Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

by Paul Bloom

in moral debate, empathy is a spice that makes anything taste better.

And so there is more to kindness and morality than empathy. To think otherwise is either to define empathy so broadly as to gut it of all content or to have a parched and unimaginative view of the moral psyche. We are complex beings, and there are many routes to moral judgment and moral action.

But spotlights have a narrow focus, and this is one problem with empathy. It does poorly in a world where there are many people in need and where the effects of one’s actions are diffuse, often delayed, and difficult to compute, a world in which an act that helps one person in the here and now can lead to greater suffering in the future.