Empathy and Virtue

Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to the in-depth analysis of the link between empathy and virtue. The main claim is that empathy can be considered as a virtue, and to prove that, several topics are dealt with. Firstly, it is illustrated how empathy can be guided by phronesis and, thanks to it, can become a reliable ally of morality and a virtue in the traditional sense of the term. Furthermore, the moral benefits of feeling with (i.e. ‘empathy’) are made visible by means of a comparison with feeling for (i.e. ‘compassion’ or ‘pity’), and finally, the possible role empathy might play within Kantian ethics is here examined in order to demonstrate how even the supporters of a rationalist kind of ethics should not be too hasty in leaving empathy out of the picture.

The way Battaly construes her argument against empathy is rather complex, but I will try to summarise it in a way that is clear and hopefully faithful to the author’s intentions: if empathy is a virtue, then it must be intentional or at least have some voluntary component. In fact, as Aristotle had rightfully noticed in the Nicomachean Ethics, we praise or blame people depending on their virtuous or vicious behaviour, and we do that because we hold them responsible for their actions. Of course, one can only be responsible for something that one has control over. Ergo, virtues are traits of character that we must have control over. For this reason, all the concepts of empathy which describe it as a fundamentally automatic and involuntary phenomenon must be ruled out, for they cannot, by definition, regard empathy as a virtue. Necessarily, the only notion of empathy remaining, the one which conceives it as a phenomenon in some way controllable, is that of empathy as perspective-taking.

However, the situation is not that simple. It might, in fact, be that perspective-taking is not a virtue, but a skill. Battaly resorts once again to Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics to illustrate the analogies and the differences between the two concepts. A skill can be defined as ‘an acquired ability to reliably attain a particular end’.¹ In fact, we are not born with skills, we have to train and develop them, and once we have developed them well enough, skills grant us special abilities to attain various ends: to successfully play football or chess, to speak a language, to do derivations in logic, for example. This also implies that a person who accidentally—even though repeatedly—attains a certain end cannot be considered as actually skilled,² for the very good reason that skills are based on the agent’s knowledge, training, and experience, not on chance. Finally, skills cannot be but voluntary abilities, for the agent must exert control both over their acquisition and over their exercise and improvement. Concerning these characteristics, skills and virtues are similar: since virtues must be acquired and developed with practice and are also voluntary.

However, virtues and skills have several differences as well. Two are the most crucial. First, skills are, essentially, abilities, that is, they signal what one is able to do; virtues, in contrast, are dispositions, which means that they designate what one would do given certain circumstances. This entails that whereas the virtuous person always displays their virtues when the situation requires it, the skilled person might decide either to show what they are capable of or simply forego the opportunity, depending on what they want. Thus, for instance, the courageous person will always react with courage by confronting danger every time it is appropriate, given the circumstances. Whereas a person skilled in, for example, playing football will use this ability when they need, want, or are forced to but may simply forego all other opportunities to play.

The second difference between virtues and skills regards the reason, the motivation behind one’s own actions. The virtuous person is moved exclusively by the idea of the good. In other words, virtuous actions are performed by the virtuous individual only because they are morally good, not for ulterior reasons. For instance, a person who gives money to the poor only to be praised and admired by others is not truly generous. On the contrary, those who are skilled not only can perform their abilities out of egoistic motives, but can even pursue morally bad ends, as conmen, thieves, or professional assassins inter alia attest. Hence, these being the different features of virtues and skills, how should empathy be considered? Battaly has no doubts: empathy is a skill. In fact:

Suppose that, other things being equal, an agent foregoes opportunities to engage in imaginative perspective-taking. Does this demonstrate that she is not a good imaginative perspective-taker—that she lacks empathy so construed? It does not.³

The example she uses is that of an expert therapist, very skilled in perspective-taking, who one particular day, out of boredom and complacency, knowingly forgoes opportunities to engage in perspective-taking with their final client of the day. Does this show that they are not a good perspective-taker? No, as in fact, they are an excellent one. What we say is rather that they did not choose to use their ability, that they were not in the right frame of mind, or something similar. But we cannot deny their skills.

The other main reason, for which we cannot consider empathy to be a virtue, is that it does not necessarily aim at the moral good, as virtues should do. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, one can be good at perspective-taking and use this ability to deceive others. Given all that, Battaly’s answer cannot be but categorical: empathy is not a virtue, but a skill.

I shall not criticise so much the content of Battaly’s view on virtues, because—good Aristotelian as she is—I think she is fundamentally right. In particular, I agree that virtues are, under many important aspects, under our voluntary control and that they are dispositions to act in a certain way given the appropriate circumstances. Finally, of course, I agree that the truly virtuous person aims for what is good. What I shall criticise, instead, is her opinion that empathy cannot share these characteristics of virtues. I think, in fact, that if we analyse these features more closely, it will soon become clear that they are also common to empathy and that Battaly’s choice to restrict empathy to the sole phenomenon of perspective-taking is unduly limiting.

Let us begin with the first characteristic: the question of voluntary control. As highlighted previously, Battaly thinks that the only definition of empathy which depicts it as a mechanism potentially under our intentional control is that of empathy as perspective-taking and we have seen the problems that this entails for Battaly. However, there are various ways to overcome this criticism. First of all, we should make clear that the characterisation of empathy I have given over the course of the book can preserve the feature of voluntary control while affirming that empathy is more than just perspective-taking. We have said, in fact, that empathy is a complex phenomenon, involving a variety of different psychological mechanisms. For the sake of clarity and simplicity, empathy has been divided into low-level empathy and high-level empathy. Perspective-taking is surely the main methodology employed in HLE, but it does not feature in LLE, which benefits from more automatic and conceptually poor mechanisms, such as instant-reading (and interpretation) of the target’s facial expressions, and gestures. Hence, empathy is more than mere perspective-taking. However—Battaly might reply—then you should abandon describing empathy as under voluntary control; in fact, it seems that LLE occurs involuntarily and automatically. The key to confuting this critique is to highlight my notion, according to which empathy can and must become—following the example of virtues—a habit. I may not have direct control over LLE (although, as made clear earlier, I have a degree of control over my empathic reactions), but I do in regard to HLE and also the triggers of empathy. In other words, I may not be able, for example, to choose to feel a hint of sadness as a result of contemplating the unhappy face of a young woman. Nonetheless, I can choose to observe her face, her behaviour, to take her perspective, and to become attuned to her. In addition, if I do these things habitually, I will sooner or later develop a habit of empathising. Does this disqualify empathy from being a virtue? It does not. Indeed, Aristotle (who is Battaly’s representative for the correct definition of virtues) thought that this was exactly the distinctive feature of the virtuous person: the virtuous individual does not have to reflect on what should be done in a given situation; instead, by way of habit, they are used to instantiating certain virtues when the situation requires it and does so almost automatically. Hence, insofar as we consider empathy to be an ability that can be developed and become a habit, it does not conflict with Aristotle’s view on virtues.⁴ Empathy is ultimately, and in many regards, under our control and can become a disposition to enact in certain ways given the appropriate circumstances.

