Cover -- Half-title -- Series-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- PART I The question of the spectator -- 1 The politics of pity -- 1.1 Pity and justice -- 1.2 Compassion and pity -- 1.3 The Good Samaritan -- 1.4 The community bond -- 1.5 The question of commitment -- 1.6 Distance and action -- 1.7 Paying and speaking -- 2 Taking sides -- 2.1 The requirement of public speech -- 2.2 Fictional suffering and real suffering -- 2.3 The unacceptability of 'that's how it is' -- 2.4 Theatre and politics -- 2.5 The pure spectator -- 2.6 Taking sides -- 2.7 Detachment and commitment -- 3 The moral spectator -- 3.1 The impartiality of the spectator -- 3.2 The powers of the imagination -- 3.3 The spectator of the spectator -- 3.4 The emotive style -- 3.5 The requirement of symmetry -- 3.6 Justice and beneficence -- 3.7 The coordination of emotional commitments -- 3.8 Nourishing the imagination -- PART II The topics of suffering -- 4 The topic of denunciation -- 4.1 From indignation to accusation -- 4.2 Identification of the persecutor -- 4.3 The 'affaire' form -- 4.4 Social denunciation -- 4.5 From revolt to investigation -- 4.6 The metaphysics of justice -- 4.7 Criticism of denunciation -- 4.8 Denunciation and its critics -- 5 The topic of sentiment -- 5.1 The unfortunate's gratitude -- 5.2 The sentiment of urgency -- 5.3 The metaphysics of interiority -- 5.4 The welling-up of emotion -- 5.5 A window on the place of the heart -- 5.6 The vocabulary of sentiments -- 5.7 Virtuous young women in distress -- 6 The critique of sentimentalism -- 6.1 The indulgence of sentiment -- 6.2 The duplicity of sham emotions -- 6.3 The ambiguous pleasure of sensitive hearts -- 6.4 The amateur of suffering -- 6.5 Sadistic pity -- 6.6 The political justification of singular tastes -- 6.7 The inconsistency of Sadean cities.

7 The aesthetic topic -- 7.1 A third way -- 7.2 The painter of horror -- 7.3 With neither indignation nor tender-heartedness -- 7.4 The sublime and the picturesque -- 7.5 Aesthetic difference -- 7.6 The passivity of the object -- 7.7 The operation of the sublime on pity -- 8 Heroes and the accursed -- 8.1 Aesthetics and politics -- 8.2 Resentment = denunciation + sentiment -- 8.3 First use: Nietzsche against humanism -- 8.4 Second use: Nietzsche with the rebels -- 8.5 Sade in the Bastille -- 8.6 The sovereign gutter-snipe -- 8.7 The liberating release -- PART III The crisis of pity -- 9 What reality has misfortune? -- 9.1 The proposals of commitment -- 9.2 Real emotions and flctional emotions -- 9.3 Four uncertainties -- 9.4 First uncertainty: the conflict of beliefs -- 9.5 Second uncertainty: the avoidance of reference -- 9.6 1950: the Soviet camps and the identification of the victims -- 9.7 1975: The Soviet camps and the crisis of denunciation -- 10 How realistic is action? -- 10.1 Third uncertainty: the opacity of desire -- 10.2 Fourth uncertainty: the vanity of intentions to act -- 10.3 Humanitarian society and its enemies -- 10.4 Justification of the humanitarian -- 10.5 Media action -- 10.6 The manifestation of speech -- 10.7 Humanitarian action and social movement -- 10.8 The politics of the present -- Notes -- 1 The politics of pity -- 2 Taking sides -- 3 The moral spectator -- 4 The topic of denunciation -- 5 The topic of sentiment -- 6 The critique of sentimentalism -- 7 The aesthetic topic -- 8 Heroes and the accursed -- 9 What reality has misfortune? -- 10 How realistic is action? -- Index.