Troubles with Empathy

Empathy has come under sustained attack because of claims that it is too affective and displaces reasoned reflection, is emotionally overwhelming, leads to burnout, is parochial and ingroup-biased, and generally detracts from understanding and wanting to understand others, and from careful moral reasoning and action. This paper analyzes both concepts and constructs of empathy in a range of uses in Philosophy and Psychological Science and finds no evidence for claims that empathy is emotional contagion or that empathy is divided into cleanly cognitive and affective sources in mind or in brain. However, empathy as understood in prevalent constructs is troubled by its assumptions of accurate understanding of others, confidence in that accuracy, displacement of others at the risk of their own agency, and its implicit dependence on social and cultural similarity. The paper concludes by pointing toward a much overlooked conception of empathy ripe for fruitful interdisciplinary work in Philosophy, Theology, and Psychological Science.