Empathy and Moral Development

Abstract

This chapter addresses the issue of whether empathy is a necessary feature for the development of morality. Scholars who deny this role usually tend to stress the importance of imitation and role models to the detriment of empathy. However, in this chapter, it is shown not only that imitation without empathy cannot suffice for the development of a healthy, reflected, and adult morality, but also that the psychological mechanism of imitation based on role models depends on empathy as well to work correctly. In particular, empathy seems fundamental to learn moral rules.

The link between empathy and moral development seems, prima facie, to be a very tight one. Though it would, admittedly, be incautious to speak on behalf of the proverbial ‘vast majority of people’, it appears nonetheless to be common for many individuals to believe that in order to develop a moral character empathy is a condicio sine qua non. Nevertheless, even this apparently obvious connection was objected to by Paul Bloom and Jesse Prinz. With regard to the former, albeit he does not take the question of moral development/education explicitly into consideration, he contends, nevertheless, that rational compassion and utilitarian principles are together both necessary and sufficient for the development of a moral character. As a consequence, empathy would constitute merely a supplement and, given its intrinsic biased nature (in Bloom’s conception), an extremely undesirable one. Prinz’s critique is, as we have seen, rather more complex. On the one hand, he argues that empathy is not necessary for moral development or education for the good reason that other emotions are very much suited to carrying out this role, such as guilt aroused by punishment or reprimand, happiness and self-esteem elicited by praise, or admiration prompted by the use of role models. At the same time, Prinz takes into account subjects who are commonly considered as devoid of empathy (i.e. psychopaths) with the intent to show that it is not the absence of empathy that leads to unmoral (or even immoral) behaviour—as it had long supposed to have been—but more an original lack of deep-felt emotions on the part of these kind of people.

I think that Prinz is following a clear strategy here. I believe that he knows that simply arguing in favour of the importance of other emotions for the moral education of a child is not enough to constitute a real critique of empathy. In fact, there is no philosopher or psychologist that would dare to support a view for which empathy is both necessary and sufficient for moral education and development, without further need for the effects stemming from other emotions or from the inculcation of certain moral and social principles. Furthermore, the support given by Prinz to the various emotion-eliciting mechanisms could at best serve to sustain the claim that ‘normal emotions’, so to say, are fundamental for moral development. However, this would not, per se, divest the possible role played by empathy in this matter. One could argue, for instance, that to develop empathy through training would have the same positive effect or that by making empathy work in tandem with the aforesaid mechanisms, one would secure a better kind of moral education, among other such reasonings. In my opinion, Prinz is aware of this difficulty and this is why he decides to demonstrate the unnecessity of empathy for moral development especially by means of an all-round critique to the view that the total lack of empathy is the generative condition of psychopathy.¹

Contrary to Prinz, I wish to claim that empathy is in fact of crucial importance for moral development or education, and in order to address his criticisms, I am going to set up a double-edged response: firstly, I aim to show that the elicitations of emotions caused by mechanisms of imitations and of punishment and reward cannot be taken to be necessary for the exclusion of empathy; at best, they are necessary in conjunction with it. Secondly, I intend to analyse the issue of empathy and psychopathy and see whether the answer given by Prinz on this matter is really as convincing as he thinks it is. Lastly, I will present and comment on the outcomes of several studies showing what seems to be a strong link between the improvement of empathy in children on the one side and moral perception, judgement, and behaviour on the other. However, let us be clear on the following matter: in my opinion, Prinz is correct when he asserts in his 2011 article Is Empathy Necessary for Morality? that, in light of the present state of research, it is impossible to conclude with absolute certainty that empathy is necessary for moral development and, therefore, that it is diachronically necessary for the formation of moral judgements. After all, to argue for the necessity of empathy in this context, we would need to raise children without making any use of it and see what the results would be, and, of course, this is not an easy—nor an advisable!—thing to do. Hence, it is extremely difficult to argue for a definitive and unobjectionable answer on this issue. Nevertheless, in what follows, I want to demonstrate that there are very good clues that empathy might be essential for moral development and that this conclusion is much safer to draw and to support than that of Prinz.

