Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 44, No.

1, 2010

When Teachers Must Let Education Hurt:

Rousseau and Nietzsche on Compassion
and the Educational Value of Suffering

MARK E. JONAS

Avi Mintz (2008) has recently argued that Anglo-American

educators have a tendency to alleviate student suffering in the
classroom. According to Mintz, this tendency can be
detrimental because certain kinds of suffering actually
enhance student learning. While Mintz compellingly describes
the effects of educator’s desires to alleviate suffering in
students, he does not examine one of the roots of the desire:
the feeling of compassion or pity (used as synonyms here).
Compassion leads many teachers to unreflectively alleviate
student struggles. While there are certainly times when
compassion is necessary to help students learn, there are
other times when it must be overcome. Compassion in the
classroom is a two-edged sword that must be carefully
employed; and yet it is often assumed that it is an unequivocal
good that ought to trump all other impulses. In this article I
hope to raise awareness concerning the promises and pitfalls
of compassion in education by examining the theories of two
historical figures who famously emphasised compassion in
their philosophical writings: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and
Friedrich Nietzsche. Rousseau and Nietzsche argue that
compassion is a powerful educational force but that it must be
properly employed. For Rousseau and Nietzsche, compassion
is necessary to develop self-mastery in human beings—the
ultimate goal of education—but it is a compassion that must
hurt in order to help. My hope is that Rousseau’s and
Nietzsche’s ideas on compassion will encourage thoughtful
reflection on the uses and abuses of compassion in education.

INTRODUCTION
In The Labor of Learning: A Study of the Role of Pain in Learning, Avi
Mintz argues that pain is a necessary and therefore desirable component of
education. Mintz further argues that Anglo-American educators and

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46 M. E. Jonas

theorists are, unfortunately, more inclined to try to mitigate pain in

education rather than allow it.1 In an evocative example of the tendency of
teachers to attempt to alleviate suffering, Mintz cites a study describing
the lengths American mathematics teachers go to in order to protect
students from struggle and confusion. Rather than let students struggle
through their difficulties, teachers are more often inclined to ‘rescue’ the
students so that they can feel successful and not be discouraged. Quoting
the mathematics study, Mintz explains that ‘it is typical for the teacher to
intervene at the first sign of struggle’ and that ‘confusion and frustration,
in this traditional American view, should be minimized’ (Mintz, 2008, p.
72). According to Mintz, while certain painful experiences can be
educationally detrimental, there are many others that are educationally
beneficial. Unfortunately, in trying to protect students from the former,
educators often deny students the latter. Mintz’s study is important
because is reveals the Western tendency to believe that students will learn
best when they have ‘positive’ and ‘affirming’ experiences in the
classroom, rather than when they experience painful struggles and
difficulties.
One issue in Mintz’s study that is underdeveloped, however, concerns
the role of compassion or pity2 in teachers’ decisions to mitigate student
suffering. Mintz discusses the role compassion plays in the cultivation of
empathy in social justice classes but does not explicitly discuss the role
compassion or pity plays in teachers’ motivation for minimising
educational pains. Compassion, like the belief that students learn best
when they are not struggling, leads many teachers to unreflectively
alleviate student struggles. While there are certainly times when
compassion is necessary to help students learn, there are other times
when it must be overcome. Compassion in the classroom is a two-edged
sword that must be carefully employed; and yet it is often assumed that it
is an unequivocal good that ought to trump all other impulses.
In this article I hope to raise awareness about the promises and pitfalls
of compassion in education by examining the theories of two historical
figures who famously emphasised compassion in their philosophical
writings: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche. Rousseau and
Nietzsche argue that pity is a powerful educational force but that it must
be properly employed. For Rousseau and Nietzsche, pity is necessary for
self-mastery—the ultimate goal of education—but it is a pity that must
hurt in order to help. My hope is that Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s ideas on
pity will encourage thoughtful reflection on the uses and abuses of pity in
education.3

THE ORTHODOX VIEW OF ROUSSEAU’S AND NIETZSCHE’S

CONCEPTION OF PITY
In her book Rousseau and Nietzsche: Towards an Aesthetic Morality,
Katrin Froese affirms the orthodox view that Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s
positions on the value of pity are antithetical (Froese, 2001, pp. 143–144).

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I call Froese’s assertion orthodox because the few commentators, who

have compared the philosophers’ ideas on pity, all concur that their
positions are divergent.4 This interpretation is not without ground. There
are numerous examples of extreme differences in their positions on pity,
like, for instance, Rousseau’s claim that ‘It is quite certain that pity . . .
contributes to the mutual preservation of the entire species’ (‘Discourse on
the Origin of Inequality’, p. 55).5 This view sharply contrasts with
Nietzsche’s assertion that ‘Pity is the practice of nihilism. To repeat: this
depressive and contagious instinct crosses those instincts which aim at the
preservation of life and at the enhancement of its value’ (‘Antichrist’, 7).6
Based on statements like these, one can see why these philosophers are
reputed to oppose one another. However, in spite of these seemingly
conclusive divergences, their positions are more similar than they are
different.
Broadly speaking, Rousseau and Nietzsche argue that pity comes in two
forms.7 The first form of pity is beneficial because it causes individuals
and the human race become stronger. The second form of pity, on the
other hand, is detrimental because it helps individuals and the human race
itself to become weaker. Rousseau and Nietzsche advocate the first form
of pity and agree in large measure about how one ought to cultivate it. At
the same time, they both denounce the second form of pity and largely
agree about how to avoid it.