What is the situation regarding the third condition, however? Does empathy always aim for what is good? Here my answer will follow two lines of thought. Let us begin by saying that even asking such a question would be a serious misinterpretation of the doctrine of virtue by Aristotle. It is not, in fact, the virtues which ipso facto aim for what is good (how could a virtue ‘aim’ at something?) but it is the virtuous person who pursues certain aims, and the aims of the virtuous person are always good. In actuality, the virtuous person is guided by wisdom/prudence (phronesis), which is crucial in order to recognise what is morally good and to use one’s own virtues in order to realise that good in the praxis. This means that the virtuous person is truly virtuous only when they are guided by phronesis.⁵ Consider, in fact, of what would happen if an ill-intentioned person were also courageous. Their courage would give them the strength to fulfil their bad aims, thereby making them even worse from a moral point of view. Phronesis is what steer virtues to the good. Hence, since all virtues need a guide, why should empathy constitute an exception? I agree with Battaly that empathy can be used to pursue morally bad ends, but since this is true for other ethical virtues as well, I claim that empathy should ‘simply’ be led by phronesis.

Nevertheless, there is more that is worthy of consideration. Before moving on with the analysis of empathy as a virtue, however, it will be useful to introduce what I think is the concept of empathy in its fullest sense. Many of the arguments I have made in the course of the book were meant to set the stage for the introduction of this concept to be analysed more in depth here, in the section dedicated to moral motivation and conduct. I have stated, for instance, that empathy implies the lingering in the inner world of others. Now it is time to ask ourselves: why is it so important to do that? It is important, because empathy mainly regards what we might call (using a term by Blum, 1980) the ‘weal and woe’ of others, their suffering, and their well-being, which we can recognise, understand, and feel. Therefore, everyone (or almost everyone) of us is concerned about their own well-being. Emotions, like joy, sadness, pride, and envy, can all be connected to a special concern we have to fare good. We are happy when our general well-being is high, sad when it is low or when we suffer, proud when we have achieved something that we deem valuable (and so, directly or indirectly, good for our well-being), and envious when we believe someone fare better than us. Lingering in the inner world of others permits the identification of and, ultimately, the feeling of the same concern the other has for their own well-being ‘from the inside’, as it were. Thus, thanks to empathy, we become concerned for the target of our empathy. Empathising in this sense, with a sad person, for example, does not simply mean that we should feel their sadness, but that we should feel this sadness as mattering. We become, in the words of Batson,⁶ empathically concerned about the other’s well-being. Quoting the words of Aaron Simmons (who mentions the link previously referred to regarding empathy and caring):

[…] empathy in its fullest form is typically if not always essential to caring for another’s well-being. When we feel concern for another’s suffering, we necessarily empathize with her insofar as we share in her feelings of concern for her pain or distress.⁷

If empathy can become a habit in the model of ethical virtues, and if in its fullest form means to linger in the other long enough to see the concerns of this other individual as things that matter,⁸ then also the criticism about foregoing opportunities will not carry weight. In fact, if I fail to feel empathy for others when the circumstances are appropriate, I could not be called empathic in the proper sense. My relationship with the virtue of empathy would be akratic at best, but I would not have reached the ‘moral excellence’, so to speak. Hence, although concern can certainly exist without empathy (I might very well be concerned not about an individual, but about something, for instance, or I might feel concerned about a person without wanting to empathise with her), true empathy cannot exist without concern. At this point, some scholars might want to object by asking: is this conception of empathy not too similar to what was elsewhere called ‘sympathy’ or ‘compassion’?

In effect, if we intend sympathy as ‘a feeling or emotion that responds to some apparent threat or obstacle to an individual’s good and involves concern for him, and thus for his well-being, for his sake’,⁹ in some sense this is true. Although, as mentioned earlier in the book, sympathy can also occur without necessarily feeling empathy. It can by way of depicting exactly what I have labelled ‘concern without sharing of feelings’ or even a positive emotion of wishing well and/or practical support directed to the well-being of others. This last definition makes it different from compassion, which, as the name suggests, always implies a sharing of (negative) feelings (pace Bloom’s writings). I would therefore maintain the concept of sympathy as being closely related but nonetheless distinct from empathy. Instead, I see no other origin for compassion other than empathy itself. This should be viewed as good news, as it simplifies the wide and complex range of fellow-feelings. It does not mean, however, that empathy always leads to compassion: in fact, only empathy with a person who is suffering can possibly bring about compassion. Indeed, we all know that we can feel empathy even with a person who is faring well: in this case, compassion will not possibly arise. Nevertheless, in situations in which we strongly empathise with a person’s plight, our empathy will take the form of compassion.

I am well aware that there are scholars who would not accept my arguments: not only anti-empathists, but even authors who are mere sceptics about empathy, such as Michael Stocker, Martha Nussbaum of Upheavals, or Stephen Darwall (at least in his less recent works), would probably object by saying, with Darwall’s words: ‘Empathy can be consistent with the indifference of pure observation or even the cruelty of sadism. It all depends on why one is interested in the other’s perspective.’¹⁰ However, as already made clear previously, that which occurs in the case of sadism is not true (affective) empathy, and now we have even more evidence to notice that this notion is not valid. If the sadist really empathised with the feelings of fear, horror, and pain of his victim, he would not be able to go on hurting this.¹¹ What occurs in the case of sadism, torture, but also indifference is, at most, cognitive empathy, that is, the pure understanding that the other is suffering, but this suffering that is recognised is not shared in, nor felt from the inside; hence, true affective empathy is, in this case, totally excluded. I think that the reason why so many authors have been persuaded by the fact that empathy could coexist with sadism and indifference was the fact that they did not see empathy as a complex phenomenon, constituted by both a cognitive and an affective part. Probably, they have understood empathy as a monolithic phenomenon, and since we have prima facie evidence of the fact that there is an aspect of what looks like empathy deployed in the work of, for example, the professional torturer, they have concluded that empathy has nothing to do with moral concern. Now we are able to see things differently.

However, there is one point on which I fully agree with Darwall: the fact that: ‘It all depends on why one is interested in the other’s perspective.’¹² Ultimately, it is our will, our intention (together with our level of development with the mechanism of empathy) which decides how much we empathise with our target. The person who prepares to torture another human being will start with the unyielding stance of not having empathy for the other. He or she will free their mind of any true sharing of feelings and, thereby, of a real concern for the other. The virtuous person, instead, will always aim for the golden means: not too much empathy—which would lead to identification and/or personal distress—and not too little—which would induce a kind of emotional indifference. In medio stat virtus.

1 Empathy and Phronesis

This also means that empathy will necessarily need the contribution of practical wisdom and reason in order to lead to morally good acts (and judgements). Nevertheless, this should not be seen as a shortcoming: in fact, reason and phronesis must guide all virtues. This constitutes an answer also for all the scholars who criticise empathy by favouring other emotions: no emotion is ever infallible, and all emotions need the precious contribution of rational arguments and prudence, exactly as empathy does. Reading the works of anti-empathists, it is evident how simplistic their idea of empathy often is. They tend to see it as a type of emotion which can indifferently arise at any moment and with any person: we can indifferently empathise with, for example, an Adolf Hitler and his ideas as we can do it with, say, a Martin Luther King and his principles, and for this reason they think empathy is profoundly unreliable in ethical matters. Now, apart from the fact that in these cases ‘sympathy’ would be a more appropriate term than ‘empathy’, since here we want to express the fact that people might be positively inclined and have a general attitude of support towards the ideas of these two figures, we can now (re)affirm that empathy never occurs in empty space. Behind the fact that someone prefers to ‘empathise’ (again, it is the incorrect verb, but let us keep it, for the sake of the argument) with Hitler rather than with MLK, we must understand that there has been a certain background of education and of experience that has ultimately led this person to make what we would judge as the wrong moral choice. The empathy of this individual is misdirected because, arguably, their education was misdirected. This individual, in other words, did not experience any positive moral development, and the ‘moral’ principles at the base of their convictions and sentiments are crippled as a result. However, as already reiterated, the situation is different in the case of someone who has achieved moral virtue. We have stated previously that Battaly is wrong in believing that the only form of empathy under our voluntary control is perspective-taking; in fact, there are numerous tasks that we can voluntarily perform which are conducive to empathy, such as paying closer attention to the affective cues in others’ behaviour, regardless of whether they are human or animals.¹³ Thus, once again, phronesis reveals itself as central. Indeed, it is a way in which we can control our empathy with others: insofar as we are capable of reflecting, of reasoning about how and with whom we ought to empathise and put, as it were, our empathy to the test.