Possibly, the best way to start this analysis is by taking again into account the already quoted ‘cookies-example’ proposed by Prinz in his article Is Empathy Necessary for Morality?. Prinz utilises this example to argue against the necessity of empathy for moral judgement; however, as we are going to see, the reasons behind his refusal are the same that drive his rejection for what concerns the supposed centrality of empathy for moral development and education. Thus, it makes sense to focus on this example at this stage. Here, Prinz wants to highlight the fact that we do not need to reflect and empathise on the harm of an individual every time we judge an action as morally bad. In fact, we are perfectly capable of judging the action of eating the last cookie, instead of offering it to a friend, as being greedy, and, in that sense, also as ‘morally bad’ (or at least ‘defective’), without further need to empathise with this friend’s harm or sadness. The friend might indeed be delighted that we ate the last cookie.² How can this happen? Prinz’s answer is that in any given occasion, our judgement about the moral goodness or badness of a certain action stems from a sentiment which leads to feeling the appropriate emotional response. Sentiments are, in fact, for Prinz, as we have seen, ‘dispositions to have emotions’. Hence, if I have a sentiment of disapprobation towards greed, I will feel anger or scorn when I see someone acting in a greedy manner, and guilt and/or shame when I myself have committed a greedy action. Now it should be quite easy to understand why this example (and the line of reasoning behind it) is so deeply connected with the theme of moral development. In fact, the only way we have to learn to have sentiments of approbation and disapprobation towards specific actions, patterns of behaviour, and something similar is to be raised in a certain way, to receive a certain kind of education. Prinz does not explicitly maintain this position in his 2011 article, but he does in one previous article from 2005. Here, he states:

When a child hits someone and sees that her victim has been hurt, it causes the child to feel bad by emotional contagion. This gives hurting a negative value that does not seem to depend on cultural conventions. In other cases, strong negative emotions are instilled by caregivers. Polluting the environment may be given moral standing by drawing a child’s attention to the harm to future generations, and in older children, victimless transgressions such as masturbation may be moralized by convincing children that it will lead to disease, deviance, or divine censure.³

Now, in light of Prinz’s doctrine about empathy, this quote appears rather problematic. It seems to me that Prinz, faced with the plain fact that children learn to feel bad about the harm done to others, thanks to empathy, tries to avoid this conclusion by speaking of ‘emotional contagion’ instead. However, as it should be clear by now, this is not at all a case of emotional contagion. The child, in fact, knows that the other was hurt because of what he or she has done and hence is not simply infected by the other’s sadness or pain. Nonetheless, what is indeed noteworthy in this quotation is the second part. Prinz points to the fact that strong negative emotions are instilled by caregivers. Interestingly, here again Prinz seems to contradict himself when he says (incidentally, absolutely correctly) that ‘polluting the environment may be given moral standing by drawing a child’s attention to the harm to future generations’, as this mechanism is again based on empathy. I have indeed to imagine these future generations and the harm I may cause them to then empathise with them and feel guilty for the damages I might cause them. In fact, if I simply pictured in my mind the consequences of my actions for the future generations, I might not feel anything at all: why should I care for people who I do not know and will never know? It takes strong moral principles to do this. Or, merely a small amount of empathy can suffice. If I am good at putting myself in the position of future generations and empathise with them as they are forced to struggle with ecological problems, then these people will start to matter and I will feel the full range of emotions I may need to act morally towards them: guilt, responsibility, and more.

1 Empathy and Imitation

Nevertheless, as we continue with the reading, matters become more interesting. Prinz’s aim, here, is to base the inculcation of moral principles and rules on the mechanism of imitation and he states this unambiguously a few lines later in the article.⁴ Furthermore, on the following page, Prinz asserts that mechanisms of imitation are pervasive and contribute at each stage in the moral development of the child, who is famously always looking for role models. Hence, the elements to be emphasised here are two, which are strictly connected: (1) the concept that caregivers shape the emotionality of children, and (2) the idea that the primary mechanism that permits the internalisation of moral rules is that of imitation. In the discussion that follows, I will, at first, briefly analyse the second element and then return to the first.

The idea that imitation and the influence of role models are central in the moral development of the child seems to be a licit one and Prinz does not fail to offer some good empirical evidence to support his thesis. Of course, one might question the importance of this mechanism and discuss whether it is an essential, necessary mechanism for moral development or simply an important one among others. However, in my opinion, developmental psychologists are better suited than philosophers to find an answer to this question and this is why I am going to leave this matter to one side. Instead, I want to focus my attention on one simple question: does the role played by imitation and role models really divest empathy of the function that it could carry out? The answer, I believe, is no.

Consider, for instance, how the imitation of role models usually works and you will soon discover that it is difficult to conceive of it as functioning without the aid of mentalising mechanisms which build up cognitive empathy, such as simulation and perspective-taking. Suppose you want to emulate the behaviour of a real or idealised person who profoundly influenced your life, and you try to ask yourself, for example: ‘What would my father/mother/teacher/Buddha/Jesus do in this situation? How would he or she behave?’ It seems evident that such a process cannot be carried out without the use of at least cognitive empathy. Of course, Prinz may reply that what he means to say is that imitation is at the base of education tout court, irrespective of the fact of whether we are dealing with a moral or an immoral education. In other words, children can unconsciously imitate both moral and immoral behaviour and it is up to caregivers to be positive, rather than negative, role models. However, if this is actually his position, then it is uninteresting for our purposes and irrelevant for our argument. Our question is in fact about how ‘moral education’ can occur and not about how education in general occurs. Imagine, for instance, the following situation: Jill is a woman in her thirties who had the misfortune of growing up with an alcoholic and abusive father and a sensitive, but weak and submissive mother. She remembers vividly that her father would come back home late in the evening and inflict his aggressiveness and frustration on her and on her mother. Now, while talking to her therapist, Jill suddenly understands that she is repeating an old scenario that she knows very well. She forms relationships with men with no fixed job and no future, who have problems dealing with anger and habitually consume excessive alcohol, in the hope that she can eventually ‘cure’ or even ‘save them’. She comprehends that she does this because it offers her the illusion of a reconciliation with her father. She always looks for men who match the figure of her father, hoping that she will succeed where her mother failed. Although she acknowledges all this to her therapist, she cannot prevent herself from adding: ‘Well, I guess this is what you get when you’ve had such dysfunctional role models’. Now, I think that it is easy to understand that if it is true that Jill has in some sense imitated the behaviour of her mother and has defined her parents as her ‘role models’, she does not want to imply, in the slightest, that they were moral role models that she wants consciously to imitate in order to act and judge morally. Hence, imitation is, taken per se, a neutral concept that can have, alternatively, positive or negative outcomes for moral education and cannot be taken as, on its own, necessary and sufficient for moral development. Over the next pages, we are going to see whether empathy can have a positive influence on the development of morality and to what extent it can be considered as being necessary for it.

2 Learning Moral Rules Thanks to Empathy

Let us come back to the cookies-example and to the concept that caregivers shape children’s emotionality. If this idea is true (and, surely, it is undeniable that much of our emotionality is deeply influenced by the kind of education we receive), then we must conclude that the subject in the cookies-example disapproves of her action because this action epitomises greed, and her caregivers taught her to disapprove of greed. Observe, however, that the very concept of ‘greed’ is, to a large extent, based on empathic considerations. If we look at the definition of ‘greedy’ provided by the Oxford Dictionary,⁵ we find: ‘Having an excessive desire or appetite for food’ or ‘Having or showing an intense and selfish desire for wealth or power.’ Now, the term ‘selfish’ is quite telling. To be selfish implies a closure with regard to others, a lack of openness and receptivity to others’ sentiments, desires, needs, and expectations. The selfish person is the unempathetic person par excellence. In fact, instead of being open to the others, oriented towards them, the selfish subject is egocentric and egoreferential, that is, completely focused on themselves. Suppose that I feel greedy, and therefore also guilty, because I have eaten the last cookie: this is not because I think I have been greedy in the sense of gluttonous or overindulgent (I may have eaten only a few cookies), but in the sense of having been disrespectful towards you and towards the desires you might have had in relation to the cookies. In order for me to entertain this line of thought, I need the shifting of perspective offered by empathy. There is nothing inherently wrong in the act of eating the last cookie; it can become wrong only when the emotions and expectations of others enter into my consideration when deciding what I ought to do.

Of course, Prinz could easily reply that it is not necessary to empathise with the other every time I have to decide whether to offer the last cookie or not (as in other similar situations). Rather, once I have learnt to label as ‘greedy’ the action of eating the last cookie, thanks to my education, then my judgement and my correspondent action will come automatically. Notice that I am not arguing for a synchronic role of empathy here, but for a diachronic one. In other words, I am arguing that it is necessary to feel empathy in order to attribute the judgement of ‘greediness’ to that kind of action and to internalise it. Since it would be difficult (as already mentioned) to find a way to teach a child these kinds of principles and, at the same time, ensure that the child is not empathising in any way, perhaps the best we can do to prove that empathy plays a diachronic role in these cases is by means of a proceeding that philosophers love: a mental experiment.

Suppose that in my childhood I used to eat the last cookie all the time, when sharing cookies with friends, and suppose that all that my parents did in reaction was to tell me that what I did was wrong, because it was greedy, but without using the ‘inductive discipline’ method I explained earlier. That is, they did not lead me to empathise with my peers, by telling me to imagine what I would feel if my friends were to always eat the last cookie. In this case, I do not think that it would have been possible to develop a real sense of guilt for what I had done. In other words, I would not have been able to internalise this moral rule: it would remain a simple convention, like an external imposition, and sound like: ‘Eating the last cookie is a greedy action and it is wrong to be greedy!’ However, the real question here is what is wrong in being greedy? In effect, this question can be answered only by empathic considerations.

I am aware that a critic of empathy may very well reject this view by claiming that we do not have enough evidence to conclude that other methods, such as punishment and love-withdrawal, might have worked as well, however, I do have difficulties in thinking that the development of a refined moral sense can actually happen without empathy. I say ‘refined’ because whilst it can surely be argued that moral judgements, such as ‘it is wrong to kill an innocent person’ or ‘it is wrong to rob a bank’, or others akin to these, can be reached without empathy, I believe, nevertheless, that our everyday morality, constituted by modest every day moral judgements and actions, which typically do not directly share an involvement with killing innocent people and robbing banks, needs empathy in order to work properly. The moral person needs empathy to give advice to a friend, to forgive a colleague who has acted wrongly, to be a good listener to their children, and so on. And, what is more, the moral person needs empathy to become a moral person. In particular, I am arguing for the importance of empathy to understand moral rules ‘from the inside’, as it were, and not ‘from the outside’, or, put in another way, to differentiate between conventional and core moral rules and values. Greed, for instance, is wrong not because of what ‘mummy and daddy’ told us, but because—among other things—it makes other people suffer. It is, in other words, substantially wrong and not only formally or, better, conventionally wrong. My claim is that if mummy and daddy want to have any chance of being successful at teaching their child why eating the last cookie (but also stealing a pen or hitting a classmate) is intrinsically wrong, then they have to turn to empathic considerations, emphasising the pain caused to the others, and not the breaking of some rule of conduct. There is, in fact, overwhelming evidence of the fact that children are able to distinguish between moral and conventional violations precisely thanks to the awareness of the harm done to others. One of the most influential, revelatory, insightful, and extensive pieces of research that has been done on this matter is to be found in Shaun Nichols’ book Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgments.⁶ Nichols argues in this book that the capacity for core moral judgements depends both on information about which actions are prohibited (thus, a ‘normative theory’) and an affective mechanism that confers a special status to the norm. The two dimensions are, together, both necessary and sufficient for that capacity. Nonetheless, what is crucial here is that innumerable pieces of research in psychological literature (well-reviewed by Nichols) prove, quoting Nichols:

[…] that, from a young age, children distinguish the moral violations from the conventional violations on a number of dimensions. For instance, children tend to think that moral transgressions are generally less permissible and more serious than conventional transgressions. Children are also more likely to maintain that the moral violations are “generalizably” wrong, for example, that pulling hair is wrong in other countries too. And the explanations for why moral transgressions are wrong are given in terms of fairness and harm to victims. For example, children will say that pulling hair is wrong because it hurts the person. By contrast, the explanation for why conventional transgressions are wrong is given in terms of social acceptability—talking out of turn is wrong because it is rude or impolite, or because “you’re not supposed to.” Further, conventional rules, unlike moral rules, are viewed as dependent on authority. For instance, if at another school the teacher has no rule against chewing gum, children will judge that it is not wrong to chew gum at that school; but even if the teacher at another school has no rule against hitting, children claim that it is still wrong to hit. […] Thus, it seems that the capacity for drawing the moral/conventional distinction is part of basic moral psychology.⁷

