self-image will be compromised if they do not.^29 This is arguably to do with the fact
that, as Stan Cohen argues, shame, unlike guilt, is a “social emotion”, appealing “to
a sense of community and moral interdependence rather than personal
responsibility”.^30 But, Lichtenberg argues that this sense of shame is easily
internalised, and can therefore even function when the actor in question is
unobserved.^31 For Lichtenberg, shame is one of the crucial elements in her
argument, in relation to aid, that “if we want people to give more, we must raise
the general level of giving in a society”.^32 Martha Nussbaum, though in general
concerned with the negative effects of shaming, also notes the potential of certain
kinds of shame to spur people towards valuable activity.^33
This opens out the discussion of empathy to something much more public, a
“cultural practice” as Lynn Hunt has it, and clearly relevant to the issue of how to
spark and deepen humanitarian concern.^34 Though at the core of empathy and pity
are cognitive processes experienced on a personal basis, Nancy Sherman reminds us
that “our private imaginations are fed by public images and narratives”.^35 The
activation of pity and empathy depend on struggles over knowledge and ignorance
of suffering and how to communicate these.
II Knowing and Ignoring Suffering
Reflecting on the phenomenon of German adhesion to Nazism, Primo Levi
perceptively highlighted the “way the typical German citizen won and defended his
29
Judith Lichtenberg, "Absence and the Unfond Heart: Why People Are Less Giving Than
They Might Be", in The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy , ed. Deen K.
Chatterjee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 30 2004), 90-91.
Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering (Cambridge:
Polity, 2001), 216. 31
32 Lichtenberg, "Absence and the Unfond Heart", 90-91.
33 Ibid., 88.
Martha C. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2004), 347. 34
35 Hunt, Inventing Human Rights , 29.
Sherman, "Empathy, Respect, and Humanitarian Intervention": 114.