Beyond Nietzsche: Getting at the Distinction between Sympathy and Pity
Pity is a misunderstood term. It’s denotation is simply the sorrow you feel when confronted by another’s misfortune. But the connotation is something else entirely — it evokes images of superiority and of contempt. The reason for this association is this. Pity — even when well-intentioned — is inescapably non-reciprocal. It is asymmetrical between the pitier and the pitied.
It was perhaps Nietzsche who first recognized this. And he took it several steps further; for Nietzsche, not only was pity non-reciprocal, not only was it inherently asymmetrical, but it was also actively detrimental in the way it compounded weakness. In The Anti-Christ he states:
People have dared to call pity a virtue… people have gone even further, making it into the virtue, the foundation and source of all virtues, — but of course you always have to keep in mind that this was the perspective of a nihilistic philosophy that inscribed the negation of life on its shield. Schopenhauer was right here: pity negates life, it makes life worthy of negation, — pity is the practice of nihilism. Once more: this depressive and contagious instinct runs counter to the instincts that preserve and enhance the value of life: by multiplying misery just as much as by conserving everything miserable, pity is one of the main tools used to increase…