The merit of the work by anti-empathists, far from being that of freeing ourselves from empathy, is that of making extremely visible the limits of our human condition and how much room we have for improvement in how, when, with whom, and for what reasons to empathise. There are so many ways that we may empathise wrongly: we may empathise too little and become indifferent, too much and become physically distressed even by the most trivial things, or we may empathise excessively with those we consider similar to us and not enough with people we consider different, thereby becoming parochial. The list is long. Nonetheless, failures, biases, shortcomings, and weaknesses are not the prerogative of only one of our faculties, but of our very humanity. They can affect our reasoning or any emotions we have as much as they affect empathy, hence, the only thing we can do is learn to avoid these shortcomings as much as possible, not to abandon one of our abilities simply because it does not lend itself to what is an impossible perfection.

There is also one sense in which the moral potentiality of empathy is clearly higher than that of compassion or (at least in the traditional use of the term) of sympathy. I am referring to the fact that empathy allows us to understand, share, and reflect on positive emotions as much as well as negative ones. We are not only able to empathise with feelings of suffering, but also with feelings of joy, pride, admiration, among others. It is a pity that neither philosophic nor scientific literature has ever dedicated the space to empathy in this positive context that it deserves. I think that a series of psychological experiments coupled with appropriate philosophical investigations would surely be in order. In what follows, I will try to make a brief argument that will hopefully pave the way for further studies in this direction.

2 Empathy with Positive Emotions

We have emphasised several times the ways in which empathy can foster moral behaviour by making us notice people in need, by motivating us to help them, by developing a caring perspective, and so on. This is a natural consequence of the fact that a moral act stands out more vividly when it is performed to help a person who fares badly; it takes, in essence, the form of the good fighting the bad, of a positive force combatting a negative one. However, concern for others and moral behaviour does not only require us to help people in trouble and, consequently, to empathise exclusively with them, but also that we share and reflect on positive emotions. The ability to feel, for example, joy with others, to anticipate in our mind what positively motivates them, is a fundamental part of the moral life. In fact, if I understand what makes others happy, I will know what I have to do in order to make them stay that way and to help them when they do not fare well.¹⁴ Also, if I share other people’s positive emotions, feeling good as a result, I will be more motivated to help them—a form of positive conditioning. The effects of positive conditioning are well documented in the scientific literature on the subject, and nonetheless, it is hard to find a work that tries to couple the beneficial effects of positive conditioning and empathy. On the contrary, there are authors who take the power of positive affect to be a proof of the inadequacy of empathy in comparison. Prinz, for instance, has no problems in affirming that ‘a small dose of happiness seems to promote considerable altruism’,¹⁵ but he never wonders whether empathy could be connected to happy feelings. In fact, it seems that he considers empathy as connected with the negative ones only: ‘The meager effects of empathy are greatly overshadowed by other emotions. Consider, for example, positive affect.’¹⁶ Further, after having cited a study in which people feeling happiness show a far greater willingness to help others in comparison with people in the control condition he states:

This conclusion is embarrassing for those who think empathy is crucial for altruism because vicarious distress presumably has a negative correlation with positive happiness. It could be that vicarious distress reduces helpfulness by diminishing positive affect.¹⁷

These words demonstrate beyond all doubts that Prinz excludes a priori a possible link between empathy and positive affect: for him, empathy only arises in relation with negative feelings and, so it seems, it is deeply connected with vicarious distress. However, the philosopher does not provide a definitive proof for this so integralist an affirmation. It goes without saying that a person only capable of sharing the pain and suffering of others and not their joys would not only be miserable, but likely, over time, barely able to function as a human being due to the high quantity of vicarious distress they would be feeling. Nevertheless, the point is that empathy can arise equally along with both positive and negative feelings. Hence, the studies which show the fostering of, for example, altruistic behaviour as a result of the influence of positive feelings¹⁸ are not per se ‘against empathy’, as Prinz presents them. On the contrary, they show how empathy with positive feelings can be of great help for morality. To cite the illuminating words of Gregory Peterson on this matter:

The ability to share positive emotions is a prime feature of affiliative relationships, and much of our decision making and action necessarily incorporates into it not simply the negative but also the positive impacts of our actions. This too is a learned and developmental process: we learn to become good friends and, later, good spouses and partners and good parents. Without such awareness, our efforts fall flat or even backfire, despite the best of intentions.¹⁹

This is a concept I have repeated several times in this book: morality does not always and necessarily involve dealing with universal themes, such as global warming and war. It does not necessarily lead to the correct choice of social or economic policies. It can do so, of course, but morality in general and moral behaviour in particular regard primarily how we behave towards others, what kind of acts we instantiate in a given relationship (between friends, colleagues, relatives, but also between perfect strangers). I can help a person in trouble because I empathise with their suffering, but I can do it also because I imagine the relief, perhaps the joy that this person will feel as a result of my helping behaviour and empathise with this image of them I have created in my mind, feeling an anticipatory happiness as a result.

In the quote I gave, Peterson also emphasises the importance of the developmental dimension of empathy, and he is right: by means of repeated empathic processes over time we learn to deal with the emotionality of other people in an increasingly better way. We become aware of what troubles them, of what makes them happy, of what makes them sad, or angry, or proud, and so on. Moreover, we become aware of all these elements not in a ‘cold’ and detached manner, but in a ‘warm’ and affective one. I feel,²⁰ for example, that what I would like to say may sound rude and inappropriate, so I change the tone and the words to maintain my message but without hurting the person in front of me. I feel that one of my students needs encouragement, I know how much he wants me to appreciate his work and I empathise with the feeling of joy and pride he will probably feel after my praise about his work, so I praise him.

3 Empathy as a Virtue

Hopefully, everything I outlined in the last chapter has helped to defend the position in which empathy is to be considered a virtue. In fact, it is capable of satisfying all the conditions required by Aristotle (and Battaly) for being considered as such. At this stage, we can add one more definition by Gregory Peterson. He describes a moral virtue in this way:

A moral virtue is an active disposition (character trait) that (1) is learned over time, (2) integrates implicit and explicit processing, and (3) is a necessary component of full moral functioning.²¹

Of empathy as being an active disposition we have already spoken. Let us now briefly see whether it also fulfils all the other prerequisites. Empathy, if it is to be considered a virtue by Peterson, should be learnt over time. However, is this indeed true? It seems, in fact, that people are born with different degrees of empathy: we have already seen the case of autistics and that of psychopaths, and even among the non-autistic and non-psychopathic population there are important variances. Would it not be more correct, then, to define empathy as a capacity rather than a disposition learnt over time? In effect, it depends. There are at least two ways in which we can interpret the word ‘capacity’. If we define capacities as Battaly does, then it is obvious that empathy cannot be a capacity. On the contrary, if we use our ordinary, simple concept of capacity as being synonymous with ability, then we might say that empathy is a capacity that can be trained. Battaly²² indeed describes capacities, first of all, as essentially involuntary, because they are either innate or acquired in the usual course of development and because we do not have control over their acquisition and activation. Thus, they also cannot be improved as a result of training and practice. Vision, for her, is a classic case of capacity: innate, involuntary, and impossible to perfect through effort (if you are short-sighted, for instance, the only solutions are glasses, contact lenses, or surgery, not training). In this sense, it is evident that empathy cannot be considered a capacity in the proper sense, because we have already highlighted the fact that we have control over it and that empathy can be improved in the course of life with practice.²³ Instead, empathy can be seen as an ability and, as we have seen above, can become an active disposition.

