Once Again with Feeling: Empathy in Deliberative Discourse

Abstract

In Upheavals of Thought, Martha C. Nussbaum asks, What positive contribution do emotions, as such, make to ethical deliberation, both personal and public? (298). Her answer to that question is consider able, an answer that aligns with and diverges from Matthew J. Newcomb' s efforts in Totalized Compassion to rescue as basis for social action. Newcomb and Nussbaum lay similar claim to the impor tance of emotion, particularly compassion, which Newcomb defines as sympathy for and desire to mitigate another's suffering (106). Compas sion, Newcomb argues, can do important work by lead[ing] to imagina tive connections between people, but only when it is not totalizing concept or sole basis for relationship (107). Similarly, Nussbaum envisions compassion, a painful emotion occasioned by the awareness of another person' s undeserved misfortune (3 01), as keystone to social justice; she claims that compassion can be an invaluable way of extending our ethical awareness and of understanding the human mean ing of events and policies (14). Thus, in making his argument to secure position for in deliberative discourse, Newcomb reinforces Nussbaum's own efforts to reclaim emotions, including compassion, as crucial to ethical decision-making. However, Nussbaum and Newcomb also diverge; they differ signifi cantly in their starting points concerning the nature of all emotions and especially the nature of compassion. On the one hand, Nussbaum argues that all emotions contain cognitive element; emotions, including