The Pitfalls of “Love and Kindness”: On the Challenges to Compassion/Pity as a Political Emotion

Anne-Kathrin Weber
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Anne-Kathrin Weber: Department of Political Science, University of Giessen, Germany

Politics and Governance, 2018, vol. 6, issue 4, 53-61

Abstract: Martha Nussbaum’s political theory of compassion offers an extensive and compelling study of the potential of employing compassionate emotions in the political realm to further social justice and societal “love”. In this article, two pitfalls of Nussbaum’s affirming theory of a politics of compassion are highlighted: the problem of a dual-level hierarchisation and the “magic” of feeling compassion that potentially removes the subject of compassion from reality. I will argue that Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on pity provide substantial challenges to a democratic theory of compassion in this respect. Following these theoretical reflections, I will turn to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 US-American presidential election campaign, to her video ads “Love and Kindness” in particular, in order to provide fitting illustrations from current realpolitik for these specific pitfalls of the political employment of compassionate emotions.

Keywords: compassion; emotions; Hannah Arendt; Hillary Clinton; Martha Nussbaum; pity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v6:y:2018:i:4:p:53-61

DOI: 10.17645/pag.v6i4.1393

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