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 ex¬pect, the answer to the first question is positive, and in this essay I shall propose a recon¬struction of some texts in which Thomas discusses compassion in order to answer the se¬cond 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 open¬ness 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 depen¬dent 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. [Publisher's text].