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Empathy for Empathy’s Sake: Aesthetics and Everyday Empathic Sadism

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Empathy and its Limits

Abstract

Jesse Prinz, in a recent article called ‘Against Empathy’, discusses many cases of the ‘dark side of empathy’ that show how empathy may lead to an unfair judgment and may favour some at the expense of others.1 The problem with empathy, Prinz holds, is that empathy interferes with morality due to its ‘intrinsic partiality’ and ‘ineluctable locality’.2

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Notes

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© 2016 Fritz Breithaupt

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Breithaupt, F. (2016). Empathy for Empathy’s Sake: Aesthetics and Everyday Empathic Sadism. In: Assmann, A., Detmers, I. (eds) Empathy and its Limits. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137552372_9

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