In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been an ongoing back-and-forth over in the comments at a recent post, which have forced me to explain more fully some earlier statements about empathy as a political virtue and skepticism as an intellectual habit.
Joel, who has been patient enough to draw me out on these things, has offered a fuller statement of his concerns on his own site. He first frames me as participating in an “anti-narrative,” which “conveys a series of anti-values but no positive values.” Further, he goes after my concept of empathy more specifically:
‘Empathy’ may be the basis for something, but the feeling itself is only useful insofar as action accompanies it. This may be a Christian dogma, but I am prepared to defend it.
His cause for doing so is one that I am most sympathetic to, and indeed points to a tendency in my own thought that has been a cause for concern in the past.
I postulate that the humanities must, at this point in time, formulate some reason why resources which could be diverted towards other means of production (as this is the fundamental basis of our capitalist society) should be used for the education of humans to become more than means of production. Again, I believe that the distribution of anti-values leaves as the default and only remaining substantial actionable belief that humans are—all ‘religious’ practices are to be performed soley for their utility in optimizing the productive capacity of the individual, close to Rieff’s definition of ‘theraputics.’ [See here some of my own reflections on the work of Philip Rieff. -ns]
My reply, in essence, is this: empathy is action (and not much else), it insists on the value of human beings, and I don’t believe in anti-values.
Last night I heard war correspondent extraordinaire Chris Hedges say something along the lines of, “Empathy is at the heart of all good journalism.” Sounds mundane, but that is exactly where I start, in ordinary habits. These notions of mine of empathy and skepticism are not abstractions to be distributed to the world for universal consumption. They are ideas that have been useful to me in my work, in my action, which happens to be writing about religion, among other things. If I were a construction worker, I would probably be writing about different values on my blog. (I might become a Freemason.)
Point is, though I know “empathy” sounds like such a fuzzy word, I am speaking about very concrete things. It can mean meeting your enemies, or your neighbors, or your friends, and finding the truth that makes it possible to love them. Right now, as circumstances have it for me, this means being the only white guy in the Baptist church next to my apartment, or preparing to go to Turkey to interview a man who everyone I respect thinks is a joke. These are humble things, but they’re a start. In quite concrete, daily ways, empathy means devotion to the opposite of idolatry—breaking out of what we think we know about ourselves and others.
Now of course, I argued for empathy as a political virtue, not as a journalistic one. The expressions of this are concrete as well. A most important extension of this is my opposition to the McCain/Palin mantra of “fight!” in a world that desperately needs understanding rather than self-immolating aggression (see here). Obama’s rhetoric and policies have been somewhat closer to empathic, including his controversial willingness to negotiate with enemies. I would like to see, however, a lot more willingness to close military bases on foreign soil and to prioritize cultural exchange around the world.
Is empathy or skepticism the final word? Should I propose them as the basis for all societies forever? No, of course not. That, precisely, would be idolatry. And I worry that the positive values that Joel is looking for would be exactly that. Nietzsche insisted that Christianity is the real nihilism because it hinges everything, all of life, on an otherworldly idea. I hope that as life goes on and times change, I’ll find other virtues to cling to, and then be ready to put them aside when the time comes. I only hope that what empathy and skepticism teach me will be good preparation for what’s to come.
Both Nietzsche and Jesus suggest, oddly enough, to put aside the tendency to cling to laws and ideas or else everything will explode. Such pillars will fall apart with time and be rebuilt and fall again. Be a person of the moment and the changes of the next moment. When a person is in need, help as you can, whether they be clean or unclean according to your values. “Humanities” themselves are an idol, and in our society what has been named that often demonstrates its irrelevance.
But that doesn’t mean we’re consigned to be means of production, even though, as I have suggested above, what we produce affects how we conceive of ourselves. I can’t think of a more human-oriented value than empathy—this is a concern of Joel’s as well. He says:
One additional parameter missing is the idea of ‘human worth.’ The exponents of these anti-values may believe that they are increasing human worth by postulating greater equality; my contention is that they actually destroy it by postulating nothing as to the reasons or substance of this worth—in other words allowing the triumph of a materialist position by default.
Rather than subjugating human life to the service of ideals, it asks us to look to each other for guidance as well as self-transcendence.
If empathy has taught me anything: there are no anti-values. If all you see in a person or a people is negation, look harder. The problem in this world is not anti-values (some sort of black hole of humanity somewhere) but coming to terms with different values we hold. There is no sense in saying that they’re all “equally valid” or somesuch. Of course, from any one perspective, one’s own are the best. That doesn’t change, even for the most extreme cultural relativism, which is a value onto itself.
