Apart from critical thinking, empathy has been strongly considered an important civic virtue. During the eighteenth century, Hume (1748) and Smith (1759) appealed to the current idea of empathy (however calling it sympathy91) associated with impartiality in order to base their reflections on morality. In this regard, they claimed that the individual‟s capacity to put himself/herself in other people‟s shoes is fundamental virtue of a moral agent who acts in private and public sphere.
Before exploring if Hume, Smith, and many other defenders of the importance of empathy in building a more just society, it is central to distinguish two understandings of such a concept. Bloom (2016, p.39) proposes that there is a difference in between “cognitive empathy” and “emotional empathy”. According to him, “if I understand that you are in pain without feeling it myself, this is […] a form of empathy – „cognitive empathy‟” (2016, p.17). Based on this definition, he considers cognitive empathy a skill like critical thinking, and, because of this, he says that it is neutral in regards to moral values.
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Sympathy, differently from empathy, is currently defined as a desire to make other people feel well, usually those who are suffering. This value is investigated in 8.5.
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In this way, cognitive empathy differs from emotional empathy. Those who experience the latter have not only an understanding of others‟ feelings, but also feel their pain or pleasure. In 8.5, it is discussed if emotional empathy is a positive or negative characteristic. Here, the focus of the analysis is on its cognitive side.
As a positive element of it, Bloom suggests that, if people understand that unknown others also feel pain and pleasure, it can make them see themselves as less special (2016, p.76), and, in turn, more accepting that everyone has the right to have their wishes considered by the state. Of course, only understanding that others have wishes does not make people think that these wishes have to be considered. A sadist can completely understand others‟ pain, but simultaneously, and in spite of this, desires to make others suffer. In this sense, a desire to make other people feel well is necessary as a complement to the empathetic capacity. Thus, associated with the capacity to imagine others‟ pain (or happiness), a desire to stop (to promote) it is also necessary. This desire is associated with the feelings of compassion and sympathy and discussed in 8.5.
8.5. Compassion
Having defended the importance of cognitive empathy as a civic skill, it is time to analyse if emotional empathy should be cultivated as a civic value. It is widely defended that the more emotionally empathetic someone is, the better this person is towards others (Baron-Cohen, 2004; Rifkin, 2009, De Waal, 2010). Obviously, such a defence considers that someone who feels empathy towards someone else also desires that this person feel well, have success, etc. In this way, it is considered that empathy entails sympathy. However, located empathy and sympathy can be the wrong moral guide for a person who acts in the social/public sphere, since these feelings stimulate someone of paying excessive attention to certain individuals rather than to others or even to some abstract idea of justice.
Bloom supports this idea by saying that individuals‟ civic reasoning has to go beyond located empathy and sympathy towards specific other people. He gives different examples regarding this. One is an interesting test that shows that located empathy and sympathy normally produce myopia instead of producing fairness: people after knowing the name and other details of a person in a queue for a treatment – and developing some type of empathy towards this person – increase their wish to pass him/her to the front, something generally considered
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unfair (2016, p.86). Regarding the duty of preserving the environment, Bloom claims that this is based on responsibilities with next generations, rather than on empathy and sympathy, since it is not possible to feel something for someone who does not even exist. Thus, in this case, emotional empathy and sympathy are useless (2016, p.23). Another interesting reflection presented by him concludes that, when someone thinks of paying taxes, empathy and sympathy towards co-citizens hardly ever orient such practices (2016, p.22). The tax system demands rational policies and people have to trust in the government‟s capacity to manage this. Otherwise, they would have to defend a minimal state in which the reallocation of goods is made in the private sphere.
Bloom also defends that the stimulus of located empathy and sympathy are not good starting points to generalise wide concerns for others. According to him, empathy and sympathy can make people expand certain circles of care, but restrict others. He claims that people tend to donate much more money not for the charity organisations that prove they are helping more people, but for those that make them to feel more attached with the receivers of help. Bloom also claims that it is quite common for politicians to stimulate people‟s inaccurate views of reality through overemphasizing certain situations despite a more holistic view of it.
Another criticism Bloom makes is against stimulating located empathy and sympathy in the social/public sphere, which he argues can work against the civilisation process. He suggests that located empathy and sympathy are vectors that transfer feelings of anger and resentment from someone who suffered a certain injustice to other people. Thus, amongst a very empathetic population, such feelings end up guiding public decisions. However, in his view, this is a guide that goes against wise decisions that have been built alongside the development of societies (2016, p.191). Regarding this point, a very interesting dialogue can be found in the film The Ides of March (2011). There, Morris, a fictitious pre-candidate for the US presidency declares in a TV show that he is against the death penalty, but at the same time he says that, if someone kills his wife, he would find a way to kill the murderer. In face of that unusual answer, the interviewer asks: “[If you judge it the right thing to do], why not let society do that?” In this moment, Morris gives an illuminating answer: “Because society has to be better than the individual. If I were to do that, I would be wrong”. The point behind this idea is that strong emotions should not guide public decisions.
