Why Compassion is Important in the Defense of Objectivity and Free Speech
Those who trample on others' feelings risk falling into a subjective rabbit hole
Welcome to a new series, where I attempt to build a philosophy of compassion, and to robustly justify and defend the concept of compassion. I believe that compassion is the driver of a reformist politics, and it is the best way to prevent a movement from turning impractical or reactionary.
Today, I'm going to talk about why compassion is fully compatible with rationality and objectivity.
In recent years, there has been a trend towards pitting compassion and rationality against each other. This trend was set into motion by two developments in the previous decade: firstly, there was the hijacking of social justice by the postmodern critical theory movement, which led to the false association of anti-objective philosophical theories with justice for oppressed minorities. This led to the misguided view among some people that compassion and social justice requires less commitment to free speech and objectivity. Secondly, there was the so-called anti-SJW movement, which popularized slogans like 'facts don't care about your feelings'. This led to another misguided view: the more callous one is about feelings, the more factual and objective one gets.
However, both the aforementioned views have no basis in reality at all. There is no incompatibility between being compassionate on one hand, and being committed to objectivity and rationality on the other hand. One can remain committed to the objective truth, and to the values that support this commitment, like free speech and intellectual freedom, without giving up on compassion and empathy. Indeed, I would argue that being compassionate enables one to become even more objective, or at least less prone to culture war-style biases and distortions. This is because, if you are truly compassionate, you would care about people's lives, and you would therefore truly listen to what they have to say. This way, you wouldn't be missing out on important facts, or important sides to a story, as culture warriors living in an echo chamber would, for example. Compassion, empathy and the willingness to listen allows bridges to be built, which allows the whole picture to be seen, and true objectivity and rationality to be achieved. It is the best antidote to the echo chambers that tribalism and the culture wars have created.
On the other hand, it is often the willingness to be callous, the willingness to disregard others' feelings, that enables the loss of objectivity and rationality. I have seen this happen with culture warriors on both sides. On the left, I've seen people get brainwashed by their philosophy, to believe that some people are 'oppressors' because of their immutable characteristics and/or opinions (often taken out of context). On the right, I've seen culture war and moral panic narratives used to demonize certain groups of people, painting them as bad or crazy with a broad brush. Either way, the effect is the dehumanizing of the other, the willingness to automatically dismiss what they have to say, and the willingness to ignore their plight. All this, by definition, leads to loss of objectivity and rationality, because you are no longer seeing the whole picture, and taking everything into account on balance. This, of course, also means that any order arising from this kind of attitude would not be a good order. Indeed, it is likely to be a bad, oppressive order. Someone who refuses to be callous, who is committed to being compassionate towards every fellow human being at all times, would never fall into this trap.
In conclusion, compassion is not only compatible with objectivity and rationality, compassion actually helps ensure we stay objective by making us truly listen to all sides of an argument. On the other hand, it is the decision to forego compassion that allows people to fall down the rabbit hole of subjectivity, via a willingness to trample on others' lives and voices.
Today, I am going to argue that compassion plays a key role in the maintenance of freedom, and the values that support freedom, like free speech. After all, one of the major arguments against morally coercive authoritarians is that they don't always get their morality right, despite their hubris, and their attempts to impose their moral positions on others is therefore harmful and oppressive. Moral libertarianism, then, is justified on the ethical principle of 'do no harm'. This argument is under appreciated in the contemporary West, and I think we should use it more.
As I said last time, the sentiment of pitting compassion against rationality, as seen in the rise of slogans like 'facts don't care about your feelings', have contributed to the erosion of freedom over the past decade. While I've long argued that values like free speech are made meaningful by our commitment to objectivity and rationality, the values of freedom can actually be derived from compassion too. For example, free speech itself can be justified by compassion. If you truly care about other people, you would want to at least listen to what they have to say in full. If you have at least a bit of empathy for other people, you would also not support a public campaign to vilify, punish and cancel them just because of something they have said. Therefore, compassion bolsters the case for free speech, and also strengthens the case against cancel culture.
At this point, you might counter-argue that so-called safe speech practices are argued on the basis of compassion too. The fact is, the argument for 'safe speech' on the grounds of compassion is both ultimately faulty, and not entirely honest. It is faulty because it is ultimately not compassionate to tell minorities they have to seek refuge in safe spaces, while refusing to have the difficult debates that will ultimately bring respect, acceptance and equality to such minorities. The avoidance of debate also makes reform more difficult to achieve, which ultimately hurts minorities too. Finally, the kind of morally coercive authoritarianism inherent in rejecting free speech is simply incompatible with being truly compassionate, if you look at the whole picture. Furthermore, we should recognize that 'safe speech' is actually a product of postmodern critical theory influence, and hence not rooted in pure compassion.
Part of the promise of classical liberalism is the ability for individuals to pursue happiness. This is reflected in 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness', and also in John Stuart Mill's utilitarian argument for liberalism. Given the importance of happiness and utility in the classical liberal cannon, it is a fundamentally important point that a truly liberal society must not arbitrarily deny any individual's opportunity to pursue happiness. Cultural warriors whose aim is to 'own' the opposite tribe and make them suffer, or alternatively to turn the tables of oppression, are therefore by definition anti-liberal. Maintaining compassion helps us with the objective of respecting other people's rights to pursue happiness on their own terms, even when we don't necessarily agree with their views.
Finally, compassion also helps with preventing the conditions where authoritarianism is likely to be enabled, or where freedom is likely to be compromised. For example, tribalism can be prevented to a great extent by compassion and empathy. Also, when you are compassionate, you would not treat people as less important than the fulfillment of abstract ideas, which as I have previously discussed, is almost always bad for freedom.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
You can also read and follow TaraElla's second substack, focused on political philosophy, here.