Though I’m sure you’ll flesh it out, I’m not digging that quick definition of empathy. There is most certainly a feeling element, but it’s an exercise of the imagination and maybe like an anamnetic recalling, too. When my kid melts down for what seems like a trivial reason, I have to try to understand why not arriving at karate with ample time to get his gear on bothers him so much. (Turns out it’s a ritual that he believes allows him to do his best). Feeling that pain as my own is important but understanding why it makes him sad and mad and unsure of himself is important if I’m to have a sustained change of heart about getting out the door on time. I connect with that as I remember I liked to get to the locker room 30 mins before everyone else to crank Metallica and get amped before kickoff. Second, the quick definition only covers pain, but empathy can cover all the emotions - except excitement over any sport that’s so slow it has to have a pitch clock.
Oh man, I will be following this with keen interest, considering how important empathy and story are to me and folks I work with. And yet I feel you're onto something important, something that bothers me, too... I dunno, I can't articulate it very well at the moment, but you're sketching the contours of it. "Not everything is a story" is probably the best way of saying it right now.
That, or, to riff on my friend Anne, "Beauty [and all the drama, sentiment, and affect that goes with it] lies sometimes."
No, I don’t think empathy as commonly defined is necessary to the moral life. Love is. To love is to will the good of the other (Aquinas). Love is sometimes accompanied by warm affective feelings, and sometimes is not. Where present, empathy can absolutely spark and feed love, but is not necessary to it.
I generally reject the premise that morality is simply emotion with legs. (To fully explain why would require a book; happily Alistair MacIntyre already wrote that book in “After Virtue.” C. S. Lewis has a lovely brief summation towards the beginning of “Mere Christianity,” as well.) It’s easiest to see how emotions are not equivalent to morality if one considers (Lewis gives this example and it’s a good one) someone choosing whether or not to rescue another person who has fallen into danger — drowning in a river, say, or trapped in a burning building. Our natural emotions will be conflicted: part of us will desire to avoid the fear and risk of the rescue, and another part of us will (usually) desire to help. Morality — underpinned by love — is the rubric through which we make the choice regarding which emotion to express.
If one reflects, as well, on the experiences that build moral character, one probably notices a pattern insofar as they often beat against our native emotional currents. They remold us. When mothers of young children get up in the middle of the night again and again and again, they (we lol my own kid was up obnoxiously late tonight) are often not full of warm affective feelings. It’s exhausting and miserable and it’s hard to be empathetic towards a baby screaming for absolutely no discernible reason. But the major learning curve of new (or not so new….ten years in and still learning) motherhood is in putting aside one’s own feelings and preferences for the sake of the baby.
The daily practice of love in the absence of empathy is sort of where the rubber meets the road, morally speaking. I’m a nurse and have cared for more than one violent rapist or murderer. Do I have empathy towards them in their suffering? No; if empathy is defined as these sort of warm
affective feelings towards them, I totally lack it. But do I firmly set my will towards their ultimate good? *absolutely.*
Practicing that kind of choice day after day and year after year is the bedrock of a robust moral life. Empathy often helpful but definitely not required.
I have lots of thoughts since I studied Smith's moral philosophy in my English PhD (yes literature PhDs need some sort of 'theory;' Smith provided mine). Sympathy is helpful, empathy is often not.
Another thoughtful post here, Myles. I wonder: to what extent would you say is the rise of our culture's value on empathy linked to the emergence of experience-generating technologies (e.g., film, television, video games, virtual reality, and video conferencing, to name just a few)? Is the value of empathy a symptom of a social environment defined by such technologies, are the technologies themselves symptoms of empathy's growing importance, or is each of them (the empathy and the immersive technologies) a result of some third, more original cause?
I'm interested in seeing what you do with this question, especially since I struggle to experience empathy in general. It's a question I've asked myself, but I don't know the answer.
This is such an interesting approach to empathy and morality. I look forward to see where the conversation goes.
One of the things that has shaped me deeply to move beyond empathy is the gospel's narrative around Jesus' compassion. The idea that Jesus' guts turned around and made him sick when he saw the multitudes as sheep without a shepherd is deeply transformative. What I have learned in being from a Global South country is that empathy does not necessarily move us to action. Compassion a la Jesus, however, moves us to feed the hungry, set the captives free, and heal the sick. This is not a "rational compassion." It is deeply felt, incarnated, and real, for suffering in my context is not a theoretical thing, it is something we live through every day. That is why, I believe the US specifically, to stay in this continent, needs to look back to Levinas's post-metaphysical talk of God. God revealing Godself in the face of the other creates splagnizomai, compassion a la Jesus.
Thank you so much for taking the time to explore this in an approachable way. Thoughtful writing is what transforms complex expertise into practical knowledge that can be used in ministry and life. Looking forward to the next one.
