Pity’s enemies rejected misfortune rather than condoning the powerful

Evidence

Apathy appears at those turning points of bourgeois history (even in ancient times) when the sovereign historical tendency makes the pauci beati aware of their own impotence. Apathy indicates the reversion of individual human spontaneity into the private world which was thereby established as the bourgeois life-form proper. Stoicism (which is the bourgeois philosophy) makes it easier for the privileged, confronted with the suffering of others, to steel themselves to their own threats. It confirms the general by elevating private existence, as a protection from the generality, to the condition of a principle. The bourgeois’ private sphere is upper-class cultural material that has lost its status. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 83 (#expands, via linked claim)

Pity and outrage are two sides of the same coin. Pity is powerful, and also dangerous, because it implies that the person who has the emotion is more powerful than the person who is the object of the emotion. Empathy is not a relevant emotion here because it is built on a greater sense of equality between the two parties; the oppressed Muslim woman is figured as coming from a culture so different that it is difficult to understand or relate to. Pity makes outrage easy; feeling sorrow for someone’s distress easily morphs into anger at the circumstances that caused the distress and thus outrage at the men, the culture, and the religion. Outrage emerges from the anger and shock when one’s sensibilities or sense of right and wrong are offended. Pity and outrage lead to experiencing oneself as invested in justice. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 518 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Pity toward the oppressed naturally becomes outrage at their oppressors — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race…, 518; Stoic apathy lets the privileged steel themselves against others’ suffering — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 83; Those who rejected compassion were negatively declaring themselves for revolution (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Those who rejected compassion were negatively declaring themselves for revolution #corroborates (0.90)
• Pity toward the oppressed naturally becomes outrage at their oppressors #contradicts (0.85) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 518
• Stoic apathy lets the privileged steel themselves against others’ suffering #expands (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 83
• Both sides preferred to blame divine storm rather than human defeat #exemplifies (0.75) — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 881