Peterson’s second condition is that virtues should integrate implicit and explicit processes. What he wanted to express with this rather cryptic formulation clearly stems from the following quote about the virtue of courage for Aristotle:

To be courageous, then, is more than reflexively throwing oneself into the line of fire when the situation appears to require it; it involves an accurate and continually updated awareness of which situations those are, when they arise, and whether the current situation demands such action or not. It also involves recognition of when a situation requires active deliberation or not, and such capacity and awareness of the need for deliberation is the result of the honing of both our implicit and explicit processing capacities.²⁴

Therefore, the phrase ‘implicit and explicit processes’ describes the general behavioural background behind the acquirement and practice of virtues. The virtuous person is not the kind of person who acts without thinking, instead, they always know what to do thanks to this mixture between implicit processes, including the ‘continually updated awareness’ about the kind of situation they are facing and about what they should do, on one hand, and explicit processes, such as that of deliberation and the practical action they will then carry out, on the other. We have seen that empathy can meet these requirements, the empathic person being exactly that kind of person who, by using both their LLE and HLE, by carrying out processes, like perspective-taking or narrative empathy, shows more than just a series of automatisms for which empathy is activated unconsciously. Their control over empathy expresses itself in their constant and updated dealing with implicit and explicit processes.

However, it is this third feature that is the most important one: in fact, if empathy were not a necessary component of full moral functioning, then it would only be a skill, and not a virtue. Fortunately, the answer to this issue has been developed in the course of this whole book up to now: empathy is, under many different aspects, a necessary component of full moral functioning. It is necessary for our moral education and development, it is a necessary component of moral perception, it is necessary in many cases of moral judgement and moral conduct. Hence, we can conclude that empathy is, even using Peterson’s standard in addition to that of Battaly, a moral virtue. Nevertheless, I wish to argue further than this. Until now, in the section dedicated to moral conduct and motivation, we have emphasised, in particular, the role that empathy can play as a powerful motivator and illustrated the situations where it favours moral agency. However, although this was certainly useful to contrast the views of anti-empathists thinking that we would be better off without empathy, the extent to which empathy can in fact be considered necessary for moral conduct remains open to dispute. Are its moral effects for our agency not merely contingent? We have answered earlier that they can be and that for empathy to be necessarily moral, especially in the field of moral agency, it should be guided by practical wisdom. It is now time to construe a special kind of argument. If we can show that empathy is, in many cases, exactly what is required from a person to act morally, then we can conclude that a well-developed morality needs empathy, that empathy contributes to the flourishing of both morality globally and of the virtuous person themselves. In what follows, I will attempt to present just this argument.

4 The Importance of Feeling With

Consider, for instant moment, that anti-empathists are right. Perhaps, we might be able to develop morality, as well as to act and to judge morally without empathy and use, instead, deontological or utilitarian principles together with what Paul Bloom (2016) calls ‘rational compassion’ (which is, as we have seen, a type of active concern for other people stemming from the rational evaluation of their needy conditions). Now ask yourself: would it be better that way? Would that be an advantage or a disadvantage for morality? I am inclined to think that setting aside empathy from the moral sphere should be considered a great loss. If we take morality to regulate the actions and intentions of individuals with bodies and sensitive appetites, who live an emotional life and do not always follow the dictates of pure reason and logic, but who also value care, attachment, and the resulting vulnerability they get from them, then empathy ought to be and, in fact, is necessary for moral behaviour. Many of the recent discoveries in neurosciences show how complex our brain is and how difficult it is to distinguish between a purely rational and a purely affective part of ourselves. Thoughts, beliefs, and emotions seem, on the contrary, to be often intertwined and to influence one other. Without empathy we might reach some morally significant results, but not in every single case, and, what is more, we would not act perfectly and completely morally. This concept may sound odd to many, so, in what follows, I will try to explain what I mean by this.

Suppose that a couple, Samuel and Alice, are talking. Alice seems quite upset, so, Samuel, who loves her very much and always tries to take care of her, asks her, with a concerned face, what is wrong. Alice initially denies that something is wrong and attempts to change the subject, but Samuel persists. After a couple of minutes, Alice starts to open up and tells Samuel her problem. Samuel listens to her problem very carefully, without interrupting her. After Alice has finished her story, Samuel takes a couple of minutes to meditate on the matter and then exclaims: ‘Maybe you could…’ and offers Alice what he believes is the best solution to her problem. However, surprisingly enough for Samuel, Alice reacts with irritation: ‘Oh, why do you never listen to me?’ Samuel is puzzled:²⁵Verse

Verse ‘What… Why do you say I never listen to you? I listened to your story for ten minutes without saying a word!’ ‘Oh, poor you!’ replies Alice with more than a hint of sarcasm. ‘No, I mean… I really care about you. I was just trying to figure out a possible solution for your problem. I wanted to help you!’ ‘Yeah, I see how you try to help me! You’re always the same! Too focused on yourself to really understand what the other needs. Forget about it. It’s my fault! I knew I shouldn’t have talked to you about it,’ replies a disappointed Alice. Samuel, astonished and hurt, is speechless.

This and other situations of the kind are, with all probability, common to many people. Let us try to analyse what went wrong in the communication between Samuel and Alice. It is clear that Samuel cares for Alice and the moment he hears that she has a problem, he immediately prepares himself to help her. Therefore, after having listened to Alice’s story very carefully, he reflects upon the possible solution and eventually offers Alice his advice. The schema is quite simple and can be summarised as follows: ‘I realise that you have a problem. From what I think I’ve understood, your problem is “x”. I am convinced that the best solution for “x” is “y”. So, why don’t you try to do “y”’? Taken per se, there is nothing wrong with this line of thought: everything seems rational and logical, and yet, Alice is convinced that Samuel has not understood her. There seems to be nothing offensive in this reasoning, and nonetheless, Alice feels offended and thinks Samuel is selfish. However, all this makes sense when we become aware of the fact that actually something is missing from this line of thought, and it is empathy. Samuel takes the problem, analyses it, and gives the solution. Even if he said that he cares for Alice (and he really does) he does not take Alice completely into account: his focus is solely on the problem.

This fact is of exceptional importance for our claim, because, put in another way, we might very well affirm that Samuel, in this precise case, has a form of rational compassion, but no empathy for Alice. He cares for her, he feels badly for her and feels the desire to help her, and he accomplishes this desire by helping her out in what he thinks is the best way. However, he does not empathise with her, and this lack of empathy is perceived by Alice, who, as a consequence, feels hurt and reacts with sarcasm. Samuel does not show empathy because he treats Alice’s problem as a mechanic would treat a breakdown in a car, or as a surgeon would treat a cancer at the stomach, that is, by focusing on the problem, ultimately for the sake of the other, but without thereby feeling with the other. If Samuel had really tried to empathise with Alice, he would have realised that what she really needed was not a ready-made solution, but simply some moral support. In other words, she just wanted to be listened to and then hear soothing words of concern. She wanted to feel herself cared for and not just to see the effects of care. This kind of aid can be offered only by empathy. That is why I argue that feeling with alone can indeed possess moral value. Moreover, frequently, when we are troubled, it is not the feeling for that we seek (which, after all, can often be overly paternalistic and make the object of compassion feel pitied), but the feeling with. We want people to be tuned into us.

