Moral impulse expressed as duty gave way to pity under modern subjection

Evidence

Horkheimer also questioned the moral imperative that Kant had postulated. Although agreeing that a moral impulse apart from egoistic self-interest did in fact exist, he argued that its expression had changed since Kant’s time. Whereas in the early nineteenth century it had manifested itself as duty, it now appeared as either pity or political concern. Pity, Horkheimer argued, was produced by the recognition that man had ceased being a free subject and was reduced instead to an object of forces beyond his control.’s This Kant had not experienced himself, because his time provided greater individual freedom, at least for the entrepreneur. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 216

Categorization

• XREF: Pity as the moral marker of reduced subjectivity connects to later critical-theoretic themes of reification and administered society. — connects to: Pity toward the oppressed can destroy human dignity more certainly than misery itself does; Being-for-others is suffered rather than actively existed; Pity presupposes inequality while empathy requires equal standing — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race…, 518 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Pity presupposes inequality while empathy requires equal standing #expands (0.85) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 518
• Pity toward the oppressed can destroy human dignity more certainly than misery itself does #complicates (0.80)
• Pity toward the oppressed naturally becomes outrage at their oppressors #expands (0.80) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 518
• Being-for-others is suffered rather than actively existed #complicates (0.72)