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Bloom‟s reflection on this point orients a last thought. The world is full of sad stories. Very few people, if any, can endure all of them. Thus, the attempt to make people expand their feelings of empathy and sympathy towards a large group can make them burn out (Bloom, 2016, p.138-9). It is possible to imagine that this feeling, instead of helping to build a better society, paralyses people. However, in order to achieve a more just society, citizens need to be actively engaged in positive social practices, rather than only feel discomfort with social injustices.
Nonetheless, whilst it is argued that citizens should avoid following strong emotions, it is simultaneously suggested that citizens should not only appeal to their rationalities when they participate in decision-making processes in the public sphere. As the debate Rawls versus Gauthier developed in 3.4 shows, a just society depends on individuals transcending their rational and instrumental view of unknown others. Nonetheless, this transcendence does not seem to be towards located empathy and sympathy. This seems to be towards a conjugation of feelings of communal/social responsibility and a more diffuse compassion for strangers in general. These feelings are more comprehensive and do not result in a restrictive moral circle of care.
This approximation between communal responsibility and compassion is important. It is mentioned in chapter 2 that the responsibility towards co-citizens, the right to equal liberty and democratic procedures are the three main pillars shared by Western individuals. Such pillars sustain these societies. In this way, it makes sense that compassion is defended as a value that should be cultivated. Here, in addition, it is suggested that to try to expand this responsibility towards all individuals could be interesting, even if they do not live in the same country. This point, however, demands much more debates about how to implement global citizenship education, exceeding the aims of this thesis.
Regarding to this general idea, Bloom defends exactly a conjugation of self-control, intelligence and diffuse compassion as better than emotional empathy in order to orient people‟s feeling in the public sphere (2016, p.35). It is possible to think that it would make people engage themselves into politics and support the state‟s actions towards fair redistribution of goods (2016, p.103). Helping the less fortunate would be understood as a duty, rather than a favour (2016, p.102). It seems that the main difference between located empathy plus sympathy and public duty plus compassion is that the latter demands a feeling
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towards others linked with a rational capacity to understand the big picture, something associated with critical thinking. Thus:
In contrast to empathy, compassion does not mean sharing the suffering of the other: rather, it is characterized by feelings of warmth, concern and care for the other, as well as a strong motivation to improve the other‟s wellbeing. Compassion is feeling for and not feeling with other. (Singer & Klimecki, 2016. Apud. Bloom, 2016, p.138)
This point returns us to the Kohlberg versus Gilligan debate (5.3). This thesis is committed with Kohlberg‟s idea, but, as discussed below, it does not mean that the cultivation of empathy is not seen as a good way to reach this at a higher level.
Defending the superiority of compassion in comparison to empathy to orient participation in the social/public sphere is not defending that empathy has not to be cultivated. Bloom, as well as Kohlberg, sees that, in the personal/private sphere, the capacity for empathy and sympathy makes people develop strong family and friendship ties, something fundamental for a happy life. Moreover, besides the importance of empathy in the personal/private sphere, it is possible to defend that these kinds of close affections are important for the development of broader and milder feelings of compassion towards strangers. Kohlberg does not disagree with this, but defends that societies have to try to go further and see that, in the end, public decisions depend on abstraction. Thus, if maybe formal education ought to stimulate students‟ empathy and sympathy, at the same time, it has to make them more aware about the importance of thinking clearly, and then avoid that their emotions make them blind about what is fair or not.
Further research is required to provide more concrete and also more abstract reflections on this point in order to improve social justice. On the one hand, caring too much for a particular individual can lead to wrong decisions. One good example is a quite common situation in which a judge obliges the state to pay for a very expensive treatment for a specific patient whose life story the judge becomes aware of. The empathy and sympathy felt by the judge makes him/her quite often decide to rule in favour of a treatment that helps that particular person but cannot be made universal (because the state has no budget to offer that treatment to everyone). In this way, his/her decision is unfair.
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On the other, it has to be mentioned that the excess of abstraction can promote indifference towards others. Maybe, if decisions in the social/public sphere are only based on rational reflections, the fact that the person who does not receive the treatment will die is simply disregarded. Exclusive rationality could make society blind to people‟s real problems. In general, it can be claimed that it is only empathy towards the worst-off that makes elite individuals who rule the state act in order to create a more just society. For example, a white person who cannot imagine how it is to suffer racism, even not being racist, is hardly prone to support laws that effectively combat this situation if they do not develop empathy. This idea is aligned with Mills‟ criticism of Rawls‟ hypothetical contract defended in 3.8.