Don’t Idolize Empathy

Until reading Professor Hiebert’s blog post, I was not aware of any “war on empathy,” which apparently is just the latest in a long line of heinous offenses by today’s “political, religious, racial, cishet, conservative coalition.” Goodness.

Perry Glanzer wrote a lucid response pointing out that empathy, while an important capacity, is not a virtue, and like all human capacities, has its uses and abuses. It can hardly be called the summit of Christian ethics.

I don’t want to belabor Professor Glanzer’s points, which he expressed far better than I could. Rather, I want to point out that skepticism of empathy has a much more settled and distinguished pedigree than an Elon Musk tweet. It can hardly be called a right-wing phenomenon.

Of the first dozen book results on Amazon, only two have been translated out of English, one of which is Paul Bloom’s Against Empathy. A quick Google search reveals that Bloom is a former Yale professor, now at the University of Toronto, a rationalist and an atheist, and has the standard portfolio of left-leaning academic opinions one would predict. He argues that empathy tends to distort rather than enhance judgment, and he takes the extreme view that it ought (by and large) to be discarded from rational discourse.

From a less rationalist angle, in Cents and Sensibility, Morton Schapiro (former president of Northwestern) and Gary Saul Morson (the leading scholar of Russian literature in the English-speaking world) point out that con men are especially empathetic—it makes them even more effective at connecting with their marks, when they genuinely feel the same emotions with those they are seeking to exploit.

Both authors (like Glanzer and myself) believe empathy is valuable and worth cultivating, and both also caution against its uncritical, much less worshipful, embrace. Flannery O’Connor warned against “the perils of governing by tenderness.” And so forth. Among all critiques, though, my personal favorite is that of Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, whose Funny Face skewers “empathicalism,” a jargon-filled academic fad which turns out to be little more than a way for aging and overweight Continental philosophers to feel like humanitarians while they seduce credulous young women.

All of these critiques are relevant here. Bloom, for instance, points out that empathy encourages tribalism and polarization: while a person might say to himself that he is empathizing with the downtrodden or marginalized, in fact, he is probably empathizing with his political co-partisans. This can lead to venomous and even racialized rhetoric, and such venom is more difficult to cure because so deeply laced with self-righteousness. As Yeats said, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” When we adopt these attitudes, we cease to treat those with whom we disagree with charity and civility.

Another quick search reveals that Toxic Empathy, which Professor Hiebert maligns, in fact isn’t vilifying empathy itself as “toxic,” just its abuse. This might have been more obvious if he had approached the book in a spirit of charity.

In truth, there is such a thing as toxic empathy, and there are people–and now, machines–who prey upon this human capacity. AI will soon make even the most successful con men look like amateurs. It has already learned to exploit empathy, and it invites users to personalize it in a way that makes such empathy dangerous. We should not try to enter into the feelings of our silicon creations (after all, they have none), and in fact should use our rational faculties to stifle whatever impulses we have to do so. Failure to let reason guide and limit our empathetic impulses has already exposed people not just to the manipulation of advertisers but driven many to suicide and many more to misery.

But really, should this surprise us? If the devil can tempt us through our capacity to reason abstractly or think critically, should it surprise us that he can also tempt us through our capacity to empathize? We have been given many gifts, and just as we should use empathy to avoid the traps of abstract reason, it makes sense that we should use our reason to correct and corral our natural empathy.

Of course, I don’t doubt many of these critics go too far. Empathy is valuable, not inherently toxic or vituperative. I go out of my way to design my syllabi to cultivate empathy, and I tell my students why I do so. But I also make a point of emphasizing the way people, especially ideologues and politicians, can use our empathy against us. As professors, we should arm our students against those malign forces who would take one of our most human attributes and pervert it to ungodly ends. And, as Christians, we certainly should not elevate it into an idol.