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION IN ROUSSEAU AND NIETZSCHE

Rousseau and Nietzsche are highly critical of the education systems of
their times. Both regard education as a social institution that is the
business of constructing persons and consider the education system of
their own cultures to be constructing persons of an undesirable sort
(Rousseau, E, pp. 40–41). Rather than constructing individuals who are
self-disciplined, courageous and autonomous, the education system
constructs persons who are capricious, cowardly and governed by the
opinions of others. They both regard the individual as constantly
developing and see education as an important guide towards the healthy
development of autonomy (Rousseau, E, pp. 33–41; Nietzsche, SE, pp.
127–130).
The way they conceive of the self that makes up these persons is under
debate. Theorists have been discussing the concept of the self in both
thinkers for some time. In the case of Rousseau, there are some who argue
that self-identity is completely socially-constructed (Ansell-Pearson,
1991, chapter 3), some who argue that self-identity is environmentally-
constructed (which means partly naturally-constructed and partly socially-
constructed) (O’Hagan, 1999, chapter 1; Winch, 1996, pp. 416–417), and
some who argue that self-identity is partly ontologically prior to
experience and partly constructed by experience (Noble, 1991, chapter
1; Mason, 1997, pp. 37–55). In the case of Nietzsche, there are some who
argue that self-identity is completely socially-constructed (Foucault,

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1984), some who argue that self-identity is biologically-constructed

(Lange, 1980, pp. 33–35; Leiter, 2002, chapter 1), and some who argue
that the self is made up of a ‘bundle’ of habits, beliefs, attitudes etc.,
which are developed in biological and social stages (Cox, 1999, pp. 125–
139; Acampora, 2006). All of these theories draw on passages from
Rousseau and Nietzsche and make cases that are, on their own grounds,
quite plausible.
I do not propose to weigh in on this debate, however. The notion of the
self that I will be using has less to do with what constitutes a student’s
self-identity and more to do with how the student behaves, both
intellectually and physiologically. On this view, Rousseau and Nietzsche
may have divergent ideas about the ontological constitution of the
student’s self, but they both want the student to act in particular ways that
reflect the student’s desire to obey laws prescribed by herself, for herself.
In other words, when I refer to self or selves, I am not referring to selves in
the sense that the above debates have explored. Rather, I am referring to
what students refer to when they say ‘I want to learn math’. The person
who utters those words or words like them is a self, precisely because she
considers herself to be one. Whether there is a ‘self’ ‘behind’ or ‘in’ the
student who says those words is not a question I will take up in this article.
What is important is that the individual who says those words can learn to
say other words. Rousseau and Nietzsche argue that individuals can learn
to utter and act upon new words, like ‘I will only obey laws I prescribe to
myself’ and ‘I will learn to master my passions so that they do not
persuade me to do things that make me weaker’. Rousseau and Nietzsche
believe that they can encourage these words and the actions that attend
them by giving students an education that promotes self-mastery.

SELF-MASTERY IN ROUSSEAU AND NIETZSCHE

For Rousseau and Nietzsche, an education that encourages students to say
and act on the words above must necessarily be an education in self-
mastery (Rousseau, SC, p. 151; Rousseau, E, pp. 77–87; Nietzsche, SE
section 1; Nietzsche, TI, ‘What the Germans Lack’, 6–7; Nietzsche, HH,
II, 305; Nietzsche, BGE, 200, 260; Nietzsche, TI, ‘Morality as Anti-
nature’ 1–2; Nietzsche, WP, 383).8 By ‘self-mastery’ I mean the student’s
ability to choose to disobey certain internal inclinations in favour of other
inclinations. For Rousseau and Nietzsche, the inclinations the students
ought to obey are ones that increase their autonomy. They argue that
giving into one’s passions is a sign of a degenerate will and a lack of self-
discipline, which necessarily entails a lack of autonomy. Students who
cannot moderate and master their passions are subject to the whims of
their desires and also to the internalised whims of their culture’s desires
(Rousseau, E, pp. 83–84; Nietzsche, SE, pp. 136–146; Nietzsche, FE, pp.
95–97). Being lead by these whims makes it impossible to determine the
kind of self one wants to be—the process will necessarily be haphazard
and fundamentally inhuman. Indeed, what distinguishes the human from