My claim is that to help others with compassion, but not with empathy, can sometimes work perfectly fine, but on many other occasions, and generally over time, it can lead to several problems: it can create a distance between the person who feels a rational kind of compassion and the target of the compassion. On the one side, there is an individual with warm feelings of concern and who is very much inclined to help, but who does not feel, in the slightest, the same feelings as the suffering person, and on the other side, the afflicted individual, who does not feel the helping person is tuned into their feelings and ends up simply feeling pitied. The sympathetic but not empathic person (or, in the sense given to this term by Bloom, the compassionate one) is that person who wants to help another, but does not know how to do it, because they are not ‘on the same wavelength’, as it were, with the other. On the contrary, the empathic person is that person who knows what to do and who feels a certain amount of motivation to do it, because it is hard to ignore what one feels. If, in addition to the already significant stimulus of empathy per se, one reaches also the level of sympathetic care (and we have seen above how empathy and caring sympathetic concern are often intertwined), then altruistic behaviour will necessarily follow.

Kant famously remarked in the Critique of Pure Reason that ‘thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind’.²⁶ I think that even one opposed to empathy would find a similar connection between empathy and compassion: empathy without compassion can sometimes be morally void (because it does not always necessarily lead to altruistic behaviour), but compassion without empathy is blind (because we cannot really act morally towards another person without first being in tune with them).²⁷

5 Empathy’s Role Within a Rationalist Ethics

Having mentioned Immanuel Kant, I would like to remain slightly longer on this matter with the aim of emphasising some points that have not been sufficiently examined in depth by the literature and to develop a few original (at least to the best of my knowledge) arguments that can further our discussion.²⁸ As a paradigmatic case of a rationalist, Kant did not reserve a special role for sentiments and emotions in his ethics. His moral philosophy can, in fact, be explained with no need to resort to this notion, and in this sense empathy cannot be considered at all as a central concept in his ethical construction. Nevertheless, even he, the staunchest defender of the law of duty, could not help but underline a special part that empathy plays in morality. Notice that Kant never used the term ‘empathy’ for the very good reason that it was not widespread at that time; however, his concept of Teilnehmende Empfindung, usually translated with ‘sympathetic feeling’, or simply ‘sympathy’, is essentially comparable to our modern concept of empathy. In fact, he writes in The Metaphysics of Morals:

Sympathetic joy and sadness (sympathia moralis) are sensible feelings of pleasure or pain […] at another’s state of joy or sorrow (shared feeling, sympathetic feeling). Nature has already implanted in man susceptibility to these feelings. But to use this as a means to promoting active and rational benevolence is still a particular, though only a conditional, duty. It is called the duty of humanity (humanitas) because man is regarded here not merely as a rational being but also as an animal endowed with reason.²⁹

From this quote it can be noticed that, for Kant, empathy is a natural feeling and that we can use it instrumentally in order to achieve what duty alone (i.e. the categorical imperative) would not be able to achieve. This is the reason why Kant calls this kind of duty a ‘conditional’ one. This duty is conditional because it is to be pursued only at the condition that it helps us to accomplish the commands of the categorical imperative, whilst it has to be neglected when it contrasts with the latter. It seems, therefore, fair to affirm that Kant sees empathy as a sort of emotional ‘crutch’ or ‘prosthesis’ for the moral man, something that can be instrumentally useful for morality, but not absolutely. While I agree with the philosopher from Königsberg in acknowledging an instrumental moral utility to empathy, I also find that by developing Kant’s view, we can reach two other important conclusions about the moral dimension of empathy that may be summarised in two postulations: (A) empathy is a fundamental part of our humanity (what Kant calls ‘humanitas’), and (B) empathy is, what is in some cases, required to not only act morally but to act in a morally, so to speak, ‘more perfect’ way. These two elements are so deeply connected that they can be viewed as two sides of the same coin.

Consider again the example of Samuel and Alice. This case illustrates the intrinsic value of empathy compared to rational compassion or sympathy. Empathy has a special and unique importance on its own, regardless of whether it can lead to compassion, or not. When we are in need, we do not want someone helping us with the superior and detached smile of a bodhisattva, we want a certain sharing, a commonality of feelings, we want—in a sense—to be ‘welcomed’ in the hearts of others. We want them to be open and receptive, even vulnerable towards us. Consider the last sentence from the quote by Kant: ‘It is called the duty of humanity (humanitas) because man is regarded here not merely as a rational being but also as an animal endowed with reason.’ What does Kant mean by that? As I interpret him, he means that whilst morals grounded in the law of duty regards a human being as purely a rational being, free from their bonds with matter, the body, and their emotionality, an ethics enriched with empathy conceives a human being for what they really are: ‘an animal endowed with reason’, specifically, a sensible, embodied, and emotional being with desires, needs, and feelings, that is also gifted with reason. In other words, reason comes to be one of the features which characterises humanity among others, but not the only feature, nor the only one of significance. Empathy, thereby, makes visible the limits of people’s autonomy, which is a central concept in Kantian ethics. We are not completely autonomous: we have emotional and social needs that can be satisfied by an application of the categorical imperative only insofar as it can promote benevolence. According to Kant, we have a duty to foster merely what we have labelled HLE, since LLE is not intentional. Given that his distinction is extremely similar to the one I have made and can thus illustrate my point even more clearly, it is useful to quote it in full:

Now humanity can be located either in the capacity and the will to share in others’ feelings (humanitas practica) or merely in the susceptibility, given by nature itself, to feel joy and sadness in common with others (humanitas aesthetica). The first is free, and is therefore called sympathetic (communio sentiendi liberalis); it is based on practical reason. The second is unfree (communio sentiendi illiberalis, servilis); it can be called communicable (since it is like the susceptibility to warmth or contagious diseases), and also compassion, since it spreads naturally among men living near one another. There is obligation only to the first.³⁰

It can be observed that, for Kant, it is not empathy that is the element to be ‘located in the capacity and the will to share in others’ feelings’, but humanity itself! For the philosopher of reason and of the law of duty, our very human essence expresses itself, inter alia, in sharing in others’ feelings. Once we admit to ourselves how closely this ability is linked with our own human nature, it is clear that anti-empathic positions cannot be maintained. How can one ‘eliminate’—as anti-empathists insist we do—such an intrinsic capacity?

Notice, also, how near the Kantian’s concept is with the one we have developed in the last section, as a result of a reinterpretation of the Aristotelian ethics: the ability to share in others’ feelings, according to Kant, is based on practical reason and is voluntary, exactly like virtues, which for Aristotle, are based on practical wisdom, and, more importantly, exactly like our concept of empathy. However, there is a caveat: Kant is adamant about the fact that only what we have called HLE can become a duty, whereas we have no obligation towards LLE. It is easy to understand why Kant chooses to sustain such a position: if LLE is involuntary (‘unfree’ in his words) and given in different measures by nature, how can one have an obligation to something over which they have no power? I partially share this view, in the sense that I also agree that LLE is less controllable and that we find people who seem, by nature, to more or less have a ‘gift’ for this. Unlike Kant, however, I think that we can have a certain indirect influence on LLE, which, if it does not make it voluntary (because it remains a fundamental automatic mechanism), at the very least makes us capable of improving it or not. In other words, LLE is grounded in our openness to the others and their inner world, and in our attention to their behaviour, to their embodied emotions expressed in gestures, vocalisations, facial expressions, and more. Although we cannot decide when LLE occurs, we can do much for the fulfilment of its preconditions. Depending, for example, on how open and attentive we are, the activation of LLE will be more or less probable, in a directly proportional manner. Hence, although I agree with Kant in affirming that we do not have any duty to feel LLE, we do have an indirect duty to favour our attentiveness towards others, so that LLE can follow. In this way, although LLE remains automatic and involuntary, it is at least able to be influenced.

