Others have done the work of outlining empathy’s limits and of carefully distinguishing empathy from other capacities, such as compassion and a sense of justice. I’m thinking here of Jean Decety, David DeSteno, Joshua Greene, Martin Hoffman, Larissa MacFarquhar, Martha Nussbaum, and Steven Pinker. I am particularly impressed by the research of Tania Singer, a cognitive neuroscientist, and Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk—two scholars working together to explore the distinction between empathy and compassion. I’ve been influenced as well by a novelist, Leslie Jamison, and a literary scholar,
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