Therefore, the capacity to distinguish between moral and conventional rules (and between moral and conventional violations) appears very early in life, and this leads us to the fundamental question: how does it happen? Interestingly, an affective system that is sensitive to harm in others (and which is active in all human beings, with the famous exception of psychopaths) seems to be the answer. In this regard, Nichols gives a wonderful example that, even if far from being definitive, very tellingly suggests that, at least for children, harm-based explanations are the end of the line for the judgement of immoral actions. The following exchange took place between Nichols and his five-year-old daughter, after the question: ‘Why is it wrong to hurt people?’ I quote:

Q: Why is it wrong to hit?

A: Because it hurts the person.

Q: Why is it wrong to hurt someone?

A: Because you might hurt them really bad.

Q: Why would that be wrong?

A: Because you might break their bones.

Q: Why would that be wrong?

A: Because it would hurt really bad.⁸

Of course, growing up, our morality becomes more and more structured and these simple explanations gain in complexity and profundity, but Nichols’ thesis is that this fundamental apprehension remains primary even in adults and grounds the distinction between norms that are backed by an affective system (harm norms) and norms that are not backed by an affective system (conventional norms). This does not constitute a rejection to the view expressed by Prinz. In fact, Nichols’ theory of Sentimental Rules (as he calls the class of norms prohibiting affect-backed violations) could very well go hand in hand with Prinz’s choice to emphasise the role of emotions in the face of empathy. However, my point is that by refusing to use empathy we would lose the affectivity which is so important (even for a sentimentalist like Prinz) to ground (and develop) our moral judgements. I have already mentioned the example of the inherent badness in being greedy, which can be exhibited by empathy, but empathy reveals the affect-backed intrinsic badness of an action in many other cases as well. Take, for instance, what seems to be, prima facie, a very conventional violation: lying.

To understand why lying is wrong, and to justify the importance of telling the truth, one needs a conception of morality much more complex than the one shown by Nichols’ daughter. One would have to stress, in fact, the importance of reliability, trust in relationships, maybe even social pacts and agreements, as well as the correct functioning of society as a whole. However, it is also possible to simply resort to empathy. In fact, no one likes to be lied to, and a child, who would probably not be persuaded of the wrongness of lying by means of arguments highlighting the above-mentioned elements that lying deny, could get an insight into the wrongness of this act, thanks to what Hoffman calls inductive discipline⁹ and is, in fact, a method founded on empathy. The name sounds rather academic, but the mechanism it depicts is, I believe, almost universally known. For instance, if I think back to my childhood, I can easily remember many times when my parents admonished me using empathy as a stimulus, and I believe that this is an experience common to many other people. Sentences like: ‘Don’t act like that with your sister! How would you feel if she did the same to you?’ were often to be heard. This phenomenon is well known to both psychologists and pedagogists alike. Hoffman, in particular, conceives this mechanism to be the opposite of the ‘power-asserting’ kind of discipline, by means of which parents attempt to raise a child merely through threats of punishment (which are then carried out if the child does not obey) and by inculcating moral reflection, motivation, and behaviour through the sheer citing of moral rules and principles. Induction appeals, on the contrary, to the empathic capacity of the child by letting them imagine how they would feel if they were to undergo the harm they had done to another, and thereby making them fully aware of the wrong-doing they had committed. If this strategy is applied repeatedly over time, the child will come to associate bad feelings (especially feelings of guilt) in situations in which the harm they can do is not yet done. Hoffman calls these habitual associations ‘guilt scripts’ and asserts that they are essential for moral development and moral motivation. In his own words:

[…] peer pressure compels children to realize that others have claims; cognition enables them to understand others’ perspectives; empathic distress and guilt motivate them to take others’ claims and perspectives into account.¹⁰

