Reconceptualising Schopenhauer’s “Compassion” through Diametric and Concentric Spatial Structures of Relation

Abstract

Schopenhauer’s compassion (Mitleid) emphasises that a person participates immediately in another’s suffering. A pervasive theme among critics historically is that Schopenhauer engages in an unwitting reduction of compassion to some form of egoism. This article argues that a spatial-relational framework of understanding can support Schopenhauer’s compassion and defend it against the charges of egoism. This spatial-relational framework is drawn from a reinterpretation of a dimension of Lévi-Strauss’ observations on cross-cultural structures of relation – diametric and concentric spatial projections – without needing to endorse Lévi-Strauss’ structuralist commitments. A distinction between concentric spatial projections as assumed connection and diametric opposition as the ‘thick partition’ of assumed separation offers contrasting frames for understanding a relational self, in Schopenhauer’s Mitleid. The objections of critics, including Nietzsche, that Schopenhauer’s compassion is mere egoism, are criticisms due to the projection of a diametric spatial-relational structure of assumed separation onto Schopenhauer’s way of thinking. Schopenhauer’s distinctive conception of compassion adopts an implicit concentric relation as assumed connection which challenges traditional diametric structured Western logic, the framework within which his critics are embedded.

Keywords

• compassion
• egoism
• concentric space
• diametric space
• causality
• self