Empathy and moral motivation

Abstract

Any justification ends finally with the rationally gratuitous presence of the emotion of sympathy; if that condition were not met, one would simply have no reason to be moral.Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (11) 1 The Empathic Motivation HypothesisThe thought that empathy plays an important role in moral motivation is almost a platitude of contemporary folk psychology. Unlike many folk platitudes, however, it also has a long and distinguished history in philosophical theory. Early British sentimentalists accorded to it (or to "sympathy," as it was then labeled) a central role; Hume's premiss that "the minds of men are mirrors to one another's" lay at the heart of his etiology of the "moral distinctions" and their ability to move us to action (Hume, 1739(Hume, / 1978. In the nineteenth century, Adam Smith followed him in locating the affective power of moral claims in our natural propensity to reflect one another's behaviors and inner lives (Smith, 1759(Smith, / 2002. Parallel themes were mooted in German moral philosophy and aesthetics in the 1700s, and versions of the empathy construct remained prominent in continental accounts of moral motivation through the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries (

Empathy & Literature

“…Recent decades, however, have seen a welcome convergence in the psychological literature. Empathy now more often, if not always, designates what is sometimes called affective empathy : the first-personal experience of affective states (including emotions, motivations, and visceral sensations) in response to observations (perceptual or otherwise, veridical or non-veridical) of natural manifestations or second-order representations of those states in another, while maintaining awareness of self and other as distinct subjects of experience (e.g., Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Coplan, 2004; Decety, 2015; Denham, 2000, 2015, 2017, 2021; Mar & Oatley, 2008; Mar et al, 2011). 4 This conception respects the important distinction between affective responsiveness and mindreading or theory of mind (ToM)–often misleadingly labelled ‘cognitive empathy’.…”

Encountering the stranger: Hannah Arendt and the shortcomings of empathy as a moral compass

“…The sceptics of a link between empathy and moral action often draw on definitions of empathy that are simplistic or overtly different from those used by its proponents (Denham, 2017). This makes the discussion of the role of empathy in moral activity rather murky and inaccessibly contentious, not to say litigious.…”

“…This makes the discussion of the role of empathy in moral activity rather murky and inaccessibly contentious, not to say litigious. Researchers reviewing the research on the relationship between empathy and moral action often conclude that, whilst there is little uncontested experimental evidence to point to a clear causal relationship between empathy and altruism (Schramme, 2017), moral judgement (Kauppinen, 2017), moral motivation (Denham, 2017), or moral responsibility (Shoemaker, 2017), there seems to be some relation between empathy and moral action, although the exact relationship remains unclear. For instance, Kauppinen (2017) writes:It is likely an exaggeration to claim that empathy is the “cement of the moral universe,” as Michael Slote (2010) does.…”

“…To sum up, the discussion of the connection between empathy and morality seems to address two particular issues: whether or not empathy is a necessary component to motivate moral or altruistic behaviour (Denham, 2017), and whether empathy is necessary in order to judge right from wrong—that is, to judge the actions of others (Kauppinen, 2017; Prinz, 2011a). All their differences aside, many if not all consider empathy as a way to reduce the potential strangeness of the other’s actions, i.e., it is a way to alleviate the discomfort connected to the uncertainty that arises in the face of difference.…”

“… Any justification ends finally with the rationally gratuitous presence of the emotion of sympathy: if that condition were not met, one would simply have no reason to be moral.(Thomas Nagel, cited in Denham, 2017, p. 227)…”