Abstract
Empathy is an emotional faculty that has joint cognitive and affective components. It is important in bioethics because it shapes the attitudes and sensitivities that are important in clinical care. Empathy is important in moral perception and judgment and gives access to other persons’ experiences and emotions as well as the moral domain, understood as the weal and woe of other persons. It is crucial to the foundations of medicine and healthcare practices. This entry focuses on the normative issues associated with empathy in the healthcare context and their importance in clinical bioethics.
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Further Readings
Doris, J. M. (2010). The moral psychology handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Nortvedt, P. (2016). Empathy. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09483-0_170
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