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the animal is our ability to direct the passions towards a self-determined

end (Rousseau, DOI, p. 45; SC, pp. 150–151).9 If there is no self-
determined end to which we direct ourselves, then we remain
fundamentally animal—we are enslaved to our desires, whether natural
or cultural.
Ironically, Rousseau and Nietzsche argue that becoming self-determin-
ing entails an early period of tutelage in which the development of the
students’ selves are determined by their instructors. Put differently, if one
is to develop autonomy, one must first be inculcated by means of
heteronomy. In the case of Rousseau, Emile is taught initial self-mastery
only by being subject to the invisible mastery of his tutor.10 The tutor
gives Emile the illusion that he is free to become who he is, but in fact, the
tutor is vigilantly guiding Emile in a pre-established direction. The
direction leads to virtuous self-mastery in which Emile utilises reason as a
guide to all his actions, both individual and social (Rousseau, E, 359). In
the case of Nietzsche, students should be inculcated into initial self-
mastery ‘under the scepter of genius’. Thus, when they have learned to
master themselves, they will have the taste to determine ends for
themselves that elevate themselves and culture (Nietzsche, TI, ‘What the
Germans Lack’, 6–7; Nietzsche, FE, lectures 2–3). Students gain self-
mastery by heeding a rigorous pedagogy that promotes a nobility of spirit,
so that the students will not choose decadent ends for themselves.11 The
problem of education for Rousseau and Nietzsche is, therefore, not that it
constructs selves, but that it constructs selves badly by failing to
encourage self-mastery in students. Education of this sort produces weak-
willed conformists who are directed by the whims of their desires and the
whims of their cultures’ desires.
Rousseau and Nietzsche have a conception of education that overcomes
the tendency towards conformity and instead fosters self-mastery through
the beneficial use of pity. On the face of it, this may seem at odds with the
orthodox view, wherein Rousseau is seen as an unmitigated advocate of
pity and Nietzsche is seen as its unmitigated opponent. In spite of their
apparent differences, they are surprisingly allied in their conception of
pity; they both value it only insofar as it promotes the strengthening of the
individual and humankind as a whole. For Rousseau and Nietzsche, when
pity is used to cultivate self-mastery, it is beneficial; when it is used
merely to alleviate suffering, it is harmful.

THE DIFFERENT SENSES OF PITY IN ROUSSEAU AND NIETZSCHE

By finding similarities between Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s conceptions
of pity, I do not mean to suggest that they have identical ones. To begin
with, Rousseau and Nietzsche spoke different languages and, thus, there is
a strong prima facie case that there are nuances in each of their respective
words (pitie´ and Mitleid) that are lost in the translation of pity.12 To
address this issue, I will follow Martha Nussbaum’s (1994) helpful
analysis of pity found in ‘Pity and Mercy: Nietzsche’s Stoicism’.

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Nussbaum distinguishes between six different connotations of the

English word pity found in Nietzsche’s thought.

1) Pity is an acknowledgement of weakness and insufficiency in the

pitied (p. 150).
2) Pity is an acknowledgement of weakness and insufficiency in the
pitier (p. 151).
3) Pity is not really altruistic, but rather egoistic (p. 152).
4) Pity does no good: it simply increases the amount of suffering (ibid.).
5) The things for which we pity people are, on the whole, things that are
not bad but good for them (pp. 152–153).
6) Pity is connected with revenge, and even with cruelty (p. 154).
Of these six connotations, I will use only senses 1), 2) and 5). I focus on
these three because they have counterparts in Rousseau. Concerning 1): as
I will illustrate, Rousseau believes that pity is an acknowledgement of
weakness and insufficiency in the pitied, but like Nietzsche, he argues that
this acknowledgement should not immediately lead to the removal of the
suffering. Concerning 2): Rousseau agrees that pity is an acknowl-
edgement of weakness in the pitier. However, similar to Nietzsche,
Rousseau believes that the weakness must be overcome if we are to help
students reach the goal of self-mastery. Concerning 5): Rousseau argues
that much of the suffering we find in students is good for them and should
not be alleviated and sometimes should even be promoted. Rousseau will
always let suffering persist if it is good for the student. The question of
how much suffering is beneficial might be disputed in Rousseau and
Nietzsche. Nevertheless, as I will demonstrate, Rousseau and Nietzsche
generally think the same sorts of things should be pitied in the same way.
On the other hand, senses 3), 4) and 6) are unequivocally rejected by
Rousseau. Concerning 3): unlike Nietzsche, Rousseau thinks that pity is
altruistic, not egoistic.13 Concerning 4): Rousseau thinks that pity does
good for the most part. There are exceptions, like pity for the wicked, but
on the whole he disagrees with Nietzsche that it necessarily increases
suffering.14 Concerning 6): Rousseau does not seem to be aware of the
possibility that pity can be a form of revenge, whereas Nietzsche goes to
great lengths to emphasise it (Nietzsche, GM, III, 14).
From this brief analysis it should be clear that in making the claim that
Rousseau and Nietzsche have similar conceptions of pity, I do not mean
they have identical ones. On the contrary, there are several senses of the
word in which they disagree quite strongly. Nevertheless, the three senses
they do share constitute a large bulk of their use, and I hope to show that—
with respect to these—they agree significantly.

