ABSTRACT
To develop a model of compassion appropriate to the political sphere would require either some modification of the understanding of the virtue as it stands (that is, as it is understood in practice in personal, private or social life, and in theory as its genealogy has been established and its characteristics stipulated) or, alternatively, a different set of principles that would go beyond the personal exercise of the virtue to act as the basis of a practice that could operate as an integral part of the political process. That is, rather than trying to translate the characteristics of what has generally been understood as primarily a type of relationship between individual persons into an acceptable form for extra-individual activities, systems and processes, the concept itself needs to be looked at from a specifically political perspective.