Joel is concerned that I am preaching some kind of nihilism, some kind of nothingness. But believe me, these values can keep one plenty busy, and rewardingly so.
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19 responses to “Empathy in Action”
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My critique was less of you personally (skepticism I understand well) and instead of the necessity for society to cohere around values defined more explicitly than empathy.
An additional supposition is that while business evolves (within its set of parameters), so must also corresponding culture. In other words, would you agree w/ TdC that the human species evolves to some global embrace or is this a pipe dream of sorts, at least for the time being?
I hold to the second position.
Maybe we are closer in thinking (particularly in skepticism) than the lines of argument make us…
By personalizing all this, what I am trying to do (rather than make it all about me) is to insist on concrete actions rather than abstractions, even well-defined ones. They are by their nature fragmentary, and I worry about hoping that society might be saved by cohering around them. Ideas and values change with times and places and habits, which give them meaning. I agree “empathy” is vague, but I think that the actions it might suggest in the present political moment, or at this point in my own life, are not.
I’ve read only a few scraps of de Chardin, so most of what I work with is caricatures. The answer would be no. If evolution (i.e. the natural phenomenon studied by scientists) is occurring, I doubt it has any “global embrace” in mind, or any such anthropocentric vista. You mention economic and political reformations toward global rather than national systems. I agree this is happening, but I don’t think it is the only thing happening. Even as we grow closer, we fragment. Regional conflicts intensify. Take Darfur, as an example: a conflict financed by global energy economies which expresses itself in a very local, seemingly petty massacre in the face of regional resource shortages. In evolution, as I grasp it, there is no single teleology. There are zillions of them. For every pattern going one way, there are zillions more going in reverse. Folks who think that all of natural history only existed to permit the evolution of people, and all of human history to permit our higher spiritual evolution, forget how well microbes are still doing.
What do you think about de Chardin? I’d love to hear more about your thoughts on the new world order.
By the way, I’ve gotten an email that compliments your arguments. I’ll second it.
There are essentially two lines of argumentation (although likely you will disagree even about these). First, what should be our orientation as individuals w/in society?
Second, what should be the organizational culture of the society? I believe one must attempt one’s answers separately — conflation becomes confusion.
I am using evolution in a broad sense to talk about the evolution of the human brain, methods for societal organization, business cultures, and the beak size of sparrows. Each has a ‘teleology,’ — usually the interest of its sub-grouping. Were I a sparrow, my sparrow brethren and I would likely use discriminatory practices to make sure we got more food than other species or sub-species. Successful businesses cultivate a similar culture. Toyota employees fight for the global market share of Toyota. Americans fight so that items imported from China can remain cheap (and, of course, for other reasons).
What does ’empathy’ have to do with this?
I agree that there are two lines here, and I’m glad you bring them up. But as you predict I think that they’re more porous than we usually allow for, between the radical secularity of a Rawlsian public sphere and the feminist mantra that “the personal is political.”
I’ve tried exploring this stuff here and here, as well as in an unfinished book a few years ago called A Theology of Scale. None of these efforts has gotten me to a satisfying framework, so I keep trying.
Basically, the point is this: yes, the two are somewhat separate, but the second is of course made up entirely of the first. Consequently, they cannot be utterly distinct, and they must be harmonious together. Take, for instance, the organizational phenomenon of civil religion in America. Few people actually personally believe in the God that American presidents talk about (except maybe John McCain), but that God is relatively compatible with a Catholic God, a Protestant God, a Jewish God, a Muslim God, and so on. It works as an organizational idea only because it plays well with personal ones.
I have argued that empathy can describe both a personal and a political disposition, each hopefully reinforcing the other.
An important thing to understand about scientific evolution (see Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, read in a sympathetic spirit) is that it isn’t all about self-interest. That is, the level at which teleology occurs (if it does at all) is not principally at the level of the organism, or even the species. There are so many examples of self-sacrifice and altruism in nature that demonstrate this, not to mention in human history. Organisms have a variety of resources with which they react to their environments, and ruthless self-interest is only one among them.
As Dawkins argues, this opens up the door for human choice. While social darwinists argued that science proves we must seek self-interest, Dawkins considers this both scientifically and morally false. We can choose our goals, and we can sacrifice our lives to them if we like. I don’t even have to care about my species’s survival vs. the microbes. This is a Heideggerian point, actually: we have to distinguish between the world picture science seems to impose (i.e. Social Darwinism) and the fundamental openness of our phenomenological condition.
