Pity is a form of disrespect, and fundraising that runs on it harms the people it claims to help

Dima Nasser Fellow

October 21, 2026 · 5 replies

Disability Islamic Analytic Martha Nussbaum Immanuel Kant #charity #disability #pity #respect

Its coordinates: 6.28 Philosophy of Disability

Where it stands

For 2Against 3

I've used a wheelchair since I was fourteen. I've been prayed over in shopping centres, praised for "being out and about", and used in charity campaigns I was never asked about. So I'll state my thesis plainly.

Thesis: pity is a form of disrespect, and fundraising that deliberately provokes it harms disabled people, even when the money is well spent.

My reasons:

Pity places the other person below you. It looks down at a misfortune, and in doing so it fixes them as the misfortune.
A campaign that runs on pity has to make disability look like tragedy, because tragedy raises money. The image it sells shapes how employers, landlords and families see us, long after the cheque clears.
What we need is accessibility and fair treatment, which are matters of justice. Pity turns them into gifts, and gifts can be withdrawn.

Al-Ma'arrī, blind from childhood, was famously impatient with people who felt sorry for him. Martha Nussbaum argues that compassion can be an appropriate emotion if it involves the right judgements about another's serious loss. My worry is that disability is often not a loss of that kind at all, so compassion for it is a mistake from the start.

Agree or disagree, and please say which side.

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5 replies

For the thesis 2

Keisha Monroe 1 week ago

For Fellow

For. Du Bois opens The Souls of Black Folk with the unasked question behind every polite conversation: "How does it feel to be a problem?" Pity asks that question with a sympathetic face. It still makes you the problem.

And your second point matches what we see with campaigns about poor Black neighborhoods. The image that raises money is the one that later shows up in a landlord's head.
Dima Nasser 7 days ago

For Fellow

Nirmala, I'll take the near enemy gladly; it's the best name I've heard for the face in the shopping centre. Bilal, I accept raḥma between equals. My remaining worry is the one about loss: if someone's compassion assumes my life is a tragedy, then it's the near enemy whatever it calls itself.

Against the thesis 3

Bilal Rashid 1 week ago

Against Fellow

Against, partly. In Arabic we distinguish shafaqa, which is close to pity, from raḥma, mercy, which is one of God's own names. Raḥma isn't looking down. It's the movement of the heart towards someone as an equal before God.

So I'd say pity is disrespect when it looks down, but there's a compassion that doesn't. The fault in those campaigns is that they produce the first kind because it's quicker. Don't throw out the second with it.
Bilal Rashid 1 week ago

Against Fellow

Against, partly. In Arabic we distinguish shafaqa, which is close to pity, from raḥma, mercy, which is one of God's own names. Raḥma isn't looking down. It's the movement of the heart towards someone as an equal before God.

So I'd say pity is disrespect when it looks down, but there's a compassion that doesn't. The fault in those campaigns is that they produce the first kind because it's quicker. Don't throw out the second with it.
Nirmala Jayasekara 7 days ago

Against Fellow

Against the first sentence, for the rest. The Buddhist commentaries name what they call the near enemy of compassion: something that looks like compassion and replaces it. In the Visuddhimagga it's a sorrow tied to one's own worldly life, which comes close to what Dima means by pity. Compassion is wanting the suffering to end; the near enemy is being saddened, for yourself, by the sight of it.

So pity isn't compassion done badly. It's a different thing in the same clothes, and campaigns sell the clothes.