| has gloss | eng: Pity evokes a tender or sometimes slightly contemptuous sorrow or empathy for people, a person, or an animal in misery, pain, or distress. In regard to humans, a protective or quasi-paternal feeling of pity may be felt towards marginalized or impoverished people such as homeless families; orphans; people with disabilities or terminal illness, and victims of rape and torture. People who have previously experienced the pain or misfortune in question may feel greater pity. Because pity will often result in the pitier aiding the pitied, some people equate pity with sympathy and assume, therefore, that pity is naturally a positive thing. However, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed that pity causes an otherwise normal person to feel his or her own suffering in an inappropriately intense, alienated way. "Pity makes suffering contagious," he says in The Antichrist, meaning that it is important for the pitier not to allow him/herself to feel superior to the pitied, lest such a power imbalance result in the pitied retaliating against the help being offered. |