In the latter, empathy is a perfectly viable option.
You’ve done everything except answer the question. Certainly empathy is viable. But why ’empathy’ instead of something else?
And also, in many cases the second is not a composite of the first, or naturally arising. It is imposed upon the people by a ‘spiritual authority’ (with Moses as the archetype).
If you believe Moses’s lawgiving was a purely natural event, then the Mosaic law was naturally-arising. Nothing unnatural about a charismatic person presenting ideas that catch on, that “go viral.” For every Moses, there are a billion others who try and fail. Perfectly natural that someone would hit the right chord with his community. There would be no Mosaic law without Moses, of course, but nor would there be if some critical mass of people hadn’t chosen to accept it as valid. If, however, the Mosaic law was a supernatural event, then that situation isn’t really relevant to the ideas we are proposing anyway (unless we are claiming divine inspiration).
Why empathy instead of something else? Well, I think empathy in addition to other things. Nothing fundamentalist about my empathy-promoting efforts, such as they are (i.e. not very much). But this is why I thought it might work well as a grounding principle for American liberalism:
It seems to counteract the blindness that has guided a lot of failed foreign policy since 9/11, particularly the failure to seek root causes of violence and to declare our rivals “evil” enemies rather than even trying to treat them as potential partners or understand their motivations in fuller ways. The mistakes we now see so clearly as such might have been prevented by a more empathetic attitude. As we have discussed, empathy is also a means by which “the human” can be rendered intrinsically valuable without resorting to particular theological anthropologies.
The point Rieff makes is that the charisma of a Moses (and, in his opinion, Jesus) is of a different type than ‘charisma’ as presently defined, which under the current disposition is more or less simply enthusiasm. Rieff’s definition implies that it does represent something that is not ‘natural’ — that is not like us as we are, although presenting a possibility of becoming more than what we are in nature (which, of course, will be different in every age).
Empathy? As I stated previously, you are working back from what probably is an inherited political position and seeking principles which will buttress it. Fine. As I also stated, I believe that is the task of intellectuals (not ‘activists’) to state clearly the first principles which they believe in, and build forward — not backwards.
If you are building backwards instead of forwards that is fine, but, frankly, it doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I believe instead of contrasting our theoretical ‘openness’ with the ‘blindness’ of others (including the present administration) we would do better to find out and state clearly what we believe in ourselves.
If this is nothing in particular, so be it.
The clarification about Rieff’s position is interesting—thank you. I haven’t gotten to Charisma yet, but hope to. I am pretty suspicious of stuff about becoming “more” than we are in “nature,” which just sounds like an overly narrow view of nature. But I hope to look more closely into what he means. Certainly a worthwhile thinker.
And you’re right—my looking into empathy isn’t really an inquiry of first principles. Quite explicitly it was meant to buttress an existing political platform, of which I consider myself a critically-minded member. Attempts to find first principles don’t seem all that promising to me because, no matter how deeply they go, they always fit within some inherited tradition—if not immediately apparent, people usually notice such patterns after a generation or two. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to explain where we’re coming from as much as we can. I am more sympathetic to the postmodern project of “giving account of oneself” as the backdrop to one’s ideas rather than the Euclidian instinct to purify them through first principles. It seems more possible. But maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by first principles.
As I see it, this is analogous to the Catholic and Protestant views of authority. While Protestants (particularly the literalist bent that was never before what it became in the 20th century) ground their belief in the bedrock authority of the Biblical text, Catholics see even that text as deriving authority from the tradition. The Catholic critique of the Protestant first principle, of course, is that you can’t interpret a text except through a tradition. Even if one claims to escape tradition, it is at work nonetheless. Consequently, I don’t see why it is any less “intellectual” to do reasoned work self-consciously within a tradition.
It seems strange to me that you are constantly threatening to not be interested in my approach whatsoever. What keeps you coming back? I keep expecting you to get fed up and disappear.
What keeps me coming back? Empathy. ??
And, from an intellectual standpoint, I’m curious how and whether the tradition of American pragmatism (from which I also consider myself to hail) can be rehabilitated, despite the failure in many respects of its aims and techniques — or at least the failure to coherently restate what they mean for the century after James (and to some extent also Dewey, although I consider myself less in his intellectual lineage).
