The Good Samaritan and the Concept of Soft Fetish
The parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates an act of compassion that emerges not from codified obligations or institutionalised law, but from an inner impulse and affective attachment. What is decisive here is that the Samaritan’s response is not the product of normative ethics in its formal sense, but rather the result of a latent inclination that operates at the level of affect and attraction.
The notion of the “soft fetish” designates a form of attachment that is distinct from the explicit or overtly sexualised intensity of the “hard fetish.” Instead, it describes a subtle and often concealed fascination with ordinary objects or gestures, through which otherwise mundane phenomena are endowed with unexpected resonance and meaning.
When these two frameworks are brought together, the Samaritan’s action can be read as a form of “ethical fetishism.” His intervention is not compelled by law or religious authority but activated by a momentary and almost involuntary pull towards the suffering other. This pull, though hidden from institutional ethics, proves to be more powerful, resonating with the way a soft fetish invests everyday objects with a latent force that exceeds their apparent banality.
In this sense, the Good Samaritan does not merely exemplify obedience to moral duty; rather, he embodies an affective orientation that can be described as a kind of soft fetish of compassion. Such a reading suggests that ethical practice is not exhausted by the logic of obligation, but may also be understood as arising from the subtle intensities of attachment and fascination. This offers a productive theoretical intersection between religious-ethical discourse and the conceptual vocabulary of fetishism.