Hello and welcome to Overthink, the podcast.
Where two friends and philosophy professors encourage you to overthink your otherwise unexamined life.
I'm David Pena Guzman.
And I'm Ellie Anderson.
David, pity is not a very well liked emotion.
What is your take on it?
I am definitely team anti pity, for sure.
I think pity is an unfitting response when we're relating to other people
because it involves a sort of looking down on them.
There is a dimension of, I guess I would say condescension when it comes to pity,
and this is why it's been such a target of critique in the disability rights community,
as we'll see a little later in the episode.
Yeah.
Nowadays, pity has been superseded, I think we could say, by other moral emotions.
It doesn't have the same traction that compassion or sympathy or empathy have.
I think, though, whether we think that pity is moral or not,
I've been wanting to do an episode on this because I think pity is a feeling that many of us have nonetheless,
at various times in our lives.
Right.
Our.