Going on with the reading of this part of the Metaphysics of Morals, it seems that Kant walks into a paradox. As I do not want to misinterpret what he has said by making a personal summary of his argument, I think that the best way to proceed is to cite his words in full and then comment on them:

It was a sublime way of thinking that the Stoic ascribed to his wise man when he had him say, “I wish for a friend, not that he might help me in poverty, sickness, imprisonment, etc., but rather that I might stand by him and rescue a man.” But the same wise man, when he could not rescue his friend, said to himself, “What is it to me?” In other words, he rejected compassion.

In fact, when another suffers and, although I cannot help him, I let myself be infected by his pain (through my imagination), then two of us suffer, though the evil really (in nature) affects only one. But there cannot possibly be a duty to increase the evil in the world and so to do good from compassion. This would also be an insulting kind of beneficence, since it expresses the kind of benevolence one has toward someone unworthy, called pity; and this has no place in men’s relations with one another […].³¹

The quote is dense with different meanings, so it behoves us to analyse it carefully. Let us start with the example of the Stoic. It is clear that what Kant wants to highlight here is the fact that the virtuous person should not desire a friend that can help them when they do not fare well, but wish for a friend that they may help when this friend finds themselves in dire straits. In other words, the virtuous person is the altruistic person par excellence. Until this point, there is nothing so worthy of note: traditionally, altruism and benevolence are characteristics of the virtuous person. However, Kant then mentions that although the virtuous person is very concerned about others, and especially about their friends, they can easily shift to indifference when they understand that they cannot be of help, thereby rejecting compassion. This behaviour, which could be deemed rather odd, is explained by Kant by means of simple logical reasoning: the problem with compassion is that it doubles the suffering in the world. In fact, if one person suffers and I am in no position to help them, but I start to feel compassion for them, I will only add to my suffering, without relieving theirs. Compassion, in other words, acts as a multiplicator of pain. Yet there is a distinct problem with compassion that I have already highlighted previously, while discussing the example of Samuel and Alice: the fact that compassion³² can easily become—even if Kant does not use this word—‘paternalistic’ and express the kind of benevolence towards someone perceived as ‘unworthy’ or at least inferior. In this case, compassion turns into pity.

Hence, following Kant’s line of reasoning, one should avoid sharing the suffering of another, as this just multiplies the suffering and eventually leads to pity, which is, as we have seen, the wrong kind of benevolence. Nonetheless, Kant then makes an unexpected move which seems prima facie to give his argument the characteristic of a paradox:

But while it is not in itself a duty to share the sufferings (as well the joys) of others, it is a duty to sympathize actively in their fate; and to this end it is therefore an indirect duty to cultivate the compassionate natural (aesthetic [ästhetische]) feelings in us, and to make use of them as so many means to sympathy based on moral principles and the feeling appropriate to them. It is therefore a duty not to avoid the places where the poor who lack the most basic necessities are to be found but rather to seek them out, and not to shun sick-rooms or debtors’ prisons and so forth in order to avoid sharing painful feelings one may not be able to resist. For this is still one of the impulses that nature has implanted in us to do what the representation of duty alone would not accomplish.³³

Reading this paragraph, it is possible to see that whilst the first sentence seems to ideally continue Kant’s argument about avoiding the sharing of feelings, the rest of it asserts exactly the contrary: ‘it is […] a duty to cultivate compassionate natural […] feelings’; ‘it is […] a duty not to avoid the places where the poor who lack the most basic necessities are to be found’, and so he continues. At the end of the quote, comes the strongest assertion: this ability to share the others’ feelings is ‘one of the impulses that nature has implanted in us to do what the representation of duty alone would not accomplish’. Therefore, this sharing of feelings is, for Kant, not only a duty, but a natural, innate, congenital impulse that help us to accomplish what duty alone (and we know that the whole framework of the Kantian ethics is based on duty) cannot accomplish. In other words, duty is considered per se not sufficient to carry out everything that a morally virtuous person should do. Moral agency extends beyond the borders of duty, and hence we have an indirect duty to do what goes beyond duty. The result is a complex and almost paradoxical formulation for what is undoubtedly a complex and almost paradoxical concept. Let us attempt to analyse this to some extent.

After having criticised compassion and the sharing of other people’s suffering, Kant seems, at this point, to reconsider his previous claims entirely. How is this possible? In my opinion, there are two feasible ways in which we can interpret Kant’s reasoning. The first is by coming back to his distinction between humanitas practica and humanitas aesthetica. Remember, in fact, that Kant made it clear that whilst the capacity to share in other people’s feelings is free and sympathetic (humanitas practica), the susceptibility towards feelings (humanitas aesthetica), which is more similar to a very basic form of empathy or even to an emotional contagion, is unfree and communicable. If we interpret Kant as placing his concept of compassion in the second category and not in the first, the paradox will disappear. In fact, Kant may continue attacking compassion as representing an unwelcomed form of benevolence because of its involuntary nature and its tendency to increase the suffering instead of mitigating it, while still insisting that frequenting locations that cause empathetic feelings to rise in us is a kind of indirect duty. The problem, indeed, is not in sharing feelings (even negative ones) per se, but sharing them by means of compassion. This is the easier explanation, but, I believe, also the wrong one. If I am not mistaken in my reading of Kant, in fact, his claim is a bit more complex than this. Notice that when he asserts that it is an indirect duty to cultivate the compassionate natural feelings in us, he not only uses the adjective ‘compassionate’ but he specifies that these feelings are ‘aesthetic’. This specification should make us reflect, since it is exactly the adjective he associates with the mere, and I quote: ‘susceptibility, given by nature itself, to feel joy and sadness in common with others’, namely, the humanitas aesthetica. Thus, it seems that for Kant we have an indirect duty to feel even compassion, but only—and this is crucial—insofar as it leads to ‘sympathy based on moral principles and the feeling appropriate to them’. The paradox, in this case, can be solved in the following way:

• A. We have a duty only towards humanitas practica (which, using our terminology, can be referred to as simply ‘empathy’, or ‘high-level empathy’, to be more precise), not towards humanitas aesthetica (which is portrayed as a degree of low-level empathy).

• B. ‘Compassion’ is another term than can be used for humanitas aesthetica (as Kant himself indicates), therefore we do not have a duty to feel it. Furthermore, compassion increases the evil in the world by multiplying the felt suffering and can lead to ‘an insulting kind of beneficence’, namely, pity. Acting out of compassion is, as a consequence, not only not obligatory, but even to be avoided.

• C. Nevertheless, compassionate (and empathic)³⁴ feelings can be used as means to sympathy, and since active sympathy is a duty, the instrumental role that these kinds of feelings play is an important one, so important that their development and use in fact form an indirect duty.

Observe that both explanations are equally functional to our purposes. In effect, by choosing the first one, we would interpret Kant’s defence of high-level empathy as nothing less than a duty: ‘we have obligation’ says Kant, to the humanitas practica. On the contrary, low-level empathy, gathered together with ‘compassion’, would be discarded. With the second kind of explanation, together with HLE, even the role of LLE would be reconsidered. In fact, even though humanitas aesthetica cannot—taken per se—constitute a direct duty, cultivating it can be an indirect duty insofar as it favours the already cited ‘sympathy based on moral principles and the feelings appropriate to them’, and because, ultimately, this is an impulse implanted by nature itself that helps us do what the representation of duty alone would not be capable of accomplishing.

