One last thought Joan-Carles Melich (Barcelona, 1961) in his practical philosophy argues that if morality is based on a consolidated framework of norms, ethics It’s a different algo. The real sense of ethics is contained here from the (classical) idea of good or from the (modern) idea of being to experience compassion for those who listen.
The ethics of compassion
Portada de ‘Etica de la compasión’.
Joan-Carles Melich
Tusquets, 2026
320 pages, €21.90
From this we can understand that it is not asserted here let’s debate Have compassion or that kind of philanthropic affection is something we love because it’s goodno Compassion occurs between men (not to be confused with charity) and that’s it. Give it we don’t talk about duty, we don’t talk about goodness, we don’t talk about norms, we don’t talk about valuesthe broad term “contecimiento” is proposed here (pp. 54–55). More, sympathy is an intrusive and exceptional response. “That’s what the other one is asking me.” […] It is the description of his otherness that makes me question” (p. 229).
To illustrate his position, the author refers to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 10, on page 218. There, Jesus tells the story of a man who goes on the road to Jericho, who is ambushed by bandits and does not receive help from two who are passing by, “but the Samaritan who goes astray, I cared for him, and when he said to me, I have sold, I am an inheritance…”. The Samaritan above was the “first” for the individual who needed to know how to be compassionate, or in Reina-Valera’s version (more faithful to Jerome) because “he was moved to mercy” (verse 33).
Mèlich coloca, con Schopenhauer, el sentimiento de la compasión o Mitleid en la cúspide de la metaética. Por otro lado, este escrito Ética de la compasión se inscribe dentro de una antropología de cuño existencial que incide en la incompletitud, la ambigüedad, la fragilidad, la vulnerabilidad, la imprevisibilidad, el simbolismo, el “espíritu poético”, el perspectivismo y sobre todo la finitud de la vida humana. La compasión sucede… entre mortales.
El autor dedica una sección considerable del ensayo a explicar qué no puede ser la ética de la compasión. Adopta una posición escéptica ante las construcciones sistemáticas de la philosophia perennis. Siguiendo una sencilla línea de argumentación vitalista y existencial, juzga Mèlich que los “metafísicos” (parece extender a todos los defensores de una filosofía primera lo que se cumple en los tres clásicos aducidos por él) han hipostasiado sus conceptos más allá del espacio y del tiempo con objeto de superar la pavorosa mortalidad, como hicieron los faraones con sus pirámides.
Este ensayo se inscribe en una antropología de cuño existencial que incide en la incompletitud, la ambigüedad
“Para una ética de la compasión no hay nada inmune al espacio y al tiempo, a la contingencia y al azar” (p. 134), considera Mèlich. Ésta “surge de la relación corpórea y contingente, doliente y sombría, surge en las grietas, en las huellas y en las ausencias” (p. 112). Es “estar pendiente del sufrimiento del otro […] I am not worth being installed in the world, and I do not know how to be there.” Even more, “To live ethically is not to know how to live at allnot competent” (p. 103).
In chapter 3 if dialogues with the great authors of contemporary continental philosophy. On page 222, the value of Kant’s “human dignity” is described. Although compassion is not a “duty” (p. 225), Mèlich ultimately denies that it can be “educated” (p. 241).
I found it strange that this author wrote about Nietzsche (the author who wrote the most aggressive anti-compassion sites) alias y de Schopenhauer, philosopher without metaphysics. I received less than one recap concise and worded as a conclusion, and because we have exceptional news!, more illustrative examples in the course of the discussion, like the great kindness of the Good Samaritan.
Leave a Reply