I think that this line of thought is much more promising than the one supported by anti-empathists, like Bloom and Prinz, and it is commonly and effectively used. Even young children are, in fact, capable of carrying out simple empathic processes and understanding that some actions are wrong because they make others suffer, as well as the fact that they would suffer similarly if these actions were done to them. Highlighting the tight connection between empathy and the line of thought behind the ‘inductive discipline’ mechanism takes us to other, not less important, considerations. Indeed, if I (together with Hoffman) am right in considering Hoffman’s induction to be an empathic process (and I do not see how a mechanism envisaging a perspective-taking with the aim of experiencing what another is feeling cannot be deemed as ‘empathic’), then we cannot possibly overlook the fact that empathy is also at the basis of another famous moral rule with an incredibly long history: the golden rule.

3 The Case of the Golden Rule and the Importance of the ‘Receptivity’

The origins of this rule are lost in time: we know for a fact that a general conception of the rule we know was already present in the philosophical reflections of Confucius and that it plays a central role in religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and others. Simon Blackburn asserts that it can be ‘found in some form in almost every ethical tradition’,¹¹ and this is far from being a reckless statement, since formulations of the same principle are to be read almost anywhere and in any time period. I will therefore refrain from quoting the various verbalisations of this norm of conduct and I will simply say, for the sake of better understanding, that this rule can be expressed in three slightly different forms, that is, in a negative form, implying that one should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated; in a positive form, according to which one should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself; and finally, in a desiderative form, which involves wishing upon others what one wishes upon oneself.

Conceivably, it should be quite easy to see how the whole framework supporting the golden rule is founded on a very basic presupposition: normally, we wish and seek for ourselves positive things and we tend to avoid negative feelings, be they physical or psychological. Therefore, the golden rule offers a simple norm of conduct, which can be followed (and understood) without much effort by almost anyone. However, as obvious and banal as it might seem prima facie, the golden rule (GR) contains a by now well-known complication: no matter how similar people may be, no matter (if you will permit the wordplay) how it makes sense to speak of a common sense shared by the majority of people, there are still exceptions, and if a rule has to become universal, it has the duty to deal with them accordingly. The problem with GR is that not any instantiation of this rule (if taken naively) would be deemed moral, and, furthermore, not any instantiation of it would even be fitting with regard to the aim we try to achieve (i.e. acting morally and doing good towards others). This means that if we were to interpret the rule literally we would soon discover how unreliable and nonsensical this would be. People have different tastes and preferences, they have different characters and personalities and take pleasure and displeasure in different things: if I were to do to a friend of mine exactly what I would like to be done to me, I may be right in some cases and be completely mistaken in others. Furthermore, if a person with unconventional or unsocially acceptable tastes, for example, a masochist, were to do to another person what they like to receive (or, to put it better, to undergo), we would hardly call this act an instantiation of moral behaviour, or even an act of good will.

Therefore, the GR needs correctives, not only to work legitimately as a universal moral principle, but also—and more fundamentally—to be interpreted in a fair way. It is here that the role played by empathy becomes essential: empathy acts as a necessary integration of this norm. Take, for example, the following case: I consider myself to be a humorous person. I like to make jokes and I have a real passion for witty irony and no bias against black humour. However, I happen to have a friend who is exactly the opposite in this regard: he finds black humour to be disrespectful, he thinks that irony, even when it is witty, can easily turn into sarcasm and, in general, hates people who seem not to take serious situations in a serious way. Now, suppose that this friend of mine—let us call him Matthew—were telling me how awful his day was and how frustrated he was feeling. If I were in his situation, I would love to have someone who was able to make light of the situation and make me laugh. Thus, if I were to apply the golden rule in this circumstance and do to Matthew what I would like to be done to me, I would fail. He would feel misunderstood or even not taken seriously and he could get offended. However, if I empathised with him, if I tried to imagine, not what I would like to receive in her situation, but what he, Matthew, would like to receive, then I would be able to foresee his reaction to this tendency of mine of downplay situations and adopt another strategy. I would think something like: ‘Well, if I were Matthew, I would like to be listened to, I would like to see a concerned face and hear soothing words of comfort.’ In this way I would be better off in achieving my goal: that of consoling him and making him feel better. Notice, moreover, that this mechanism does not have to be grounded on purely cognitive empathy. As I have said more than once, in fact, cognitive and affective empathy are often felt in an intertwined manner.

