공감은 의무인가: 쿳시 소설에 나타난 이웃사랑과 동물권 논의를 중심으로

This essay explores the relationship between sympathy and moral duty in the novels of J. M. Coetzee, under the guiding question, “Is sympathy a duty?” The discussion begins with Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which exposes the paradox of sympathy: an observer of another’s suffering attempts empathetic identification, yet often experiences discomfort or aversion first. Thus, sympathy presupposes distance rather than immediate unity. Building on this paradox, the paper explores Disgrace and The Lives of Animals to analyze the ethical implications of failed sympathy. Coetzee reveals the impossibility of perfect empathy across boundaries between human and animal, ruler and ruled, white and black, thereby reconfiguring the meaning of neighborly love. For Coetzee, the absence of sympathy does not simply signify a moral deficiency; instead, it generates a sense of responsibility rooted in the awareness of one’s inability to fully understand the other. In this way, sympathy becomes not an emotional identification but an ethical obligation that underlies humanity itself. Ultimately, Coetzee’s ethics does not rely on the optimistic premise of mutual understanding but rather on the paradoxical duty that emerges from its (im)possibility. This paper argues that Coetzee’s ethical vision renews the moral sentimental tradition and rethinks the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman.