incogneato,

I have in mind the sort of situation where someone really needs to know some information even though it will hurt them � an obvious case would be a doctor telling a patient she has cancer. Another case would be a teacher giving an honest evaluation to a student that hurts the student�s feelings, even though the student needs to know the information to correct her errors (this may be especially tough on good students � it�s happened, I suppose, to all of us, but it�s the teacher�s job).

Also, there are people (probably all of us, at least sometimes) who �get their feelings hurt� simply because someone else expresses a different opinion. That can be a way of bullying people to force them to agree with us, and I don�t think anyone is obligated to avoid hurting our feelings in such a situation.

I think that gratuitously hurting other people�s feelings � just for the fun of it, so to speak -- is pretty much always wrong.

Dave