ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 considers the relationship between empathy and compassion and the humanities through the lens of materiality explored in the previous chapter. There is a brief consideration of how empathy and compassion have been taken up, and contrasted in health humanities literature, and how the cultivation of compassionate practitioners has been claimed, with qualifications, as a goal for using humanities. Derrida’s conception of the pharmakon is introduced, as a substance with ambivalent effects. Pharmakon is applied as a metaphor for humanities as a kind of intervention that does have physical effects on people and behaviours. To illustrate potential risks of humanities-as-pharmakon, examples are cited of poetry being using to incite sectarian and nationalism acts of war and terrorism. Returning to compassion, now seen as a contingent event, there is an argument to rethink a relationship between compassion and nursing. The French thinker Simone Weil is introduced, focusing on her ideas about necessity as the conditions of physical existence. From recognition of necessity moments of compassion can emerge. In conclusion, there is an argument for a return to the idea of the tragic, of an acceptance of limit to achieve full recognition of the other in nursing practice.