PITY IN ROUSSEAU
From even a cursory reading of Rousseau’s writings, it is clear that in
some sense his educational philosophy promotes pity. He claims that it is
natural (Rousseau, E, pp. 54–55), that it is the foundation of morality

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(Rousseau, E, pp. 17–19),15 and that it must be carefully cultivated

(Rousseau, E, pp. 221–226). Consequently, one is tempted to see
Rousseau’s insistence on pity everywhere. From his dramatic, imagined
history of the development of mankind in Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality to the education of Emile, Rousseau invokes the word. From
these sources, we are easily lulled into thinking that suffering is bad, that
we should feel sorry for those who suffer, that we should empathetically
suffer with them and that we should do what we can to alleviate their
suffering. However, as we examine his texts more carefully we see that his
position is not so straightforward.
The very object lessons of Emile’s tutor are cases in point. The goal of
Emile’s tutor is, in places, to sadden (Rousseau, E, pp. 97–100), to
frighten (Rousseau, E, pp. 123–124), to humiliate (Rousseau, E, pp. 172–
175), and to depress (Rousseau, E, pp. 442). In all of these instances, it is
clear that were the tutor to pity Emile for his suffering, Emile’s education
would be compromised. Pity is, on this count, counter-productive, even
dangerous. The tutor is compelled not to intervene in Emile’s suffering. If
the tutor acquiesces to the feelings of pity regarding Emile’s immediate
pain, he will lose the ability to properly educate him. The tutor must use
his self-mastery to overcome these feelings of pity so that he can act
justly. In other words, the passion of pity must itself be overcome if he is
to produce a powerful,16 autonomous pupil. Rousseau makes this point
explicit when he directly condemns the feelings of pity that weaken
mankind:

To prevent pity from degenerating into weakness, it must therefore, be

generalized and extended to the whole of mankind. Then one yields to it
only insofar as it accords with justice, because of all the virtues justice is
the one that contributes most to the common good of men. For the sake of
reason, for the sake of love of ourselves, we must have pity for our species
still more than for our neighbor, and pity for the wicked is a very great
cruelty to men (E, p. 253).

In this statement we see that pity, in its ultimate and most just expression,
does not desire to see the end of individual instances of suffering. On the
contrary, as in the case with Emile’s tutor, our love of mankind demands
that we allow and even insist in certain situations on the suffering of
individuals. To encourage pity on the wrong occasions is to demean
individuals and debase their potential for growth. Pity in this sense
backfires because it hurts human beings. The only way to help individuals
is not to pity them for their suffering but to help them overcome it. This is
seen in the tutor’s exhortation to Emile regarding the overcoming of one’s
weakness:

In the theater, you saw heroes, overcome by extreme pains, make the
stage reverberate with their senseless cries, grieving like women, crying
like children, and thus meriting public applause. Do you remember how
scandalized you were by these lamentations, cries, and complaints on the
part of men whom one ought to expect only acts of constancy and

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firmness: ‘What?’ you said very indignantly. ‘Are these the examples we
are given to follow, the models we are offered for imitation! Are they
afraid that man is not small enough, unhappy enough, and weak enough
without someone extolling his weakness under the false image of virtue?’
(E, p. 443).

The goal is not to see the end of suffering but to see the increase of self-
mastery, which necessarily includes hardship and difficulty. This is
essential to the students’ growth as moral individuals. As the tutor says to
Emile: ‘My child, there is no happiness without courage nor virtue without
struggle. The word virtue comes from strength. Strength is the foundation
of all virtue. Virtue belongs only to a being that is weak by nature and
strong by will. It is in this that the merit of a just man consists . . .’ (E, p.
444). To be virtuous is to overcome our suffering. Human beings,
according to Rousseau, must suffer so that they can learn to master
themselves; happiness is not the absence of suffering, but the experience
of courage and virtue that comes from strength and control over
ourselves.17 Pity must be restrained in order to promote human
flourishing. This does not mean, however, that Rousseau thinks all
suffering is good or worthwhile. Nevertheless, he thinks that unmitigated
pity is dangerous for the human species because it threatens to make the
species weaker if it is not carefully considered before acted upon.
Applying this discussion to Nussbaum’s analysis, we see that
concerning 1) Rousseau does in fact think that we are tempted to see
the pitied individual as weak and insufficient, but that we must master that
temptation and believe instead that the individual can overcome her
weakness and insufficiency, becoming more powerful and self-sufficient,
and, thus, virtuous. Likewise, concerning 2) we see that while Rousseau
believes that it is natural to feel pain for an individual who is suffering, we
must not embrace that feeling but overcome it so that it does not tempt us
to alleviate suffering where doing so would produce harmful results. From
1) and 2) we see that 5) is also repudiated. Rousseau regards much of our
suffering as beneficial to us. To eliminate suffering is to eliminate the
possibility of virtue and happiness. It is the job of the tutor to determine
what should and should not be pitied. In the case of Emile, the tutor
alleviates only those things that would destroy Emile’s power and
autonomy. Rousseau’s conception of pity is, as I will now show,
consistent with Nietzsche’s own position on the proper use of pity.

