{"id":154,"date":"2008-10-03T15:17:51","date_gmt":"2008-10-03T19:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=154"},"modified":"2022-04-11T23:51:31","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T03:51:31","slug":"empathy-in-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2008\/10\/empathy-in-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Empathy in Action"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been an ongoing back-and-forth over in the comments at a recent post<\/a>, which have forced me to explain more fully some earlier statements about empathy as a political virtue<\/a> and skepticism as an intellectual habit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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:<\/p>\n

\u2018Empathy\u2019 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014all \u2018religious\u2019 practices are to be performed soley for their utility in optimizing the productive capacity of the individual, close to Rieff\u2019s definition of \u2018theraputics.\u2019 [See here<\/a> some of my own reflections on the work of Philip Rieff. -ns]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

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<\/em> 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\u2014breaking out of what we think we know about ourselves and others.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>). 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<\/a> around the world.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014this is a concern of Joel’s as well. He says:<\/p>\n

One additional parameter missing is the idea of \u2018human worth.\u2019 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\u2014in other words allowing the triumph of a materialist position by default.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been an ongoing back-and-forth over in the comments at a recent post<\/a>, which have forced me to explain more fully some earlier statements about empathy as a political virtue<\/a> and skepticism as an intellectual habit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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:<\/p>\n

\u2018Empathy\u2019 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014all \u2018religious\u2019 practices are to be performed soley for their utility in optimizing the productive capacity of the individual, close to Rieff\u2019s definition of \u2018theraputics.\u2019 [See here<\/a> some of my own reflections on the work of Philip Rieff. -ns]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,54,41,80,84,43,82,62,69],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-becoming","tag-conversation","tag-double-truth","tag-empathy","tag-ethics","tag-personhood","tag-politics","tag-skepticism","tag-utopia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5752,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions\/5752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}