In an attempt to get clearer, and less hyperbolic, about the value of suffering, I earlier suggested the idea of a suffering threshold, which is the “point” at which suffering loses its (positive) value and warrants easing. The idea of easing suffering leads directly to compassion/pity and this passage from section 338 of Nietzsche’s the Gay Science:
The whole economy of my soul and the balance effected by “distress,” the way new springs and needs break open, the way in which old wounds are healing, the way whole periods of the past are shed–all such things that may be involved in distress are of no concern to our dear pitying friends; they wish to help and have no thought of the personal necessity of distress, although terrors, deprivations, impoverishments, midnights, adventures, risks, and blunders are as necessary for me and for you as are their opposites. It never occurs to them that, to put it mystically, the path to one’s own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell. No, the “religion of pity” (or “the heart”) commands them to help, and they believe that they have helped most when they have helped most quickly. (Kaufmann’s translation)
The last line in German is: “die ‘Religion des Mitleidens’ (oder ‘das Herz’) gebietet zu helfen, und man glaubt am besten geholfen zu haben, wenn man am schnellsten geholfen hat!” Kaufmann translates “‘Religion des Mitleidens’” as “‘religion of pity’”; however, the German “das Mitleid” can be translated as either “compassion” or “pity,” among other things. Perhaps nothing hangs on the difference between “compassion” and “pity.” However, Jeremiah Conway notes a possible difference of importance. In “A Buddhist Critique of Nussbaum’s Account of Compassion” he writes:
