| OCR Text |
Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 261 As defined in this discussion, compassion precludes such abnegation of the self and its interests, because compassion disposes one to act in accordance with the moral principle of rendering aid to the needy. Applying this principle requires one to conceive of oneself either as a potential provider or as a potential recipient of aid, and calls upon the former to put their resources in the service of the latter. But incapacitating self-sacrifice is clearly a condition of need that itself demands amelioration. Hence consistent application of the principle of rendering aid to the needy prohibits depleting or sacrificing one's resources so thoroughly that one ends up joining the ranks of the needy oneself. Rather, the terms of this principle implicitly require protecting the psychological integrity of the self that is disposed to act on it, at the same that it requires extending the self in service to the other. So the principle of rendering aid to the needy imposes a double requirement of balance on the affective and conative dispositions it regulates. Compassion satisfies the double requirement of balance by satisfying the symmetry requirement already discussed. Indeed, this double requirement just is a special case of the symmetry requirement. In compassion, the interests and demands of the self are balanced in relation to those of the other because the self as a unified whole is balanced in relation to the other. The self is situated between self-absorption and vicarious possession with respect to another's inner state of suffering. It is a condition both of inviolate inner integrity and of experiencing the other's felt distress, in which the demand for relief of that distress is met by principled action to restore the other to a condition of similarly inviolate integrity. Mean-spiritedness, by contrast, evinces poverty of spirit. It is a condition of emotional deprivation, in which inner integrity is violated by the other's felt distress - i.e. in which one is vicariously possessed by that distress; and in which the demand for relief of that distress is met by desensitizing and fortifying the self against it - i.e. in which one is self-absorbed by one's own. Thus the spiritually undernourished or mean-spirited self swings between vicarious possession and self-absorption relative to the other's distress. It is bereft of the inner resources both for preserving the integrity of the self against incursion by the other, and for extending those resources beyond the self to the other. Whereas compassion presupposes the integrity and emotional abundance necessary to fuel actions on behalf of another as well as those on behalf of oneself, mean-spiritedness involves a felt violation, an emotional deficit in which action of behalf of the other is experienced as an extortion, as usurping those on behalf of oneself. Compassion thus prepares the self for a balanced accommodation with the other because it requires one neither to sacrifice one's own well-being on the other's behalf, nor the other's well-being on one's own. Instead it involves respect for the psychological boundaries of both, and © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