PITY IN NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche, like Rousseau, is concerned that overweening pity for the
suffering individual is weakening mankind as a whole. For instance, in
Beyond Good and Evil, he advocates a farsighted pity for the whole of
mankind to reverse that trend:

Our pity is a higher and more farsighted pity: we see how man makes
himself smaller, how you make him smaller—and there are moments

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when we resist this pity—when we find your seriousness more dangerous

than any frivolity . . . And our pity—do you not comprehend for whom
our pity is when it resists your pity as the worst of all pamperings and
weaknesses? Thus it is pity versus pity (BGE, 225).

The similarity to Rousseau is striking for two reasons. The first is the
uncanny resemblance between their metaphorical language of smallness,
strength and weakness. The goal of both Rousseau and Nietzsche is to
advocate physical and intellectual strength, and to decry physical and
intellectual weakness. Moreover, they both regard the culture at large as
promoting smallness, weakness and decline. They want to redress this
situation by promoting the proper use of pity. The second is found in their
conceptions of pity. Nietzsche, far from being the opponent of all forms of
pity, is merely concerned to oppose the kind that weakens human beings.
He claims for instance that it is the farsighted pity of the self-masters that
is actually useful to the weak and ailing. It is useful because the weak and
ailing are taught by the self-masters to be strong through their suffering.
Nietzsche claims it is to these masters ‘to whom the weak, the suffering,
the hard pressed, and the animals too, like to come and belong by nature
. . . when such a man has pity, well this pity has value’ (BGE, 293). Instead
of receiving sympathy, they are taught to overcome their weakness.18 In
characteristic fashion, Nietzsche argues dramatically and polemically and,
in doing so, perplexes and worries readers with his boundless castigation.
But, at the heart of his project, there is a desire to raise mankind in a
manner consistent with Rousseau.
This desire can be seen in greater detail when Nietzsche argues from the
point of view of one who suffers, who must suffer. He suggests that his
own strengthening process is dependent on his suffering, and it is actually
reprehensible for ‘compassionate’ individuals to intervene because of their
own inability to master their feelings of pity:

The entire economy of my soul and the balance effected by ‘misfortune’,

the breaking open of new springs and needs, the healing of old wounds,
the shedding of entire periods of the past—all such things that can be
involved in misfortune; that terrors, deprivations, impoverishments,
midnights, adventure, risks, and blunders are as necessary for me and
you as their opposites . . . No, they know nothing of that: the ‘religion of
compassion’ (or the ‘heart’) commands them to help, and they believe
that they have helped best when they have helped most quickly (GS, 338).

Nietzsche is implicitly appealing to true feelings of pity in his readers; it is

not that he rejects the concept of pity altogether, but he thinks it is
misguided when it only seeks to abolish immediate suffering. This is the
cry for self-mastery; it is the cry for the governance of one’s passions
(including the passion of pity) so that other individuals can be made strong
and free—in other words, so that they can become masters of themselves.
As indicated earlier, it is only through self-mastery that morality has any

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use. Without self-command, morality can be directed in the wrong ways.

One must cultivate its reasonable use to make individuals stronger:

Morality of pity in the mouth of the intemperate.—all those who do not

have themselves sufficiently under their own control and do not know
morality as a continual self-command and self-overcoming practiced in
great things and in the smallest, involuntarily become glorifiers of
the good, pitying, benevolent impulses, of that instinctive morality which
has no head but seems to consist solely of heart and helping hands (HH,
III, 45).

The operative word here is involuntary. Nietzsche’s criticism, as we saw

above, is not that pity exists, but that it is unreflectively, that is to say
involuntarily, assumed to be moral. This is to deny the possibility that pity
can be governed by one’s head instead of by one’s heart. For Nietzsche,
the feeling of pity is not valuable in itself, but how one controls and
thoughtfully allocates that pity determines its value. Allowing reason to
direct pity towards the strengthening of an individual—in an act of self-
mastery—is the beneficial use of pity; to prescribe pity universally and
thoughtlessly is reprehensible.19

DIVERGENCES BETWEEN ROUSSEAU AND NIETZSCHE ON PITY

Having established important similarities between Rousseau and
Nietzsche on pity, I want to highlight a significant difference. For
Rousseau, pity is a natural sentiment that on the social level needs to be
cultivated in order to protect individuals in contemporary society from
harming one another. As he famously explains in his Discourse on the
Origin of Inequality, the natural man is gentle and peaceable and naturally
hates the sight of suffering in other sensitive beings (Rousseau, DOI, pp.
54–56). Society robs the natural man of this disposition by introducing
vanity, greed, selfishness, etc. (Rousseau, DOI, pp. 60–64). The
development of Emile is Rousseau’s attempt to return man to a pre-
fallen state—but the pre-fallen state is not a return to natural man (which
he considers impossible) (Rousseau, DOI, pp. 33–34).20 Rather, Emile is
made ‘perfect’ by providing him ‘moral liberty’, which can only be found
in society with others (Rousseau, SC, pp. 150–151), while simultaneously
helping him become gentle and compassionate. Emile’s duty is thus to
become ‘sensitive and pitying’ (Rousseau, E, pp. 222–223), even though
his sensitivity and pity is distinct from that of the ‘natural man’. Stated this
way, Rousseau’s project is antithetical to Nietzsche’s. Nietzsche deplores
this kind of talk because it is characteristic of the herd mentality, which
hates greatness and would rather make mankind weaker (Nietzsche, A, 7;
EH, II, 4). For Nietzsche, as I have indicated, the only type of pity that is
valuable is that which comes out of an overflow of strength and good taste,
not duty; to make it a duty is to diminish humankind’s potential.

