American Political Science Review Vol. 101, No. 4 November 2007 DOI: 10.1017/S0003055407070578 Rousseau’s Discriminating Defense of Compassion JONATHAN MARKS Ursinus College P olitical theorists from Martha Nussbaum to Amitai Etzioni appeal to compassion as a basis that liberalism otherwise lacks for refraining from exploiting and even for helping others. However, critics like Clifford Orwin and Richard Boyd have raised this question: is compassion too weak and undiscriminating to rely on in politics? Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s account of compassion helps answer it. Rousseau understands compassion as a useful manifestation of the otherwise dangerous desire to extend the self and show signs of power. Consequently, he considers compassion’s relative weakness a strength and explains how it can be supplemented and complemented by other, independent motives for serving others, including gratitude, friendship, and obligation. Compassion’s weakness also makes it less likely than self-love, narrowly conceived, to overwhelm reason. Rousseau excels compassion’s contemporary defenders in his awareness of the complex relationship between compassion and other social passions and of the dangers that his understanding of compassion addresses. G eorge W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism is only the most recent indication of compas- sion’s broad political appeal. 1 During the 1988 presidential campaign, the elder George Bush spoke of a kinder, gentler America. In 1992, he lost to a centrist Democrat whose name will long be connected to the phrase “I feel your pain.” The liberal “bleeding heart” does not bleed alone. American politics is damp with the blood of moderate and conservative hearts as well. Compassion also pitches a big tent among public intellectuals and scholars. Martha Nussbaum, a liberal, looks to compassion to revitalize our commitment to equality and to nurture global citizenship (2001, 401– 54). Amitai Etzioni, a communitarian, calls for an ethic of “caring and sharing” to balance liberal democratic individualism (2002, 56). Similarly, though more radi- cally, Virginia Held, a feminist, expects a new emphasis on care to fundamentally transform societies that until now have been founded on self-interest and contract (1993, 203–4, 223). Gertrude Himmelfarb, a neocon- servative, celebrates those British moral philosophers for whom compassion disposes citizens to exercise the social virtues on which decent and free societies depend (2004, 25–41; 92). Richard Rorty, a postmodernist, sees the capacity of the strong “to be moved to action by sad and sentimental stories” as a more dependable and de- fensible support for the powerless than the outmoded idea of human rights (1993, 20). Cutting across these praises of compassion is a common assault on that liberalism which founds itself on rational self-interest; such a liberalism fails to move people to refrain from exploiting their fellows, let alone to care about and help them (Alford 1993, 277). Jonathan Marks is Associate Professor of Politics, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA 19426 (jmarks@ursinus.edu). I would like to thank the H.B. Earhart Foundation for its gen- erous support of my research. Thanks to Laurence Cooper, Steven Kautz, Christopher Kelly, Clifford Orwin, David Williams, and my anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to the A.W. Clausen Center for World Business at Carthage College for the opportunity to present a version of this argument to my colleagues there. 1 For other descriptions of this appeal, see Orwin 1997a, and Woodward 2002. The ubiquity of appeals to compassion in American politics is not necessarily good news for the helpless. Mickey Kaus (1999) has called compassion a “miser- able basis for American politics.” Compassion politics “is fragile” because compassion is too weak to over- come self-interest; people will “stop giving when they feel pinched themselves.” Moreover, compassion is no substitute for justice, because it is a kindness the pow- erful extend to the weak, not an obligation binding on all. 2 Finally, compassion is undiscriminating and “tends to override traditional, and sensible, moral distinctions that should govern policy,” like the distinction between deserved and undeserved suffering. Kaus, writing for the New York Times, raises objections in brief to polit- ical compassion that Richard Boyd (2004) and Clifford Orwin (1997a, 1997b) raise at length and in depth. 3 We will consider those objections carefully, but for now they can be summed up this way: compassion is too weak and undiscriminating to play an important role in our politics. The politics of compassion should be resisted, not merely because politicians are likely to be insincere about compassion but because even sincere compassion does more political harm than good. The purpose of this essay is to offer Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s account of compassion 4 as a model for how these objections can be met. For Rousseau, compassion is not too weak but just weak enough. Compassionate feeling and action are among the least harmful man- ifestations of the dangerous natural human desire to extend the self and to show signs of power and activ- ity. Moreover, compassion need not be stronger than it is because it is only one of the passions that con- cern us with others and motivate action on their be- half. In Rousseau’s account, friendship and especially gratitude take up compassion’s slack. The latter also 2 See also Dionne 2001. 3 For related objections, see Berlant (1997, 7) and Elshtain (1996). On the weakness and indiscriminateness of compassion-based for- eign policy, see Hassner (1997, 217–18) and Rieff (2005). For a brief account of the debate over compassion among legal theorists, see Nussbaum (1996, 29–30). 4 Although Rousseau frequently uses piti´ e rather than compassion, I know of no one who asserts these terms mean different things for him. Like Dent (1992, 51, 278) and Orwin (1997b, 18), I take it he uses them interchangeably. 727