Embodied Cognition and Loving Character

Empathy and character are concepts that many hold to be at the center of human morality. Currently, however, they are subject to sustained scholarly suspicion among social scientists, genealogically minded humanists, and moral philosophers from both utilitarian and deontological perspectives. This paper presents a close reading of influential attacks and their scientific bases and argues that they emerge from a shared model of the human mind and self that opposes reason and affect in a zero-sum game. The paper critiques these accounts and presents an alternative model of moral character for virtuous construal in which character is not identified with static, inflexible traits, dispositions, or habits, but with affectively dynamic and context-sensitive schemas supporting a mindfulness of others' needs in action.