Should we strive for empathy? Our culture generally says, yes, of course. After all, it is better to understand your fellow man, so as to live in harmony, do the most good, and so on.
I’m not clear on the issue, but I do have an opposing view to offer. I have a friend (a real person, not hypothetical) who is the most moral person I have ever met. He has never done anything significantly wrong, according to his own very rigid and demanding moral code. He has no weaknesses - sex, drugs, depression, self-indulgence, you name it. Not one. And as a result, he is very condemning of those with the tendency to cheat on their significant others, those who are imperceptive of the needs of others or who are manipulative, and certainly anyone who does anything worse.
In a moral sense, he’s a lot like a god. We imperfect mortals who understand imperfection as we are imperfect ourselves, find it easier to forgive others who act similarly. But a perfect being could not possibly understand weakness or imperfection, being entirely removed from that sort of mindset. A perfect being would have no empathy for the flawed and their mistakes. This seems to suggest that we either strive for moral righteousness, or for empathy, but that we cannot achieve both.
In defining a god as a ‘perfect’ entity, I think we somehow ascribe both empathy and moral righteousness to it.
In the case of your friend, despite his moral righteousness, I’d consider his lack of empathy as a flaw. Some psychiatrists would even consider it to be symptomatic of a much deeper personality disorder.
It’s possible to act morally and still have an appreciation of how difficult such behavior is. Actually, if your friend acts morally without any particular effort, what are we applauding him for?
This is my first post here. I’m not professionally trained so take my opinion with as many grains as you want. I just have an intense interest in philosophy that can’t be sated by the people I socialize with in real life. waves enthusiastically
Striving for empathy is only required of those who lack it adequately.
Societal dictums are often misinterpreted in the “one size fits all” mistake when they really were meant to speak to a specific audience but an appeal to Occam opted for brevity.
It’s good to have empathy, as empathy requires both intuition and feeling, a preference facility to readily and accurately intuit going missing in about 85% of the population.
That’s not to say that empathy should ever become self-sacrificial “justification”.
But to truly see how other’s see is a great source of knowledge not found by any other means.
It seems that it matters in the who. If someone lacks and nothing else is pressing it seems a worthy goal. But self criticism can only go so far before becoming the raging behemoth. In order to forgive we must first condemn. There are other pursuits worthy of a concerted effort such as excellence. Such as art. We cannot be everything but we can be something, something . . . Teeth.
I don’t think there is any other way to found a rational morality. Other moralities must be dogmatic (‘commandments’) or overly vague (‘the greatest happiness’).
In respect to your friend, I guess I don’t know how he justifies his righteousness, but he could easily be affecting a selfish and superficial morality. If he does all this good because he’s scared of retribution, it is self-serving and not good. Compare to someone who is kind and serves others because she tries to understand how others feel, and and avoids bad things because she knows that bad things feel bad to her. Her goodness comes from caring that other people good, because she knows and likes the feeling herself.
And the “greatest happiness” idea is OK, but it too must rest on an understanding of what makes me feel happy and what makes me feel sad. Without an understanding of what happy is and why it is worth pursuing, there is no imperative to attempt to make the greatest number happy.
My intuition leads to me to think this is true, at prima facie. However, empathy is understanding of others situation, it would seem that the perfect entitly should then take it a step further and have compassion, not only understanding but a want to subscribe solution or create solution.
‘No’ to empathy - it is a waste of energy that could be used for more constructive/ helpful things - we know other’s are suffering/ in need of help, so doing is where it’s at for me…