A Quote by Kenneth Smith on philosophy, sympathy, aristoi, shame, and characterology

The demand for sympathy is a major form of rhetorical ploy, freighted with massive ulterior motives: it is a way of shaming higher minds into not daring to characterize or recognize the actual nature of the most pathetic ("lowest," "basest" or "most ignoble") personalities among us; it is a way also of shaming aristoi about their very characterological imperative of being or becoming aristoi, of having the audacity to differ so profoundly from the ordinary self-expectations of humans in general. Sympathy for the most intellectually or rationally pathetic -- a kind of "blind shame" analogous to blind faith -- has become a premier weapon in the psychological class-warfare between one psyche-type and another.