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Refraining mutually from injury, violence, and exploitation and placing

one’s will on a par with that of someone else—this may become, in a
certain rough sense, good manners among individuals if the appropriate
conditions are present (namely, if these men are actually similar in
strength and value standards and belong together in one body). But as
soon as the principle is extended, and possibly even accepted as the
fundamental principle of society, it immediately proves to be what it
really is—a will to the denial of life, a principle of disintegration and
decay (BGE, 259).

This passage clearly contrasts with Rousseau’s goal for Emile; never-
theless, I argue that the contrast is not as dramatic as would first appear.
There are several aspects of this contrast that need to be fleshed out. The
first is that Rousseau considers pity to be a natural sentiment that ‘carries
us without reflection to the aid of those we see suffering’ (Rousseau, SD,
p. 55). He further indicates that this sentiment is rooted in a natural
‘repugnance at doing evil’ (ibid.). Thus, the motivation for helping an
individual is found in our natural hatred of suffering and evil. Rousseau
claims: ‘Pity is what will prevent every robust savage from robbing a
weak child or an infirm old man of his hard-earned subsistence, if he
expects himself to be able to find his own someplace else’ (ibid.).
Nietzsche does not affirm the same natural state. Indeed, Nietzsche
believes that ‘natural’ man is something closer to a savage beast who loves
‘murder, arson, rape and torture’ (Nietzsche, GM, I, 11). In fact, Nietzsche
explicitly denigrates Rousseau for what he perceives as Rousseau’s naı̈ve
romanticising of the state of nature (Nietzsche, TI, ‘Skirmishes of an
Untimely Man’, 48). Contrary to Rousseau, Nietzsche thinks that the
feeling of pity (the kind found in the repugnance at doing evil) comes not
from our nature, but our upbringing in the decadent culture of Christian
morality. It is this feeling of pity that must be overcome. On the other
hand, Nietzsche does believe that individuals who are overflowing with
health and self-mastery will naturally act on pity, not as repugnance in the
face of pain or evil, but because they hate the sight of ‘precious
capabilities’ that are ‘squandered’. It is as if they were seeing a Picasso
being destroyed by fire. They act on pity as an aesthetic impulse, not a
moral one. To see an ailing individual waste away is an ‘ugly’ sight, as it
were. The distinction between pity as a moral versus an aesthetic impulse
is the chief difference between Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s conceptions of
pity and why pity for Nietzsche cannot become a duty. Rousseau and
Nietzsche both think that pity is natural, but Rousseau believes it is an
innate moral sensation whereas Nietzsche believes it is a natural response
in an intellectually robust individual.
But does this distinction mean that their advocacy of pity is
incommensurable? As my forgoing analysis attempted to show, it does
not. Rousseau believes that the natural feeling of pity itself must be
overcome if one is to actually pity an individual. To act on pity, merely
because one feels it, is to jeopardise an individual’s potential growth. The
situation in question must be deliberated upon so that one can know how

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56 M. E. Jonas

to effectively make the individual stronger. Thus, it is Emile’s moral

‘duty’ to pity a person by encouraging growth in her, even if that means
overcoming one’s apparent ‘duty’ to relieve her of pain. Doing this will
not only assist the individual but will also help establish freedom and self-
mastery in humankind as a whole. For Nietzsche, the actions are the same
even if the sources are different. Nietzsche believes that the culturally-
conditioned feeling of pity (what Rousseau calls natural) must be, in a
Rousseauian and Nietzschean manner, overcome. To say it again: to act on
pity, merely because one feels it is to jeopardise an individual’s potential
growth. Like Rousseau, Nietzsche believes that one must deliberate how
best to assist the individual in becoming stronger. But while Nietzsche
agrees with Rousseau about overcoming certain feelings of pity, he does
not agree with calling it a moral ‘duty’, or indeed a duty at all.21 Nietzsche
wants to encourage deliberative pity, not as a moral duty, but as a refined
aesthetic taste, which will elevate the individual and mankind as a whole.
To encourage individuals to develop farsighted pity is to help make the
world a more beautiful place, where freedom and self-mastery abound.

