{"id":21149,"date":"2019-03-28T11:47:28","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T15:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=21149"},"modified":"2019-03-28T11:47:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T15:47:28","slug":"empathy-and-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=21149","title":{"rendered":"Empathy and Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My remarks at a conference entitled \u201c<\/em>Empathy \u2026. or Ways of Caring<\/em><\/a>,\u201d Harvard Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, March 15, 2019. (Apologies for some cutting and pasting from previous posts.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doris Sommer mentioned that Barack Obama popularized the notion of an \u201cempathy deficit.\u201d In a 2004 interview with Oprah Winfrey, while he was still a State Senator, Obama said<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I often say we’ve got a budget deficit that’s important, we’ve got a trade deficit that’s critical, but what I worry about most is our empathy deficit. When I speak to students, I tell them that one of the most important things we can do is to look through somebody else’s eyes. People like bin Laden are missing that sense of empathy. That’s why they can think of the people in the World Trade Center as abstractions. They can just crash a plane into them and not even consider, “How would I feel if my child were in there?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here Obama links empathy to moral judgment. In a 2006 commencement address<\/a>, he also implies that the level of empathy in a society as a whole is a precondition of social justice. Our \u201cempathy deficit\u201d explains why we accept that \u201cAmericans \u2026 sleep in the streets and beg for food,\u201d that \u201cinner-city children \u2026. are trapped in dilapidated schools,\u201d and that \u201cinnocent people [are] being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away .\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To suggest that this argument is problematic, I would quote then-President Obama in Jerusalem on March 21, 2013<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I \u2014 I\u2019m going off script here for a second, but before I \u2014 before I came here, I \u2014 I met with a \u2014 a group of young Palestinians from the age of 15 to 22. And talking to them, they weren\u2019t that different from my daughters. They weren\u2019t that different from your daughters or sons.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I honestly believe that if \u2014 if any Israeli parent sat down with those kids, they\u2019d say, I want these kids to succeed. (Applause.) I want them to prosper. I want them to have opportunities just like my kids do. (Applause.) I believe that\u2019s what Israeli parents would want for these kids if they had a chance to listen to them and talk to them. (Cheers, applause.) I believe that. (Cheers, applause.)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It is\nnot so much the speech as the applause that I find problematic, because I believe\nthat the Israeli electorate supports policies that are unjust, and their\npolitical behavior is compatible with a fair amount of actual empathy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u201cempathy\u201d is a modern coinage. It is not attested before 1895, and it gained its current meaning only in 1946. Many wise people have thought about moral psychology and justice without using this word at all, so we should consider whether it does us any good.*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d posit the\nfollowing definitions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n