Paolo Costa

In maggioranza la tradizione intellettuale e politica occidentale ha guardato con sospetto il sentimento di compassione. Una delle più celebri critiche della compassione è quella proposta da Hannah Arendt. A ben vedere, però, la Arendt non critica la compassione in quanto tale, ma l’uso politico che di essa è stato fatto dai rivoluzionari moderni. In sé e per sé essa ha infatti un valore umano innegabile in quanto apertura all’altro e alla nostra realtà più immediata. Recentemente Martha Nussbaum ha proposto un’analisi dettagliata del sentimento di compassione. Anche dalla sua disamina emerge il carattere ambivalente della compassione che a suo avviso deve essere guidata da una teoria etica corretta. Se mantenuta entro i limiti della ragione la compassione può svolgere un ruolo essenziale nelle democrazie liberali contemporanee.Compassion has been looked upon with suspicion by the majority of our western intellectual and political tradition. One of the most famous criticisms of compassion was Hannah Arendt’s. She, however, did not criticize compassion as such, but complained the way it was used by modern rivolutionaries. Compassion in itself has an undeniable human value, to the extent that it opens us up to the others and to our most immediate reality. Martha Nussbaum has recently offered a detailed analysis of compassion. Its ambivalent character emerges from her reading, too. Her conclusion is that compassion should be guided by a correct ethical theory. If kept within the limits of reason, it can play a crucial role in contemporary liberal democracies

In broad terms, realism, relativism and pluralism can be regarded as the theoretical articulations of the following insights. Realism embodies the sense that what is at stake in our beliefs is something serious, i.e. that there is a fact of the matter, independent from our desire, which is going to decide whether what we believe in is true or not. Relativism, on the other hand, incorporates the realization that our cognitive take on the world is always perspectival, that there is no way to overcome the blind spot which enables the knower to have a world in view at all. Pluralism, finally, draws on the intuition that every human being and every human community cannot fully understand, let alone save themselves, without the help of others’ sense-making efforts. Against the background of Charles Taylor’s philosophy, the core of truth of the above insights will be discussed and arranged to develop an active view of toleration that not only urges us to put up with others, but encourages us to rely on the benefit of coming to terms with different outlooks and ways of life

Da un punto di vista temporale la felicità rappresenta un’esperienza intensa del presente. Non a caso la tradizione metafisica e cristiana ha rappresentato la beatitudine come una fuoriuscita dal tempo in un attimo che permane . Ma, accogliendo alcuni suggerimenti di Hannah Arendt, la felicità umana può essere intesa altresì come l’esperienza di un presente dilatato in cui il tempo non è trasceso, bensì esaltato in uno “spazio” della presenza in cui il trascorrere degli attimi non costituisce una perdita. Ma questo dono della felicità non è senza costi: esso spetta solo a chi si oppone alla deriva del tempo, a chi parteggia per un “presente che lotta”.From a temporal point of view, happiness consists in an intense experience of the present. It is not a chance that the metaphysical and christian tradition has understood beatitude as a getting out of time in a lasting moment . Drawing on some suggestions by Hannah Arendt, however, human happiness can be seen also as an experience of an extended present where the time is not transcended, but exalted in a “space” of presence where the elapsing of the “nows” does not represent a loss. In any case, the gift of happiness is not without costs: it belongs to those who oppose the drift of time, those who stand for a “fighting present”

What is it like to be an earthly, worldly, “secular” creature? Is it a blessing or is it a curse? During the last two centuries, this question has generally been answered with an appeal to disengagedness and objectivity, that is, to an indisputable “scientific” representation of the whole of “reality.” The world then seems to serve as a justification, through the “facts of the matter,” of the superiority of optimism or pessimism. On the contrary, I want in this essay to show that, in order to argue convincingly about our basic attitudes towards the world and the reasons pro or con for them (if we have any reasons at all), we do not have to insist on disinterest; we need, rather, to move toward primary and apparently objectless emotions, of the kind that are called Stimmungen in German. In other words, we need an epistemology of basic existential moods. In particular, I examine, out of many possible, one basic attitude toward world – the readiness to be surprised or amazed by things or events – on the hypothesis that one of the preconditions for feeling at home in the world has to be sought exactly here.