I think we can become convinced by these statements if we come back to our previous example. I have said that Matthew is one of those people who likes to treat serious situations in a serious way. However, how can I know that the kind of situation in which Matthew is at the moment is a serious one, assuming that Matthew and I have different views about what is really serious and what is not? Of course, I might find out because Matt decides to tell me. But what if he does not? There are cases in which we want to help, be kind, and altruist and in which we simply cannot ask questions like: ‘How serious is the situation you are facing?’ because these kinds of question are not only embarrassing (if you have to ask, then you really did not understand how serious the situation was), but they tend to undermine our aim to help the person. Thus, a certain sensitivity, receptivity, I would like to say even vulnerability (in the sense of being vulnerable towards what others feel and think, being hit by their thoughts and feelings in order to really understand them and empathise with them) is in order. This means that in order to act morally towards Matthew, by being kind and trying to help him feel better, I cannot rely solely on a pure cognitive mechanism in which I simply put myself in the position of someone who does not appreciate humour in certain circumstances,¹² but rather, I have to feel part of his sadness. It is in fact this sadness that tells me, more than anything else, that, at least for Matthew (I could be of a different opinion) the situation he is facing seems serious. Once I know that—and I know that not as a descriptive statement about the state of the world, but as part of Matthew’s present and personal experience of the world—I also know that I have to avoid downplaying the situation and trying to cheer him up by means of humour. To summarise: empathy allows me to understand how serious Matthew’s situation is by providing me with a hint of the emotions he feels. Once I discern the gravity the situation has for Matt, then I can, by considering what I would like to hear if I were him (so, holding on with my empathic process), understand what I should do in order to help him.

Empathy thus helps us to understand the golden rule in the correct manner: after all, this principle does not require from us that we do to others exactly what we want to receive, but, just as we would like others to take into account our preferences when dealing with us, we should do the same when it is our turn to reciprocate. Using the words of Walter Terence Stace:

Mr. Bernard Shaw’s remark “Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may be different” is no doubt a smart saying. But it seems to overlook the fact that “doing as you would be done by” includes taking into account your neighbor’s tastes as you would that he should take yours into account. Thus the “golden rule” might still express the essence of a universal morality even if no two men in the world had any needs or tastes in common.¹³

Through these words shines the real (and realistic) interpretation of this rule, which does not, in any case, bind us to do to others exactly what we do (or would like to have done) to ourselves, but reminds us of the fact that others have needs and desires as we also do and that we should take these needs and desires into consideration (as we do with our own ones) every time we act. Empathy, in this sense, acts as a necessary corrective, in that it permits us to understand in what respect the desires and needs of others differ from those of our own, and to act accordingly.

To be clear: it is not my intention to make an argument in favour of the GR by stating that it is the basic principle of morality. In fact, I generally distrust the use of single principles as bedrocks for realistic moral theories. The GR has problems and ambiguities as any other principle of the kind, be it the categorical imperative, the utilitaristic maxim, or others. To be honest, I regret the love that moral philosophers seem to have for the idea of a unitary principle capable of grounding an entire moral system and which has had them struggle for years and years through a plethora of books and articles, looking for ways to solve the problematic cases these principles inevitably leave unsolved. This is why I am choosing not to found here any new moral theory, nor am I offering any basic principle as its base. What I am doing in this work is analysing our everyday morality and seeing which role (if any) empathy can play there. Hence, my humbler and much more modest argument in this chapter is simply the following: empathy plays a necessary role for the GR, and, if we all agree on the fact that the GR constitutes one of the main principles through which we educate our children to be moral persons (and I think that not many people would dare to deny it), then empathy assumes a special importance for moral development or education and even an indirect necessity.

