Empathy on trial: A response to its critics

ABSTRACT

Despite being held in something approaching universal esteem for its capacity to promote prosocial behavior and inhibit antisocial behavior, empathy has recently become the recipient of strong criticism from some of today’s leading academics. Two of the more high-profile criticisms of empathy have come from philosopher Jesse Prinz and psychologist Paul Bloom, each of whom challenges the view that empathy has an overall beneficial influence on human behavior. In this essay, I discuss the basis of their criticisms as well as why I am not compelled by their arguments to believe that empathy does more harm than good. In the process of responding to empathy’s critics, I discuss the important role that empathy plays in our moral lives. I argue that, rather than employing rational considerations to minimize the role that empathy plays in our moral and political judgments, such considerations are put to better use by expanding empathy when conducive to the common good and suppressing it when it opposes the common good.

KEYWORDS:

• Empathy
• pro-social behavior
• emotion
• consequentialism
• Paul Bloom
• Jesse Prinz

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It is worth noting here that Bloom acknowledges that other moral emotions “such as anger, guilt, shame, and gratitude” are similar in that they tend to focus on individuals over groups (2016, p. 87).

2. Such is the recommendation of Prinz (2011a, p. 228). Bloom favors this position as well.

3. Beyond the concern that moral considerations detached from empathy may result in a lack of motivation to treat others well, there are good reasons for thinking that moral judgments detached from empathy may often lead to catastrophic results in terms of general welfare. After all, tragedies like the Holocaust and war in general depend crucially on their perpetrators convincing their countrymen that harsh acts are the moral course of action and that the targets of their ire do not deserve their empathy (I discuss this in more detail below). Speaking to the dark side of morality, Steve Pinker has stated flatly that “the world has too much morality. If you added up all the homicides committed in pursuit of self-help justice, the casualties of religious and revolutionary wars, the people executed for victimless crimes and misdemeanors, and the targets of ideological genocides, they would surely outnumber the fatalities of amoral predation and conquest” (2012, p. 622).

4. It is telling that even Bloom himself admits that an appeal made by a charity focusing on a single child succeeded in persuading him to make charitable donations to the child’s family over the course of several years (See Bloom, 2016, p. 45–46).

5. For a discussion of this research, see Bloom (2016 pp. 137–140).

6. See Bloom (2016, p. 101).

7. Historical accounts of how empathy bolstered the abolitionist movement in the U.S. can be found in Rediker (2008) and Hayashida-Knight (2018).

8. While robust empirical research regarding the levels of empathy that slave owners felt towards their slaves in the U.S. is understandably lacking, evidence of a general lack of empathy that slave owners had towards their slaves can be found in historical records – see, for example, University of Cambridge (2015) and Addison (2009). The latter work features the diary entries of a Virginia slave owner named William Byrd, whose lack of empathy towards slaves and the abusive treatment that this gave rise to can be found in entries such as the following: “1 December 1709. I rose at 4 o’clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and some Greek in Cassius. I said my prayers and ate milk for breakfast. I danced my dance. Eugene [a slave] was whipped again for pissing in bed and Jenny [a slave] for concealing it…. 3 December 1709. I rose at 5 o’clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and some Greek in Cassius. I said my prayers and ate milk for breakfast. I danced my dance. Eugene pissed a bed again for which I made him drink a pint of piss. I settled some accounts and read some news…” (p. 298).

9. The fact that viewership for professional football games fell precipitously in 2017 is a clear indication of how many white sports viewers harbor outrage towards the protesting players.

10. For a discussion of the authoritarian and non-empathetic moral perspective of Trump supporters, see Ekins and Haidt (2016). I elaborate more on the differences between liberals and conservatives in the next section.

11. While this evidence suggests that empathy might be superior to moral reasoning in terms of motivating prosocial behavior or preventing antisocial behavior, the importance of empathy with regards to its capacity to motivate amiability is given additional support by compelling arguments that empathy plays a crucial role in moral reasoning itself. Psychologist Martin Hoffman (2000), along with many others, has argued persuasively that empathy “is the foundation of morality” in the sense that the concern for others which it provides serves as the basis from which all subsequent moral reasoning develops. On a more philosophical level, Michael Slote has developed a novel moral theory according to which empathy itself is what determines whether an action is right or wrong. According to this perspective, “actions are morally wrong and contrary to moral obligation if, and only if, they reflect or exhibit or express an absence…of fully developed empathic concern for (or caring about) others on the part of the agent” (Slote, 2007, p. 31).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen Morris

Stephen Morris is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The College of Staten Island/CUNY.  His research interests include ethical theory, free will, and moral psychology. He has authored or co-authored several published articles, including “Vargas-Style Revisionism and the Problem of Retributivism,” “In Defense of the Hedonistic Account of Happiness,” and “Is Incompatibilism Intuitive?” In 2008 Stephen received a Distinguished Professor Award with distinction in the area of Scholarship/Creative Activity from Missouri Western State University. Stephen received Missouri Western State University’s James V. Mehl Outstanding Faculty Scholarship Award in 2009. His first book, Science and the End of Ethics, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015.