CONCLUSION
From the foregoing analyses we see that Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s
positions on pity are similar in significant respects. Although they disagree
about the ultimate source of pity, they both agree that the feeling of pity
we experience when we see someone suffer is never its own justification.
In order to truly pity an individual, we must act on our pity only if
assisting the individual will have the net effect of making her more
autonomous. This means that true pity is not a feeling at all, but is rather a
‘reasoned’22 decision about how to best assist an individual in becoming
more autonomous. For Rousseau and Nietzsche, the goal of the educator
must be to develop self-mastery in herself and employ that self-mastery to
overcome the feeling of pity for her students so that they can develop self-
mastery themselves.
Unfortunately, while Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s prescription for
inculcating self-mastery is compelling in theory, it presents a host of
problems in practice. The most serious difficulty is how to determine when
to act on the pity we feel for students and when not to. As Rousseau and
Nietzsche indicate, there are times when it is necessary for the
development of self-mastery to reasonably follow our pitying inclinations.
Helping a student overcome her fear of speaking in the classroom by
gently encouraging her over a period of time may increase her mastery far
more effectively than forcing her to speak immediately. On the other hand,
another student may develop self-mastery more quickly by being forced to
confront her fears by speaking immediately, and therefore we should not
attempt to alleviate their suffering. The problem is that to adequately
judge between even these two cases we would need ‘complete’ knowledge
of each student, including her background, intellectual abilities,
psychological states, etc. While this may be possible for the tutor in

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 When Teachers Must Let Education Hurt 57

Emile, it is not possible for teachers in more conventional circumstances.

On top of this, there are obviously serious psychological, ethical and legal
ramifications at stake in forcing students to suffer when it is within our
power to alleviate their suffering.
As a consequence, it seems to me that the only possible implementation
of Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s ideas in the contemporary classroom is to
focus less on how teachers are to determine when to show pity and to
focus instead on how to help students guide teachers in those
determinations. If teachers cannot accurately and safely determine when
a student needs to experience more suffering and when she needs to
experience less, it is left to the students to make these determinations
themselves. This means that the teacher’s role is to find ways of
developing a culture of self-mastery and the desirability of suffering in the
classroom. By doing so, teachers can encourage students to eschew pity in
its detrimental forms and encourage it in its beneficial forms. Students can
learn, in other words, how to educate teachers on when to act on their
feelings of pity. Of course, discovering the best way to create a classroom
culture of self-mastery and the desirability of suffering is no easy task, but
it seems to be that task that must be done if we are to promote self-mastery
in our students.

Correspondence: Mark E. Jonas, Department of Educational Foundations,

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, 800 W. Main St., Winther Hall
6053, Whitewater, WI 53190, USA.
E-mail: jonasm@uww.edu

NOTES
1. Mintz explains that social justice educators and theorists are noteworthy exceptions to this rule.
Often they recommend the experience of suffering in students as a way of motivating a desire for
social change. Interestingly, Mintz goes on to argue that these same educators and theorists
overcompensate and induce more pain than is educationally beneficial. The question of how to
determine how much pain students should suffer will be returned to in the conclusion of this
article.
2. Citing the historical connection between these words, Mintz uses these terms interchangeably. As
I discuss in a later footnote, I will use the word ‘pity’ in this article, following the convention
employed by the translators of Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s texts.
3. In stating that my goal is to encourage reflection—as opposed to the adoption of a definite theory
of pity—I want to make clear that I do not think that Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s conceptions of
pity are unproblematic or even straightforwardly applicable. Indeed, on some counts their ideas
may be dangerous. Nevertheless, their suspicion of pity is useful in helping educators think
through their own use of pity so as to better employ it in the classroom.
4. Two other interpreters who regard Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s positions on pity to be
fundamentally opposed include: Keith Ansell-Pearson (1991) and Michel Ure (2006).
5. For the sake of easy reference, I will use the following abbreviations for Rousseau’s texts
followed by the page number(s): E (Emile, or On Education), SC (On the Social Contract), DOI
(Discourse on the Origin of Inequality). The bibliographic information for these texts is found in
the reference list at the end of this article.
6. For the sake of easy reference, I will use the standard abbreviations for Nietzsche’s texts: A (The
Antichrist), BGE (Beyond Good and Evil), EH (Ecce Homo) FE (On the Future of our

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58 M. E. Jonas

Educational Institutions), GM (On the Genealogy of Morals), GS (The Gay Science), HH

(Human, All Too Human), SE (Schopenhauer as Educator), TI (Twilight of the Idols), and WP
(The Will to Power). References for all passages will use section numbers rather than page
numbers with the exception of SE and FE. The bibliographic information for these texts is found
in the reference list at the end of this article.
7. There are actually several senses of pity in both Rousseau and Nietzsche. Nevertheless, for the
time being, dividing pity into harmful and helpful categories is a useful schematic.
8. Not all theorists agree with my assessment of Rousseau and Nietzsche’s educational goals.
Concerning alternative conceptions of Rousseau’s philosophy, see O’Hagan, 1999; 2004.
Concerning alternative theories on Nietzsche, see Rosenow, 1989, pp. 308–309; Hillesheim,
1990, pp. 301–306; Johnston, 1998, pp. 67–83.
9. Although Nietzsche does not directly refer to individuals who are not self-determining animals,
he does suggest that humans achieved a new level of evolutionary growth when they developed
the ability to master themselves. These types of individuals are, Nietzsche claims, superior to
those who cannot self-determine. (Nietzsche, GM, II, 1-3; BGE, 200).
10. This is seen throughout Emile. Indeed the whole book is a meditation on the development of
autonomy through a protracted tutelage in heteronomy.
11. Nietzsche uses the concept of taste instead of reason to emphasise the bodily component of sound
thinking. For him, reason is reasonable only to the degree that it employs the affects, passions,
etc. (Nietzsche, GS, 3.) The latter are not antithetical to sound thinking but part and parcel of it.
Interestingly, Rousseau thinks of reason in a sense that is not necessarily dissimilar to
Nietzsche’s. For Rousseau, reason must be embodied if it is to produce action:

