knowledge have value not only instrumentally but also intrinsically.^40 Interestingly,
David Rieff, close to the MSF understanding of humanitarianism, tells us that an
“inchoate idea about witness, in the Quaker sense of the term, was what set me on
my journeys to all those ground zeros.”^41
But if action remains at the heart of the humanitarian purpose, knowledge
of human suffering and crises of humanity cannot ever be an unalloyed good. It
necessarily requires filtration and mediation. Stan Cohen suggests that a surfeit of
empathy can be overwhelming and paralysing.^42 Michael Ignatieff is blunter: “There
are strict limits to human empathy.”^43 To quote Primo Levi again: “if we had to and
were able to suffer the sufferings of everyone, we could not live. Perhaps the
dreadful gift of pity for the many is granted only to saints.”^44 Judith Lichtenberg
agrees:
people have only so much psychological room to feel others’ pain. It’s not at
all clear that we would want to make people more sensitive in this way if we
could. The suffering most people encounter among those in their inner circle- through death, disease, and innumerable varieties of evil, stupidity, and ill-
fortune - is quite enough.^45
The risks involved in a surfeit of others’ suffering are backed up by studies of
professional humanitarianism. John Norris’ recent portrait of aid workers, The
Disaster Gypsies acknowledges that many of them are “disaster junkies”, but overall
the picture of the corrosive effect of wandering lives largely defined by others’
40
See for example the website Quaker Witness in Africa. Available at
http://quakerafrica.blogspot.com/; accessed on 13 A 41 ugust 2010.
42 Rieff, A Bed for the Night , 17.
43 Cohen, States of Denial , 72.
Michael Ignatieff, "The Stories We Tell: Television and Humanitarian Aid", in Hard
Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention , ed. Jonathan Moore (Oxford:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 287. 44
Cited in Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference , 36. Thomas Laqueur also a slightly
different version of this passage. Laqueur, "Mourning, Pity, and the Work of Narrative in
the Making Of "Humanity"", 46. We might also usefully recall George Orwell’s sceptical
remark on sainthood. “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved
innocent”. George Orwell, "Reflections on Gandhi", in Collected Essays (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1949), 451. 45
Lichtenberg, "Absence and the Unfond Heart", 88.