Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics

Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Series-title......Page 6
Title......Page 9
Copyright......Page 10
Contents......Page 13
Preface......Page 15
Acknowledgements......Page 19
PART I The question of the spectator......Page 21
1.1 Pity and justice......Page 23
1.2 Compassion and pity......Page 25
1.3 The Good Samaritan......Page 27
1.4 The community bond......Page 29
1.5 The question of commitment......Page 31
1.6 Distance and action......Page 33
1.7 Paying and speaking......Page 37
2.1 The requirement of public speech......Page 40
2.2 Fictional suffering and real suffering......Page 41
2.3 The unacceptability of ‘that’s how it is’......Page 43
2.4 Theatre and politics......Page 44
2.5 The pure spectator......Page 47
2.6 Taking sides......Page 50
2.7 Detachment and commitment......Page 52
3.1 The impartiality of the spectator......Page 55
3.2 The powers of the imagination......Page 58
3.3 The spectator of the spectator......Page 59
3.4 The emotive style......Page 61
3.5 The requirement of symmetry......Page 63
3.6 Justice and beneficence......Page 66
3.7 The coordination of emotional commitments......Page 68
3.8 Nourishing the imagination......Page 71
PART II The topics of suffering......Page 75
4.1 From indignation to accusation......Page 77
4.2 Identification of the persecutor......Page 78
4.3 The ‘affaire’ form......Page 79
4.4 Social denunciation......Page 81
4.5 From revolt to investigation......Page 84
4.6 The metaphysics of justice......Page 87
4.7 Criticism of denunciation......Page 90
4.8 Denunciation and its critics......Page 93
5.1 The unfortunate’s gratitude......Page 97
5.2 The sentiment of urgency......Page 99
5.3 The metaphysics of interiority......Page 101
5.4 The welling-up of emotion......Page 102
5.5 A window on the place of the heart......Page 105
5.6 The vocabulary of sentiments......Page 111
5.7 Virtuous young women in distress......Page 113
6.1 The indulgence of sentiment......Page 116
6.2 The duplicity of sham emotions......Page 119
6.3 The ambiguous pleasure of sensitive hearts......Page 121
6.4 The amateur of suffering......Page 123
6.5 Sadistic pity......Page 126
6.6 The political justification of singular tastes......Page 129
6.7 The inconsistency of Sadean cities......Page 131
7.1 A third way......Page 134
7.2 The painter of horror......Page 135
7.3 With neither indignation nor tender-heartedness......Page 137
7.4 The sublime and the picturesque......Page 140
7.5 Aesthetic difference......Page 143
7.6 The passivity of the object......Page 146
7.7 The operation of the sublime on pity......Page 148
8.1 Aesthetics and politics......Page 151
8.2 Resentment = denunciation + sentiment......Page 152
8.3 First use: Nietzsche against humanism......Page 156
8.4 Second use: Nietzsche with the rebels......Page 158
8.5 Sade in the Bastille......Page 160
8.6 The sovereign gutter-snipe......Page 162
8.7 The liberating release......Page 164
PART III The crisis of pity......Page 167
9.1 The proposals of commitment......Page 169
9.2 Real emotions and flctional emotions......Page 171
9.3 Four uncertainties......Page 172
9.4 First uncertainty: the conflict of beliefs......Page 174
9.5 Second uncertainty: the avoidance of reference......Page 179
9.6 1950: the Soviet camps and the identification of the victims......Page 181
9.7 1975: The Soviet camps and the crisis of denunciation......Page 187
10.1 Third uncertainty: the opacity of desire......Page 190
10.2 Fourth uncertainty: the vanity of intentions to act......Page 192
10.3 Humanitarian society and its enemies......Page 197
10.4 Justification of the humanitarian......Page 201
10.5 Media action......Page 203
10.6 The manifestation of speech......Page 205
10.7 Humanitarian action and social movement......Page 208
10.8 The politics of the present......Page 211
1 The politics of pity......Page 213
2 Taking sides......Page 216
3 The moral spectator......Page 219
4 The topic of denunciation......Page 225
5 The topic of sentiment......Page 227
6 The critique of sentimentalism......Page 228
7 The aesthetic topic......Page 233
8 Heroes and the accursed......Page 235
9 What reality has misfortune?......Page 241
10 How realistic is action?......Page 248
Index......Page 260