4. The Antichrist: After Tea, we talk about "Pity" and "Love"

Though I am not a Christian, I feel obliged to challenge my old teacher's condemnation of it as a "religion of pity". My old teacher argues that Christianity's unjustified 'pity' for the weak goes against nature and preserves 'those ripe for extinction'. Thus my old teacher claims that it multiplies and preserves misery.

I disagree on the point of it being "pity". For me, at the true core of all religion is love. And love is not pity. Love requires more than pity. It requires empathy: a meeting of minds.

Pity is akin to empathy but with a great difference.

The one who pities feels and recognizes the pain that the "pitied" is in but yet he does not want to be like the pitied. He does not want to share the same boat, mentally or physically.

And most importantly, he does not understand the situation that the pitied is in. Thus it is a two-fold "pedestral" that the "pitier" is on: One of his non-suffering condition and another of non-understanding.

The one who empathises, on the other hand, is able to intellectually identify with the "sufferer" and thus shares the suffering, albeit only on a mental level.

Fine, then do we give aid to the suffering, you ask?

To me, the act of giving aid should and can be born out of an empathy. True, the suffering may not want/ need our help but it is a natural response of "free agents" to want to alleviate another man's suffering since he too empathizes with the situation. Of course, if the aid is refused, then should "free agents" still push forth with it? Now that is a tricky question.

Also, the "free agent" aims at helping the suffering to overcome their dispositions through personal struggle. The aim is not purely to alleviate the suffering.

So long as the act of giving aid is not born out of a feeling of superiority and privileged generosity, I think that it is highly acceptable.

That then is love and loving actions born out of empathy. And empathy can be made natural to us through the actions of "free agents" which would yield more "Moral Man", who possess a common understanding of all man being common in that we all experience the same pains ('anxiety' and 'sensory pain') and possess a will.