Appel à la pitié, questionnement problématologique et paradoxe pathémique

Abstract

This paper examines texts evoking religious conceptions based on the absence of pity (and, a fortiori, of appeal to pity) towards human beings lowered to the status of enemies, both in DAECH magazine, Dar al-Islam, and in Voltaire’s correspondence regarding the punishments Catholics inflicted to the Sirvens. These texts emphasize the importance of problematizing the appeal to pity (which will be done here by looking at indirect argumentation) from the point of view of its content and of its manifestations and analyses, as the link between religion(s) and compassion or pity is not self-evident. The paper examines why there is no appeal to pity in the intolerant conceptions of religion; it then identifies the positive reasons for expressing pity and looks more specifically into the duty of pity. Thirdly, the paper examines an original discursive use of the appeal of pity in a semi-private, semi-public letter written by Voltaire in relation to the Sirven affair. Eventually, it outlines a linguistic problematization drawing on Michel Meyer’s notion of problematological questioning (2017) in relation to the discursive strategies adopted by Voltaire, strategies that unravel a pathemic paradox: the text becomes all the more touching because it contains relatively few pathemes and it spurs to action as the appeal to pity arouses, in addition to compassion, a feeling of indignation towards the iniquities that overwhelm the innocent victims.

Keywords

• argumentum ad misericordiam
• patheme
• pathemic paradox
• pathos
• problematological