Compassion and Revenge

I have argued that amorality can hold its own against morality by means of rationality and compassion. A person who cultivates both capacities would have the best tools available for benefiting oneself and the world, and indeed, in part by dispensing with (the belief in) morality. It is true that being moral can or maybe even must involve a heaping portion of rationality, and of course a moralist can also be compassionate. However, my claim is that the belief in morality, being itself irrational, is hardly a natural home for thinking rationally or deploying it to maximum effect. In this respect I see an affinity to the belief in God, which similarly facilitates irrational thinking even in areas outside its purview, creationism being the poster child of this tendency. But how could compassion be conceived as a friend of amorality over morality? Isn’t compassion an inherently moral emotion? 

            I don’t think so. Let me illustrate why by contrast to an emotion like the desire for vengeance. It seems to me that in the latter case, a moralist analysis naturally applies, which is to say, to use Ronnie de Sousa’s term, there is some double counting going on. For if A seeks vengeance against B, A must believe not only that B has done something hurtful to A or possibly even lethal to someone else in A’s circle, but also (this is the double counting) that what B did was wrong or that A has an obligation to visit comparable hurt on B. In yet other moral terms, A or A’s confrere has been an innocent victim, and therefore B deserves a comeuppance. Lacking these latter elements, I don’t see how A could desire to do harm unto B simply because B had done harm unto A or A’s confrere. 

            Now consider compassion. Here I detect no double counting. If A sees that B is suffering in some way, all conditions are satisfied for eliciting A’s compassion. A need not judge that she is obligated to care. A might even believe that B deserves to suffer, but compassion could still arise. Is this not why at least some of the people who visit prisons as volunteers hope to relieve some of the deprivation that the visitors themselves may believe has been justly imposed? I for one discover that my sympathies jump immediately from victims of some crime to the perpetrator once he has been rendered helpless and in need, however appropriately. 

            Indeed, and perhaps this is the clincher: Is it not easy enough to imagine that A seeks vengeance on B out of a sense of duty, all the while feeling compassion for B due to some personal tie of affection? 

            Therefore I think there are good grounds to believe that an amoral world could (and would) contain compassion … and a reason to prefer an amoral world is that it would not contain the desire for vengeance. Certainly there could still be prisons and the like in the amoral world; but their purpose would not be retributive but only protective or corrective.

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