Beyond the bare fact that it is extremely thought-provoking to observe how the most famous example of rationalist ethics existing in the history of philosophy assigns such a special role to empathy,³⁵ Kant’s considerations invite some reflections as to why empathy comes to be that weighty. Are not the dark sides of empathy more numerous than the bright ones? Judging from Kant, they are not. Again, take the paradigmatic case of Kantian compassion. The philosopher from Königsberg interprets compassion in the traditional (and, I should add, more appropriate) sense of ‘suffering-with’, Latin com-passio, German Mit-Leid, that is as empathy for the person in pain (be it physical or psychological). His example with the Stoics and the subsequent reflection about compassion as a multiplier of suffering seem to bring him close to the claims made by anti-empathists about the vicarious distress one gets by empathising with the plights of others and the negative impact it has on our psychology, as well as on our capacity to actually do something morally good. However, Kant then adds something more: ‘places where the poor who lack the most basic necessities are to be found’ are to be sought out, so that the painful feelings one will receive as a result will not be avoided.

We have already highlighted this apparent paradox: at first it seems that such a sharing of feelings should be shunned, then the philosopher urges us to seek it out. The point is that, in order to accomplish our duty, we also need appropriate feelings that accompany the actions we carry out and that help to enhance our moral motivation. Although risky, empathy, in all its forms, is either a direct or an indirect duty, in fact, even when it takes the form of compassion (and Kant says clearly that we should not refrain from ‘sharing painful feelings one may not be able to resist’), it is the necessary complement of the categorical imperative. Nonetheless, one might still ask how can this be reconciled with Kant’s previous arguments. I think that the answer has to be sought in the fact that although the humanitas aesthetica (i.e., LLE) is not in itself under our direct control, as I have highlighted earlier, it can be controlled after its occurrence. In other words, the moment I know that I am experiencing feelings of suffering out of empathy with another, I can do something about it, I can stem it. If I am right about that, then Kant’s assertion about the Stoics may still make sense: if the virtuous person knows that feeling with another will be not only useless, but even deleterious, they will not do it. Furthermore, if I have some sort of control over my LLE, then I will in principle be able to prevent it from becoming pity. Notice, besides, that what is central for Kant is that we avoid acting out of empathy, of this ‘feeling with’. We should, that is to say, act with empathy, but not out of it. The categorical imperative must be our only guide,³⁶ nevertheless, empathy, far from being a stranger to the moral landscape, integrates the law of duty with extra moral motivation and insights.

6 Empathy and Moral Perfection

I would like to emphasise one point in particular from Kant’s last quote that would otherwise run the risk of being ignored: that about feelings appropriate to moral principles. What does it mean for feelings to be appropriate to moral principles driving the moral subject? It seems clear that, for Kant, the virtuous person should also be a sympathetic one and that this sympathy should be active, namely, not only involving a generic psychological tendency to abstractly sympathise with the others, but a practical commitment to really help them in the praxis. If this is true, then empathy has, as already highlighted, an irreplaceable (instrumental) role to play as a powerful motivator for moral conduct and complement to the categorical imperative, but it also has—and this is my argument, which I believe is very much in accordance with Kant’s—the role of a constitutive element of the morally virtuous person. In other words, my claim is that even if it makes no sense to affirm that a person has not acted morally when they had good intentions and chose a morally apt means of realising those intentions, if they failed to empathise with the other when it was needed, then their action cannot be considered morally perfect, because it was not perfectly appropriate for the situation. In some cases (as we have seen with Samuel and Alice’s example), empathy is even what is required to truly be of some help and reach one’s own moral aims.

Consider the case of telling lies. We know that the categorical imperative imposes a duty to always be truthful and never lie to anyone. However, imagine for one moment the following scenario: suppose that Mark decides not to lie to his wife Jean because it is ‘his duty’ (so he tells his wife) to do so. Indeed, the categorical imperative commands total honesty. My claim is that in such a situation Jean would (and actually should) feel offended. Mark’s behaviour seems to be very much comparable to that of the (in)famous ‘husband with one thought too many’ created by Bernard Williams at the end of Persons, Characters and Morality.³⁷ There, Williams famously discusses the case of a man who, faced with a dangerous situation, can only save one of two people in equal peril, one of them being his wife. The British philosopher observed that a moral justification defending the man against the charge that he ought to have been impartial provides the rescuer with ‘one thought too many’. Put in another way, a morally good husband should not think about impartiality when it comes to saving the life of his wife over the life of another person with whom he is not acquainted. Similarly, Mark’s appeal to the categorical imperative to justify his decision not to lie to Jean seems ‘less than moral’ or at least ‘oddly moral’ because it is grounded in what we feel is the wrong motive: it is another ‘thought too many’. A good husband should avoid lying to his wife not only because it is his duty to do so, but because he loves her, he cares for her, and he feels with her. ‘How would she feel if I told her a lie?’; ‘How would I feel if she lied to me?’ These should be the thoughts driving a good husband, and not something like: ‘What would happen if I universalised my maxim to lie in order to protect myself from bad consequences?’

These considerations teach an important lesson: there are cases in which empathy offers the right kind of moral justification for our actions, and in which other more general and universal moral principles fail to do so. However, we have to admit that even inflexible anti-empathists, like Jesse Prinz and Paul Bloom, might concede such a conclusion, that is, they may very well agree on the fact that close personal relations need the fundamental contribution of empathy, but that its role in the moral sphere should be limited or even suppressed. Indeed, this thought seems to emerge from some of their statements. Prinz, for instance, is ready to admit that empathy might enrich the lives of those who experience it and help foster close relations in personal life, but then adds that it cannot serve the central motivational role in driving pro-social behaviour.³⁸

Bloom seems at times to share Prinz’s position, but eventually displays a more radical position than that of Prinz. In fact, if on page 130 of his book Against Empathy he shows a certain openness towards the role of empathy in personal relationships,³⁹ between pages 131 and 132 he then states: ‘I am going to concede that there are facets of intimate life where empathy does add something of value. But on balance, my conclusion here will be consistent with the overall theme of this book: It often does more harm than good.’⁴⁰ Hence, anti-empathists might still object that what I have proved with the example of Mark and Jean and the following discussion is merely the beneficial role empathy can play in intimate relationships, but not in the domain of morality in general. However, the positions of Bloom and Prinz are far from being unproblematic. To say that intimate relationships are one thing and morality is something completely different is troublesome at least. It is troublesome because either one concedes that morality does not have anything to do with personal relationships, and this would be an outlandish conclusion, or one admits that there are at least two different categories of morality: a ‘private morality’ for individuals to whom I am personally related and a ‘public morality’ for, say, matters such as social and economic policies, the environment, and charities. Since I cannot believe that any reasonable person would be ready to embrace the first option, I am inclined to believe that Jesse Prinz and Paul Bloom are in favour of the second. The question is whether it really makes sense to hold such a position. Should we not strive towards a unitary ethics that can be used in all kinds of situations and with both strangers and acquaintances? If the answer to this question is positive (and I think it should be), then an ethics which acknowledges the positive role that empathy can play and, nonetheless, does not refrain from employing moral principles, especially when it comes to make decisions which extend well beyond the personal sphere, appears to be the best solution. Our empathy does not simply disappear when, for example, we reflect about voting or not for a certain policy: it accompanies our choices together with our moral principles. Limiting its influence in these matters, as we have shown several times in the book, is a short-sighted resolution.