One of the errors of our age is to use reason in too unadorned a form, as if men were all mind
. . . . Reason alone is not active. It sometimes restrains, it arouses rarely, and it has never done
anything great. Always to reason is the mania of small minds. Strong souls have quite another
language . . . . Clothe reason in a body if you want to make youth be able to grasp it. Make the
language of the mind pass through the heart, so that it may make itself understood. I repeat,
cold arguments can determine our opinions, but not our actions. (Rousseau, E, pp. 321–323)

12. The question of translation is difficult in more ways than one. There are instances throughout
their texts in which Rousseau’s pitie´ or Nietzsche’s Mitleid would be better translated into
English as compassion. There are other instances—usually ones connoting a conscious sense of
superiority—in which the word pity is a better translation. Following the conventions generally
used by Allan Bloom and Walter Kaufmann (the translators that I cite for Rousseau and
Nietzsche, respectively), I use pity throughout this paper, even though I might have alternatively
used compassion, since the sense of pity I advert to is one that is free of the condescension often
associated with the word pity in the vernacular.
13. Commentators point out that there is a sense in which Rousseau thinks that pity is partially
egoistic, in that it recognises that the suffering of others seems sweet, as when Ansell-Pearson
(1991) quotes Rousseau: ‘Pity is sweet because, when we put ourselves in the place of one who
suffers, we are aware, nevertheless, of the pleasure of not suffering like him’ (p. 67). See also
Boyd, 2004. Nevertheless, while there is certainly an element of pleasure found in Rousseauian
pity, it is conceived, for the most part, as altruistic.
14. As I will illustrate, Nietzsche himself does not think pity necessarily produces suffering, just that
it does so most of the time because it is felt and used by weak, decadent, Christianised
individuals. For Nietzsche, pity in the strong can produce good.
15. This is Allan Bloom’s analysis in the introduction of the Emile. Obviously, my reading is slightly
divergent from Bloom’s, as I suggest that self-mastery is, in part, the foundation for morality.
16. Power in this context does not mean power over others, which is for Rousseau and Nietzsche a
sign of weakness. Rather, power refers to the ability to live courageously and choose to embrace
our fate while, paradoxically, simultaneously determining our destiny. Power is a central factor
in Rousseau (E, pp. 67, 80–85) and Nietzsche (A, 2; A, 57; GM, II, 12; BGE, 13).
17. Of course, this is not to say that there are not times when we must attempt to alleviate the
immediate suffering of the individual. The key is to use reason to determine whether their
suffering should be alleviated or prolonged. For Rousseau, the just individual is the self-master,

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who, through his own suffering and strengthening process, knows how best to approach the
suffering of others. As we shall see, this is no different from Nietzsche. Like Rousseau, he is
certainly willing to help someone out of his suffering if that act would increase his self-mastery.
18. This same interpretation of pity is also seen in Nietzsche’s notebooks: ‘My kind of ‘‘pity’’: I
sense it when I see precious capabilities squandered . . . . Or when I see anyone halted, as a result
of some stupid accident, at something less than what he might have become’ (WP, 367).
19. For an extended discussion of Nietzsche’s conception of suffering in education see Mintz’s ‘The
Disciplined Schooling of the Free Spirit: Educational Theory in Nietzsche’s Middle Period’
(2004). While Mintz focuses on exclusively on Nietzsche’s middle period, his conclusions are
relevant for Nietzsche’s writings as a whole.
20. Rousseau indicates that the state of nature is an imaginative construct that is not meant to be an
actual history or a utopian vision of the future. It is meant to provide an anthropological basis
upon which the ideal human and society can be built. The ideal human is a combination of innate
capacities and dispositions coupled with careful socialisation.
21. There is one passage where Nietzsche seems to contradict this claim. ‘When the exceptional
human being treats the mediocre more tenderly than himself and his peers, this is not merely
politeness of the heart—it is simply his duty’ (A, 57). What is problematic about this passage is
not that Nietzsche advocates the more tender treatment of average individuals (since doing so is
consistent with the need to reason about how much pain and individual can handle in her present
state), but that he claims that such tenderness is a duty. In this case, the question becomes what
Nietzsche means by the word ‘duty’ (Pflicht). While there is much debate about this question
(Solomon, 2003, p. 132), I take the duty to be one generated from within the exceptional
individual based on her aesthetic taste, rather than a duty based on a moral law imposed from
without.
22. It is important to note that Rousseau and Nietzsche conceive of reason differently. Rousseau
considers reason as the accord between the one’s thoughts and behaviours and the metaphysical
laws of the universe. Nietzsche considers reason as an embodied aesthetic experience where
individuals ‘smell’ the proper action to be taken.

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