Compassione, autonomia e vulnerabilità. Considerazioni sull’“etica” di Nietzsche a partire da Martha C. Nussbaum

The paper aims to focus on Nietzsche’s conception of pity, compassion, empathy and mercy. In the essay, these notions are intertwined with those of vulnerability and autonomy. I have shown how these notions are intrinsically linked to those of vulnerability and autonomy and how Nietzsche’s thought takes up and reformulates, in relation to these themes, some important concepts from the ancient Greek world. In order to shed light on Nietzsche’s complex reflections on autonomy and vulnerability, I have widely referred to and reworked some essays by Martha Nussbaum. Taking up passages from Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca and the Stoics, Nussbaum shows how already in the ancient world compassion was considered a harmful sentiment and an unbalanced relationship that creates deteriorating forms of dependency. What emerges from these perspectives is that for the most part in the ancient world the repudiation of compassion has nothing to do with insensitivity, brutality or tyrannical behaviour: if anything, it is compassion itself that is the source of anger and cruelty. I also intended to interpret the figure of Zarathustra in the light of some fundamental Stoic virtues (independence, freedom, detachment, clemency, magnanimity). In conclusion I have shown how in the Genealogy of Morals compassion comes close to the Christian psychological feeling of shame.