Nevertheless, both Prinz and Bloom demonstrate, at times, a desire to go even further than that. For them, even in the context of personal relations empathy proves not to be always and necessarily useful. Consider, for instance, the doctor-patient relationship.⁴¹ Generally, we hope for competent doctors and the question of whether they are empathic or not does not seem to matter; what matters is the result. At least, for most of us, it seems obvious that it is better to be cured and survive, even if we have no esteem for the doctor who saved our life, than to die at the hands of the most empathic of doctors. The patient is here simply expressing a personal (and understandable) interest to survive, and since this is the only outcome that matters, the question about the character of the doctor (are they empathic or not?) and the nature of their treatment (does it involve a concern for me as a patient or not?) becomes secondary. In this context, morality is completely excluded: it is just a transaction, figuring on the one side a patient who wants to recover, ‘whatever it takes’, and on the other, a doctor ready to do exactly that in order to save them.⁴²

If we regard the relationship between doctor and patient in this way, then it is not surprising that empathy is out of the question. However, there are two objections which are possible to be raised here. The first regards the definition of morality itself. My claim—which I think reflects the normal moral intuitions even of non-philosophers—is that the morality of an action cannot be reduced merely to what one does (in this case, saving the life of a patient instead of letting them die), but must encompass also how one does it and why. There are, in fact, many conceivable ways of saving a life: for example, one can do it unintentionally, and in this case we would not be ready to judge such an action as moral. Alternatively, one can do it à la ‘Doctor House’, in a cold, detached, even unfriendly, and unkind manner, or, conversely, expressing warm caring and concern. Also, of course, one can do it following altruistic motives or very egoistic ones. All of these potential variations have an impact on the morality of an action, which, as we have already stated, always differs by degrees. For instance, we are more inclined to deem as morally good an action stemming out of an altruistic concern for the other, than one out of an egoistic motive. Also, we are more prone to call morally virtuous a person who displays care for others than a sociopath. Thus, the question regarding whether one would prefer a competent but insensitive doctor, instead of an empathic but incompetent one, is misplaced. Morality, in fact, does not have to do with competence. Furthermore, morality is not totally reducible to the outcome of an action (‘saving the patient’s life’, for instance). That is why I would like to propose a different question be asked: competences and abilities being equal, would you prefer a doctor like Gregory House or an empathic one? In particular, which of the two would you judge as a ‘morally virtuous person’ or, to use our habitual words: ‘a good person’? I think that in this case no doubts would arise.

However, anti-empathists might still want to object that if you are very sick, you are not—and should not be—interested in any mirroring of your feelings. In fact, you may be very worried, perhaps even frightened, and you do not want your doctor to be as afraid as you are. This is actually a point that Paul Bloom made in his 2014 article for the Boston Review:

As I write this, an older relative of mine who has cancer is going back and forth to hospitals and rehabilitation centers. I’ve watched him interact with doctors and learned what he thinks of them. He values doctors who take the time to listen to him and develop an understanding of his situation; he benefits from this sort of cognitive empathy. But emotional empathy is more complicated. He gets the most from doctors who don’t feel as he does, who are calm when he is anxious, confident when he is uncertain.⁴³

Prima facie, this criticism might seem to be valid. Indeed, no one would deny that doctors should be good at cognitively empathising, but emotional empathy is another matter. If emotional empathy is defined as a mirroring of the others’ feelings, then it definitely appears inadvisable for a doctor to cultivate it. However, I hope I have shown in previous chapters that high-level empathy must not be regarded as a mere mirroring of feelings. If it were, it would be something different: it would be identification or emotional contagion at worst, or, alternatively, low-level empathy, at best. Empathy means feeling what another feels, but without thereby forgetting one’s own identity and the role one plays in a given context. Emotions, once empathised, must—so to speak—‘be brought home’. Empathy’s effects do not end with the simple sharing of feelings: taking the other perspective, entering, as it were, in their world, dwelling, lingering in it, and coming to experience the concerns of the others, is actually what can fuel the empathiser’s care for the target. Hence, an empathic doctor would understand and feel what is like to be a worried, frightened patient, but then act as a good doctor would. By doing this, they would reveal a more fully developed morality than the unempathetic one, for they would help the patient for good (moral) reasons—a desire to heal the person and not just defeat the disease or demonstrate their skill. They would also help in a good (moral) way, that is, by feeling with the patient, giving them the respect and consideration that they deserve and, more importantly, need. The good doctor is not someone who echoes the feelings of the patient, but someone who feels the patient’s subjective concern and is able to act, taking this into due consideration.

Harkening back to the beginning of this book, we made it clear that emotions generally have an ‘intentional object’. Now, in the case of a frightened patient, the intentional object of their fear is the illness which threatens their life. However, the doctor treating the patient, and who empathises with them, will not feel the same emotion towards the same object: the doctor’s fear, if present, will be directed to an eventual failure on their part: ‘what if the treatment I prescribed doesn’t work? What if I’m wrong with my diagnosis?’ In other words, the doctor who faces a distressed patient and wants to emotionally empathise with them will, for a moment, as a result of empathy, feel the fear of their patient: their worries, their anxiety, perhaps even their desperation, and this will not only inform them about the state of the patient, but also help them in developing a caring, concerned perspective towards that person. On the other hand, after this process is concluded and the emotions are recognised and felt from the inside, the doctor will return to their own perspective and will only be worried about what might concern them as a doctor, although the perspective of the patient will remain in the background and influence their decision. For instance, having empathically experienced the patient’s fear, they will be particularly careful in communicating to that person with respect to any urgent needs based on their condition, for example, over a difficult operation.

There is, however, another reason why we find a doctor like Gregory House to be extremely competent, but also, all things considered, a ‘jerk’ (if you allow me the ‘philosophical term’): his defective character. House is intelligent, brilliant, extremely knowledgeable, but he is not kind. He is not empathic. He is, or at least he seems, extremely egoistic, and he is definitely arrogant. Do these character flaws, this lack of virtues entirely prevent him from doing good things and acting morally? No, they do not. He is capable of instantiating morally good actions. Do they—at least at times—undermine his capacity to do what is good or negatively affect the morality of his actions? Indeed, they do. His lack of empathy makes him unable to truly understand how the patient feels and to react, not simply according to the progression of the illness (that, he can do), but according to the psychological conditions of the patient. The patient of an unempathetic doctor will often feel not listened to, perhaps even not cared for in the right way. This is why Leslie Jamison, in the first chapter of her above-mentioned book The Empathy Exams, affirms that the most important entry on the checklist with which she rated medical students was number 31: ‘Voiced empathy for my situation/problem.’

Let us leave aside the example of doctors and consider a more general picture. Referring back what we said previously: true care and benevolence can only stem from empathy, not from a detached and cold kind of sympathy. In fact, if the sympathetic action needs to avoid becoming a pitiful one, that is, the kind deed of a superior towards an inferior, one needs to situate oneself in the same place as the target before one can help them to emerge, to visit them in their darkness before one can bring them into the light. Morality cannot be reduced to the mere instantiation of certain actions, to questions about right and wrong. It is also a matter of internalism, of (caring, loving) principles driving our acts, of virtues building up our character. I think that this conclusion was discerned even by Kant, who, in the paragraph following the last one we quoted, writes:

Would it not be better for the well-being of the world generally if human morality were limited to duties of Right, fulfilled with the utmost conscientiousness, and benevolence were considered morally indifferent? It is not so easy to see what effect this would have on man’s happiness. But at least a great moral adornment, love of man, would then be missing from the world. Love of man is, accordingly, required by itself, in order to present the world as a beautiful moral whole in its full perfection, even if no account is taken of advantages (of happiness).⁴⁴

How should we interpret this passage?