Also, I have a cause of sorts — to encourage American would be intellectuals to step back from present political agitation and consider more broadly the principles the nation was founded on and how and whether they can be restated for the coming century. Without such dialogue, which I firmly believe in, the only recourse is violence. Although I expect this in some measure, I work as best I can to minimize its occurrence.
Of course I am not interested in your intellectual framework — as you admit, it does not exist. Not a threat, but statement of fact. Nonetheless, I remain interested in dialogue, not for its own sake, but for the sake of man. Is this not, according to Jesus, why God also provided us the Sabbath?
Do we work in a tradition? Of course, but what is this tradition? We select out of it what we believe necessary for our purposes, but what is the hermeneutic we use to decide what these are and what is useful for them? That our parents believed the same thing is, for me, insufficient.
I think you know well enough to recognize that what you have said—straight from parents, etc.—is a caricature of any sensible concept of tradition. And certainly mine, which has led me to differ from my parents enough to embrace a different religion.
I can’t really help not having a finished intellectual framework to present. But I have tried throughout this to illustrate the tendencies in my thinking over the years, which have some consistency, and I think, tiny bits and pieces of originality, such as is possible. I summarize it the best I can in the About page—an urge for experimentation with ideas and a view of that experimentation as a process partly beyond my own total, systematic control. I have tried to practice a discipline that is the intellectual equivalent of Gandhian Satyagraha—a conviction that the truth will best unravel itself when we deny that we are possessed of it. You, as I have said, are seeing my position as one of pure negativity, which it is not, just as critics have described Gandhi’s program as “passive,” which it was decidedly not.
Anyway, the more I attempt to defend myself, the less I seem to satisfy you, and indeed, the less appealing I find your expectations of me and your conception of the intellectual life. It may be more productive (“for the sake of man”?) to change the subject somewhat so we don’t have to keep reiterating hurtful remarks about what we are “not interested” about in one another.
For instance, I’d be eager to know more about your thinking on pragmatism—your sense of its failures and promise. Some links to your writing on the subject would be most welcome.
Nathan,
I’m sorry you find my remarks hurtful. I don’t mean to be so. I think of intellectual frameworks as something like the memory palaces and theatres of Ricci and Bruno we once discussed. Consequently I have a difficult time taking offense when persons critique mine and perhaps don’t realize how offensive I can be to others.
As for my houses on display, I’m also not particularly impressed with any that I have put forward. If you don’t have any to show yourself at the moment, perhaps you can tell me what aspects of what you have seen of mine that are insufficient or unappealing. I seem to be in a constant stage of building and rebuilding and always appreciate suggestions.
As for the argument from tradition, I wasn’t sure if you were making it or not. Most people default to the beliefs passed onto them by their parents and modify forwards (or even backwards) as they see fit. I don’t see anything wrong with this.
In my discussion of values, I don’t see all such as necessarily grounded in ‘first principles,’ as nice as this would be. To give an example of what I mean: if we, two citizens of Greenfield, believe that our town should be less polluted, this constitutes a shared value. Once we have a shared value, we can move forward and debate how to implement this. I may believe that it is best to fund programs in schools that encourage recycling, etc. You may believe a better option is to organize citizen patrols to pick up litter.
I’m sorry if what I suggest sounds astonishing but I mean exactly this with respect to pragmatism. Philosophical schools pick up large quantities of extra verbiage supposedly but often not even related to their founding principles. My project at the moment is simply to restate the founding principles of both James and Dewey within their historical context. Frankly, I’m not entirely capable and must do more serious study before I can.
Here is a quote from CTaylor:
As to the unfortunate fact that [William] James is neglected by contemporary academic philosophers, with a few honorable exceptions, this may just show that, alas, wide sympathy and powers of phenomenological description are not qualities for which the discipline has much place at present. But in spite of this, it seems to me that James… has trouble getting beyond a certain individualism.
As I understand James he claims that observable ethical behavior should be the prime factor in evaluating the benefit of religious experience. The problem, for me, is both the definition of the ‘ethical,’ and expanding this beyond individual persons. Which is why I present these snippets of my theories of cultural evolution.
I appreciate so much of what you say here. So funny that you think in terms of memory houses! Reading Frances Yates on all that was one of the great formative moments for me. I’ve still got Paulo Rossi’s book on the subject waiting to be cracked. Because I also think of all this in terms of memory houses: I think of my house as so unfinished that many of your criticisms have felt beside the point—like saying “that doesn’t look like a framework at all” when I’m still driving back from Home Depot with a load of lumber in the back. I can understand the confusion—perhaps I have not properly contextualized some of my proposals.
