Tag: Empathy

• May 4, 2014

  Some very awkward truths about empathy

  In the last handful of posts, I have sought to demonstrate some rather uncomfortable and infelicitous things about our near-universal celebration of empathy. One is that it is based on a false metaphysical picture of human beings as weak, suffering creatures. Another is that it has been raised from a ‘local virtue’ into an ascetic ideal, with the…
• May 3, 2014

  Being virtuous without being empathetic

  So far, I have argued (1) that the ascetic ideal of empathy has sprung forth from a false metaphysical picture of human beings as weak, suffering creatures and (2) that it  leads to the conclusion that when we speak, we not do often lodge claims that can be examined with a view to changing our basic conceptions…
• May 2, 2014

  Empathy as an ascetic ideal

  Why would empathy not be a supreme virtue? By ’empathy,’ I mean what most laypersons mean: either feeling what another is badly feeling or acknowledging what the other is badly feeling. By ‘supreme virtue,’ I mean the virtue of virtues, one that is ripped free of context and raised to a principle. That principle would…
• April 30, 2014

  On a category mistake: ‘Human beings are weak’

  Here are three questions that fascinate me: 1.) How did we go from being creatures who above all ‘desire to know’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics I)–let us say: to understand our place in the world–to being creatures who want most of all to be helped (modernity)? 2.) How did the accidental property of weakness (e.g., feeling weak on Tuesday)…