Bergson, Time and Free Will, Chapter 1, §12 "The Moral Feelings. Pity. Its Increasing Intensity is a Qualitative Progress"

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary; my commentary is in brackets.]

Bergson,

Time and Free Will

(Essai sur les donnéesimmédiates de la conscience)

Chapter I, "The Intensity of Psychic States"

Part IV: "The Moral Feelings"

§12 "The Moral Feelings. Pity. Its Increasing Intensity is a Qualitative Progress"

Pity pains us. And we are moved to assist. Perhaps we consider what it is like to be the person pitied. It might be that we are horrified by the thought of their misfortune happening to us.

Regardless, true pity is of another sort. Here we desire suffering, but so faintly that we never wish it upon ourselves. We act as though Nature had treated the pitied person unjustly, and so we want also her injustice so that we cannot be blamed with her. The true essence of pity is "a need for self-abasement, an aspiration downwards." (19c) It raises our self-esteem, and causes us to believe we are above our sensuous nature. So the "increasing intensity" of pity is really a qualitative progress:

1) from repugnance to fear,

2) from fear to sympathy, and

3) from sympathy to humility.

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Images from the pages summarized above, in the English Translation [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Images from the pages summarized above, in the original French [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Transl. F. L. Pogson, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001).

Available online at:

http://www.archive.org/details/timeandfreewill00pogsgoog

French text from:

Bergson, Henri. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Originally published Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1888.

http://www.archive.org/details/essaisurlesdonn00berguoft