Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

by Paul Bloom

More generally, we just don’t like empathizing with the sad. It makes us sad, and we have enough problems of our own! Smith puts this more eloquently: “Nature, it seems, when she loaded us with our own sorrows, thought that they were enough, and therefore did not command us to take any further share in those of others, than what was necessary to prompt us to relieve them.” Smith suggests that sad people should be aware of how unwilling people are to empathize with them and should be reticent in sharing their sadness with others. Now I admit that there is something odd about getting life advice from Adam Smith (though there is an excellent book called How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life). Although he had close relationships with friends and was a wonderful son to his mother, there is no evidence that he ever had any close romantic or sexual relationship with man or woman. (I was once at the dinner after a morality conference, surrounded by Smith experts, and their heated argument was over whether he died a virgin.) But still, his caution about oversharing and his demands for reticence fit well with the arguments in this chapter and also sit well with my own cold and repressed Canadian heart.