Yet of course I cannot ignore what you say because interesting points are everywhere in it. And because conversation is the whole point of throwing my unfinished business onto the internet anyway. Probably someday I will regret it when this stuff gets me in trouble (I might have already offended some Muslims with it). Throughout, this discussion has been quite invigorating, forcing me to think hard about what I know and what I don’t.
I hope that we can appreciate that both of us are still at the lumber yard for at least parts of our houses. You sound like you’re saying you are too.
I forget if we’ve talked about it, but how productive have you found Rorty’s pragmatism as a contemporary expression?
Absolutely. Expect to be gathering timber for the rest of my life and am always interested in discussing parsing methods for finding the best trees — some sort of historical hermeneutic seems necessary to make an argument from tradition besides the default inheritance. Of course, if your inherited house is sturdy no reason you can’t just do add-ons — but the most important thing is always the foundation.
Unfortunately present parsing methods mostly ignore contemporary philosophers. Vintage is the only filtering mechanism I know that picks up innovation w/o excessive time investment. I wish I could say more on Rorty but am not capable at this moment. What is your take?
No—Rorty is still on my list of to-dos. I was hoping you could motivate me to finally crack The Mirror of Nature. It is true that reading old philosophers gets the highlights of the past (all the less important stuff got filtered out by memory), but there are certain things one can only get from contemporary folks. As much as analogies can help to bring older ideas to bear on present problems, they are only analogies.
I (perhaps obviously) tend to think of ideas from a historicist perspective rather than as eternal ideas.
Which is not to say I see no point in reading older stuff. I hope soon I’ll be able to show you the stuff I’ve been writing about medieval and ancient proofs for the existence of God.
I agree. I read extensively contemporary literature in fields in which I have worked professionally. If ever philosophy becomes one (this would be nice) certainly I will better acquaint myself with such persons.
Look forward to hearing more from you.
Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s feelings and experience. It has been said that “to empathize is to see with the eyes of another to hear with the ears of another and to feel with the heart of another.”
In our day to day life, we come across many different people who hold many different viewpoints. To deal most effectively with those who have a deferent opinion to our own, empathy is an important communication technique to develop.
The origin of the word empathy dates back to the year 1897, when German psychologist Theodore Lipps coined the term “einfuhlung”(literally means “in feeling). He used the term to describe the emotional appreciation of another’s feelings. Empathy is a balanced curiosity leading to a deeper understanding of another human being; stated another way, empathy is the capacity to understand another person’s experience from that person’s frame of reference.
More simply stated “empathy is the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes.”
In order to develop empathy one must realize how difficult it is to practice this interpersonal skill. Empathy requires that we extend ourselves beyond the level of cultural and sociological understanding and try to make connections on the level of individual personality. Our own moods, feelings, emotions and attitudes change constantly, and it is even more challenging to predict the others from a different culture. Practicing empathy is a psychologically and emotionally demanding interpersonal skill, but one that is necessary for effective cross-cultural communication. Empathic communication is described as extending oneself into another person’s space in order to see things from the point of view of that person.
The ability to empathize is directly dependent on our ability to feel our own feelings and identify them.
If you have never felt a certain feeling, it will be hard for you to understand how another person is feeling. This holds equally true for pleasure and pain. If, for example, you have never put your hand in a flame, you will not know the pain of fire. If you have never felt rebellious or defiant, you will not understand those feelings. Reading about a feeling and intellectually knowing about it is very different than actually experiencing it for you.
Many people not know the differences between empathy and sympathy; I will present my understanding of the subject. Empathy means putting aside one’s own personal and cultural perspective of a situation and assuming an alternative perspective. Whereas sympathy carries connotations of pity and sufferer supporter social roles. Empathy assumes equality between two people or groups from different cultural backgrounds. While sympathy functions as a communicative strategy for those who share common values, empathy provides the best interface for cross cultural communication.
By your definition ’empathy’ is a means, not an end. Correct?
Joel: I would say it is a means that transforms the ends.
Radhe: Thanks so much for your comment. Good to know about the Lipps connection—I’d like to look into that. I would be a bit skeptical about the chances of actually practicing the pure empathy you speak of, really getting into another’s shoes. But there is the hope of glimpses, which remind us how much farther we have to go to understand the other. I admire how Levinas takes the transcendence of God as a way to speak of the transcendence of others. Your distinction between empathy and sympathy warns of an important danger—the thought, no matter who is in power and who is not, that empathy need only be a one-sided affair.