Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

by Paul Bloom

There are those who think that the world would be a better place without anger. Many Buddhists see it as personally corrosive and socially harmful—“unwholesome” is the word sometimes used. Owen Flanagan once described a meeting with the Dalai Lama in which he asked the leader of the Tibetan Buddhists a great question: If it would stop the Holocaust, would you kill Hitler? “The Dalai Lama turned to consult the high lamas who were normally seated behind him, like a lion’s pride. After a few minutes of whispered conversation in Tibetan with his team, the Dalai Lama turned back to our group and explained that one should kill Hitler (actually with some ceremonial fanfare, in the way, to mix cultural practices, a Samurai warrior might). It is stopping a bad, a very bad, karmic causal chain. So ‘Yes, kill him. But don’t be angry.’ ” The Dalai Lama is conceding that a rational and caring individual is going to have to engage in, or at least support, certain acts of violence, including murder. But he sees it as a necessary evil, a last resort. If there were some way to stop that very bad karmic chain without violence, that would be better. This is not the perspective of an angry person—anger feeds off the suffering of others; an angry person wants wrongdoers to suffer. Anger, however, does make us irrational. There are