Tommaso d'Aquino e la compassione

Did Thomas Aquinas, one of the leading medieval philosophers and theologians, consider compassion in his works? And if he did, how did he describe it? As we might expect, the answer to the first question is positive, and in this essay I shall propose a reconstruction of some texts in which Thomas discusses compassion in order to answer the second question as well. I shall prove that for Thomas compassion is not merely a feeling of sorrow and sadness for a person’s misfortunes, but also a virtue that determines an openness of human beings toward the others. Compassion, thus, results in a movement that puts a bridge between two dimensions of human beings: on the one hand, it is a feeling dependent on our experiences, but on the other hand, it is also a virtue dependent on our will, which is why compassion cannot be disregarded in a serious ethical theory.