Compassion and responsibility for disease: Trump, tragedy and mercy

Abstract

Thinking about compassion helps to illuminate what is pernicious and beneficial about emphasizing personal responsibility for health. This article considers whether it is ‘compassionate’ to see someone’s disease as an embodiment of past faults. Two traditions, one Aristotelian-tragedic and the other Thomist and merciful, yield two ideas of compassion. The argument is that disease should not be conceived as something for which one is responsible in a way which risks the possibility of receiving treatment. But preventive medicine is conceived as a moral endeavour intertwined with the pastoral care of the sick, with discretion as to the manner and timing of any focus on responsibility.