COMPASSION AND REASON

Compassion is controversial. For about twenty-five hundred years it has found both ardent defenders, who consider it to be the bedrock of the ethical life, and equally determined opponents, who denounce it as “irrational” and a bad guide to action. These opponents have strongly influenced the rhetoric of contemporary debates about the emotion. Contrasts between “emotion” and “reason” are ubiquitous in the law, and in public life generally – particularly where appeals to compassion are at issue. These contrasts are seldom drawn with clarity. We are rarely told whether “irrational,” as applied to emotion, means “not involving thought” or “involving thought that is in some way substandard and bad.” In the process, we frequently encounter traces of the historical debate – but in an unclear and degenerate form. For this reason it seems worthwhile to study the historical debate closely, assessing it in connection with our evolving theory of compassion. It will turn out, I believe, that most of the contemporary opponents of compassion do not share the philosophical position with which they appear to ally themselves.

To set the stage, let us consider the way in which the attack on compassion as “irrational” has figured in one recent legal debate. In a jury instruction case (concerning the same rules for sentencing under which O. J. Simpson would have been sentenced, had he been convicted), Justice O'Connor argues that “the sentence imposed at the penalty stage should reflect a reasoned moral response to the defendant's background, character, and crime rather than mere sympathy or emotion.”