Is pity born of pain?
On the axis: The meaning of suffering · the bond with the suffering other
Would a world without suffering be a world without compassion, without courage, without solidarity? Pity presupposes another's misfortune: must we then keep the evil for its fruits, or can we pick the fruits without the tree?
Justification
A revealing tension: nothing justifies suffering, and compassion commands relieving it everywhere, which pulls him toward abolitionism; but great pain 'sobers,' breaks the attachment to willing, and opens the second road to deliverance. Suffering has no meaning, it has an effect, which forbids ranking it wholly on the side of pure evil to be abolished.
The World as Will and Representation, §68
Justification
Rousseau does not value suffering for its own sake, but he grants it a fruitfulness: pity, the first natural movement, is born of another's suffering felt as our own, and grounds all humanity. Ordeal and melancholy deepen the feeling soul, which heralds the Romantic valuing of painful sentiment, far from the worldly person's insensibility.
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality · Emile, IV
Justification
For Nietzsche suffering is a condition of growth: what does not kill me makes me stronger, and the discipline of great suffering has produced every elevation of humanity. He explicitly despises moralities that make the abolition of suffering the supreme goal.
What does not kill me makes me stronger.Twilight of the Idols, "Maxims and Arrows", §8
Beyond Good and Evil, §225 · Twilight of the Idols, "Maxims and Arrows", §8 · The Gay Science, §338
Anchors: Schopenhauer · Rousseau · Nietzsche