Rousseau and the Education of Compassion

Abstract

In this paper I examine Rousseau's strategy for teaching compassion in Book Four of Emile. In particular, I look at the three maxims on compassion that help to organise Rousseau's discussion, and the precise strategy that Emile's tutor uses to instil compassion while avoiding other passions, such as anger, fear and pride. The very idea of an education in compassion is an important one: Rousseau's discussion remains relevant, and he has correctly understood the significance of compassion for modern life. But in linking compassion to self‐interest, he creates a tension between Emile's natural sentiments, including compassion, as a way of bringing him into the social order. The Buddhist and Christian views of compassion help to clarify some of the difficulties with Rousseau's account.

Rousseau and his child-centered, anticultural education | Rousseau e sua educação infantocêntrica e anticultural

“…One of such works, by Richard White (2008), examines the supposedly negative opinion Rousseau presents about the normal feeling of compassion in the Book IV of Emile -compassion as a feeling accompanied by pity, an affirmation of power and domination towards an unfortunate fellow human -and how the tutor should deal with it during the transition of his pupil from childhood to social life. White aims to amend Rousseau's understanding of compassion in order to validate it from a moral and selfless point of view, an effort that is still coherent with the three maxims presented by Rousseau (1979, p.211) in Book IV and, the author claims, presents his true lesson.…”

From Girls to Slaves: Rousseau, Gendered Education and the Prison of Vanity

“…By his own definition of humanity, Rousseau is essentially renouncing a woman's by removing her liberty and morality through education, and replacing it with vanity as proscribed in Émile. Such debasement, ironically, also undermines what Rousseau saw as one of the great virtues of education, which is the capacity for liberation through the removal of social blinders and the unfettering of self by empathetically imagining the other (White, 2008;Scott, 2012, p. 464). Further, while women obviously bear the burden of dehumanization, they are not the only ones who become enslaved.…”

Compassion in Contemporary Social Policy: Applications of Virtue Theory

“…A variety of educational strategies aimed at cultivating feelings of empathy may be appropriate in these settings. Numerous authors and scholars have identified moral education and perspective-taking to be key to helping individuals understand ‘others’, thereby decreasing social distance and allowing room for compassionate response (e.g., Nussbaum, 2001; Barad, 2007; Porter, 2006; White, 2008).…”