Everything about Pity totally explained
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Pity, as in the Merriam-Webster
dictionary, implies tender or sometimes slightly contemptuous sorrow for one in misery or distress. By the nineteenth century, two different kinds of pity had come to be distinguished, which we might call "benevolent pity" and "contemptuous pity" (see Kimball). David Hume observed that pity which has in it a strong mixture of good-will, is nearly allied to contempt, which is a species of dislike, with a mixture of pride.
Pity is an
emotion that almost always results from an encounter with a real or perceived unfortunate, injured, or pathetic creature. A person experiencing pity will experience a combination of intense
sorrow and
mercy for the person or creature, often giving the pitied some kind of
aid, physical help, and/or
financial assistance. Although pity may be confused with
compassion,
empathy, commiseration, condolence or
sympathy. These all mean the act or capacity for sharing the painful feelings of another, however pity is different from any of these.
In regard to humans, pity may be felt towards the
homeless,
orphans,
people with disabilities, those with
terminal illness, and especially victims of
rape and
torture, by non-sufferers of these and similar things. Because pity will often result in the pitier aiding the pitied, some people equate pity with
sympathy and assume, therefore, that pity is naturally a positive thing. However, the
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed that pity causes an otherwise
normal person to feel his or her own
suffering in an inappropriately intense,
alienated way. "Pity makes suffering contagious," he says in
The Antichrist, meaning that it's important for the pitier not to allow him/herself to
feel superior to the pitied, lest such a
power imbalance result in the pitied
retaliating against the help being offered.
Nietzsche pointed out that since all people to some degree value
self-esteem and
self-worth, pity can negatively affect any situation. Additionally, pity may actually be
psychologically harmful to the pitied:
Self-pity and
depression can sometimes be the result of the power imbalance fostered by pity, sometimes with extremely negative psychological and psycho-social consequences for the pitied party.
Though in his later works he reverses his position and sees Pity as an emotion that can draw beings together,
Mystic poet
William Blake is known to have been ambivalent about the emotion Pity. In
The Book of Urizen Pity begins when Los looks on the body of Urizen bound in chains (Urizen 13.50-51). However, Pity furthers the fall, "For pity divides the soul" (13.53), dividing Los and Enitharmon (Enitharmon is named Pity at her birth). Analyzers of this work assert that Blake shows that "Pity defuses the power of righteous indignation and proper prophetic wrath that lead to action. Pity is a distraction; the soul is divided between it and the action a 'pitiable' state demands. This is seen as Los's division into active male and tearful female, the latter deluding the former." Again railing against Pity in
The Human Abstract, Blake exclaims: "Pity would be no more, / If we didn't make somebody Poor" (1-2).
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