ABSTRACT
This chapter links compassion and forgiveness to love and to a love-based justice. It analyzes two aspects of compassion: it forms one of the key components of love; and it "pushes the boundaries of the self further outward than many types of love". The main aspects of compassion hang on the perception that the beloveds have become vampires through no wrongdoing of their own, and their monstrous existence expands their lovers' own sense of well-being. The chapter focuses on the concept of compassion. Compassion has three cognitive elements: the judgment of size; the judgment of nondesert; and the eudaimonistic judgment. It examines that like all emotions directed at living beings, compassion frequently either contains or is closely linked to a non-eudaimonistic element of wonder. To feel compassion for another being means an admission this person—human, vampire, or any other creature—matters for one's own flourishing.