The question now becomes: is the role played by empathy for moral development or education indirectly necessary at best (i.e. necessary for a principle which seems to be an integral part of moral education), or can it be necessary tout court? As I already made clear above, attempting to demonstrate the incontrovertible necessity of empathy for moral development or education can easily become a rather quixotic endeavour. Empathy is such a deep-seated capacity in human beings that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible (let alone imprudent), to raise a child without using empathy and, at the same time, to also be sure that the child is not making use of it either. Philosophers and psychologists are aware of this issue and this is why the discourse about the necessity of empathy for moral development and education is usually conducted by means of the examination of people whose empathic capacities seem to be impaired, if not totally compromised, that is, psychopaths and autists. Usually, the scholars who deny that empathy plays a necessary role for moral development use the example of autistic people. The general argument sounds approximately like this: if people with autism—whose capacity for empathy is normally taken to be absent or at least severely impaired—are capable of thinking and acting morally, then we have evidence to deem empathy unnecessary for moral development or education.¹⁴ Prinz, as we have seen, takes another view and claims that even psychopaths are not amoral because of a lack of empathy, but on account of a blunting of nearly all emotions.

The challenge is thus twofold: the defender of empathy should, on the one hand, reply to the argument about the ‘unempathic morality’ of people with autistic syndrome, and on the other hand, he or she should find a good answer to the amorality of psychopaths, not having to do with a presence or an absence of empathy. Therefore, in what follows, I will find possible explanations for the fact that both the particular (even if very distinct) conditions of autistics and psychopaths can be grounded on their different relationships with empathy. In this way, we would have good reason to argue in favour of a probable (even though not certain)¹⁵ necessity of empathy for moral development and education. I shall begin with psychopathy.

As we have already seen, psychopathy is a mental disorder associated with callous and unemotional traits, such as lack of guilt, remorse, fear, a general shallow affect, and, famously, antisocial and aggressive behaviour.¹⁶ In the psychological empirical literature, there are two significant theories employed to explain these impairments. One is Blair’s VIM theory (which we have already discussed), but this is not accepted by Prinz. The philosopher prefers instead to follow an updated version of the theory put forward for the first time (at least to the best of my knowledge) by Fowles.¹⁷ According to this revised theory, the emotional deficit of psychopaths in systems modulating the experience of fear leads them to reduced emotional responses in anticipation of punishment and in imagining negative, threatening events, and, therefore, a reduced aversive conditioning. In simple terms, punishment instils fear, and a child who is afraid of punishment will develop important (fundamental for moral socialisation) aversive responses to imaginatively anticipated threats. Thus, a psychopathic child who is unable to experience fear will also be untouched by this method of moral training.

Prinz, as we have observed, widens the range of this approach: it is not merely the lack (or severe impairment) of fear which explains psychopaths’ amorality. Psychopathic people have a more general deficit in experiencing all kinds of emotions, and, for this reason, they also are insensitive to mechanisms of inhibition grounded in emotions. How can we possibly educate a child who is not frightened by anything and who does not feel guilt, remorse, or even sadness towards the suffering of others or in the contemplation of a violation he has committed?

Now, this reconstruction certainly sounds persuasive and it has merit in giving a simple explanation for what appears as a complex, serious problem. However, I will argue in what follows that it does not suffice, per se, to demonstrate that it is not the lack of empathy that is the fundamental cause of psychopaths’ amorality. According to the argument supported by Jesse Prinz (and also Paul Bloom, who simply chooses to follow Prinz on this issue), psychopaths have a deficient morality as a consequence of their general emotional blunting. For my part, I will not argue with the view that psychopaths really have severe impairments regarding their emotionality; nevertheless, my claim is that it is only because this general blunting makes it impossible for them to feel empathy that amorality comes as a result. Therefore, even if the condition of psychopaths is correctly described as a condition of callousness and lack of deep-felt emotions tout court,¹⁸ this callousness is the primary cause of their amoral behaviour only insofar as it impacts negatively on their empathic capacity.

In the chapters that follow I will argue that psychopaths’ amorality is due to (1) a compromised capacity to perceive in a moral way and, therefore, to judge morally and (2) an incapacity to be motivated to act morally. However, before that, I will criticise Prinz’s theory of moral education and claim that empathy has a role to play here. Once we have criticised this position it will be, in fact, possible to argue in favour of empathy and to see how the absence of it can lead to moral aberrations, such as those displayed by psychopathic individuals.