saturated” with compassion, to the “eclipse” of compassion in modern political philosophy in Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke. Rather than stopping at that point, however, the dialogue recommences with a comparative approach to three figures. (1) In Kant’s view, deeds of compassion ought to be guided by rational moral principles. Why? Because principles are much more reliable than feelings. (2) Rousseau’s Emile, however, gives a privileged place to feelings of compassion for others. (3) In the film, La Reine Margot, we catch a glimpse of how compassion for others might be learned, when Marguerite of Valois experiences a crisis of conscience and rescues Henry of Navarre from the soldiers sent to kill him. (4) A concluding section asks about the contribution the visual arts to “mapping compassion,” and what an ethics of compassion might look like at the micro, meso, and macro levels.