Though I’m sure you’ll flesh it out, I’m not digging that quick definition of empathy. There is most certainly a feeling element, but it’s an exercise of the imagination and maybe like an anamnetic recalling, too. When my kid melts down for what seems like a trivial reason, I have to try to understand why not arriving at karate with ample time to get his gear on bothers him so much. (Turns out it’s a ritual that he believes allows him to do his best). Feeling that pain as my own is important but understanding why it makes him sad and mad and unsure of himself is important if I’m to have a sustained change of heart about getting out the door on time. I connect with that as I remember I liked to get to the locker room 30 mins before everyone else to crank Metallica and get amped before kickoff. Second, the quick definition only covers pain, but empathy can cover all the emotions - except excitement over any sport that’s so slow it has to have a pitch clock.
Oh man, I will be following this with keen interest, considering how important empathy and story are to me and folks I work with. And yet I feel you're onto something important, something that bothers me, too... I dunno, I can't articulate it very well at the moment, but you're sketching the contours of it. "Not everything is a story" is probably the best way of saying it right now.
That, or, to riff on my friend Anne, "Beauty [and all the drama, sentiment, and affect that goes with it] lies sometimes."
No, I don’t think empathy as commonly defined is necessary to the moral life. Love is. To love is to will the good of the other (Aquinas). Love is sometimes accompanied by warm affective feelings, and sometimes is not. Where present, empathy can absolutely spark and feed love, but is not necessary to it.
I generally reject the premise that morality is simply emotion with legs. (To fully explain why would require a book; happily Alistair MacIntyre already wrote that book in “After Virtue.” C. S. Lewis has a lovely brief summation towards the beginning of “Mere Christianity,” as well.) It’s easiest to see how emotions are not equivalent to morality if one considers (Lewis gives this example and it’s a good one) someone choosing whether or not to rescue another person who has fallen into danger — drowning in a river, say, or trapped in a burning building. Our natural emotions will be conflicted: part of us will desire to avoid the fear and risk of the rescue, and another part of us will (usually) desire to help. Morality — underpinned by love — is the rubric through which we make the choice regarding which emotion to express.
If one reflects, as well, on the experiences that build moral character, one probably notices a pattern insofar as they often beat against our native emotional currents. They remold us. When mothers of young children get up in the middle of the night again and again and again, they (we lol my own kid was up obnoxiously late tonight) are often not full of warm affective feelings. It’s exhausting and miserable and it’s hard to be empathetic towards a baby screaming for absolutely no discernible reason. But the major learning curve of new (or not so new….ten years in and still learning) motherhood is in putting aside one’s own feelings and preferences for the sake of the baby.
The daily practice of love in the absence of empathy is sort of where the rubber meets the road, morally speaking. I’m a nurse and have cared for more than one violent rapist or murderer. Do I have empathy towards them in their suffering? No; if empathy is defined as these sort of warm
affective feelings towards them, I totally lack it. But do I firmly set my will towards their ultimate good? *absolutely.*
Practicing that kind of choice day after day and year after year is the bedrock of a robust moral life. Empathy often helpful but definitely not required.
I have lots of thoughts since I studied Smith's moral philosophy in my English PhD (yes literature PhDs need some sort of 'theory;' Smith provided mine). Sympathy is helpful, empathy is often not.
Another thoughtful post here, Myles. I wonder: to what extent would you say is the rise of our culture's value on empathy linked to the emergence of experience-generating technologies (e.g., film, television, video games, virtual reality, and video conferencing, to name just a few)? Is the value of empathy a symptom of a social environment defined by such technologies, are the technologies themselves symptoms of empathy's growing importance, or is each of them (the empathy and the immersive technologies) a result of some third, more original cause?
I'm interested in seeing what you do with this question, especially since I struggle to experience empathy in general. It's a question I've asked myself, but I don't know the answer.
This is very interesting. Thank you for sharing.
This is such an interesting approach to empathy and morality. I look forward to see where the conversation goes.
One of the things that has shaped me deeply to move beyond empathy is the gospel's narrative around Jesus' compassion. The idea that Jesus' guts turned around and made him sick when he saw the multitudes as sheep without a shepherd is deeply transformative. What I have learned in being from a Global South country is that empathy does not necessarily move us to action. Compassion a la Jesus, however, moves us to feed the hungry, set the captives free, and heal the sick. This is not a "rational compassion." It is deeply felt, incarnated, and real, for suffering in my context is not a theoretical thing, it is something we live through every day. That is why, I believe the US specifically, to stay in this continent, needs to look back to Levinas's post-metaphysical talk of God. God revealing Godself in the face of the other creates splagnizomai, compassion a la Jesus.
Thank you so much for taking the time to explore this in an approachable way. Thoughtful writing is what transforms complex expertise into practical knowledge that can be used in ministry and life. Looking forward to the next one.