Hannah Arendt suggests that it is still important to imagine how things might look from another point of view, not because it is possible to see the world the same way as another person sees it, but because it is important to enlarge our own mentality/perspective, by trying to imagine what it might be like FOR US to be in another person's shoes. That said, I don't think the potential pitfall you mention can be eliminated, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to widen our own perspective by imagining how we might feel if we shared another's plight. That one exercise alone could change much about how we treat strangers in our midst whom society has scapegoated.
I'm in agreement with you and Arendt on this score. I don't think empathy is toxic, per se. It just isn't without its dangers, which are compounded by the fact that, in my experience, its association with love made it almost an unmitigated good and was rarely scrutinized, as a result. (I also don't think all understandings of empathy can be adequately described as "seeing-as.")
I was actually thinking about Arendt when I was writing for a different reason, though. It struck me that her notion of the public and the necessity of continually meeting as a public might be driven by the need to situate ourselves so we affect one another in a dialogic relation. Moreover, the new possibilities born in public, when people are in contact with one another, isn't so dissimilar from the new possibilities born of the woman's choice to touch Jesus's cloak. Also, I think the uncontrolled nature of love that I reference isn't so dissimilar to the unpredictability of action that arises in public for Arendt.
Honestly, I think so. I'm not an expert in all things Doug Wilson, but reading between the lines, it seems as though part of the motivation behind propagating "the sin of empathy" is to make oneself responsible only to "God." I think the notion of imago Dei throws a wrench in the whole thing, making other people's force and God's force inseperably mixed, but he doesn't seem to think it's relevant to empathy.
Have you ever come across the work of Roshi Joan Halifax? Distinctions of empathy versus compassion have been done and well-recognized already, feels like this is trying to reinvent the wheel.
Thanks for reading and responding to my reflection, and for pointing me to Halifax. I have to admit that I had not read her work and am not deeply familiar with the broader literature on empathy. And I agree that the distinction between empathy and compassion isn’t particularly new; indeed, I was taught what empathy was through that very distinction! The contribution I aimed to make in this reflection was less to establish that distinction than to intervene in a particular moment. I aimed to suggest in light of the recent popularization of the phrase “toxic empathy,” which many find repugnant, myself included, that we might find ourselves tempted to defend empathy wholesale against detractors like Doug Wilson. However, empathy of the kind I describe has problems of its own, and, if we allow empathy to escape scrutiny, those problems might inhibit rather than foster our capacity to love.
RE: "When I feel someone touch me, for example, they feel me touch them. In this way, feeling operates more as a dialogue than a monologue." This makes sense to the way I experience things, but I am not conversant enough with the debate to even tell if this is 'right' or 'wrong.' I remember Professor Ron Nydam (?) speaking at length about sympathy and empathy and why the first is clearly insufficient. I admit (openly if not with great pride) that much of the debate leaves me confused. When I'm holding the hand of E. at the nursing home, I don't think at all if I'm showing pity, compassion, seeing-with, empathy or sympathy.
(P.S.: I think you are too hard on John Milton. I do think the submission/subservience of the Son in P.L. is not exactly the way the scriptures describe things.)
Hi Curt, thanks for reading my reflection! I think I agree with you about the inadequacy of those words to describe the experience that you do. However, I think what you are talking about is something that words and categories cannot do justice to. Ultimately, what I was trying to drive home was not so much that we should choose compassion over empathy, but that, if we identify empathy with love, we foolishly place limits around what love is.
Also, I didn't mean to be hard on Milton (apologies to Milton)! I don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to Milton. I just didn't like the sleight of hand that Wilson employs, where he makes a point about what Genesis says, but switches from reading Genesis to Paradise Lost. Which would be fine if he was using Paradise Lost as a kind of commentary of sorts, but instead, he employs Paradise Lost as if it speaks with the same authority as Genesis.
Hannah Arendt suggests that it is still important to imagine how things might look from another point of view, not because it is possible to see the world the same way as another person sees it, but because it is important to enlarge our own mentality/perspective, by trying to imagine what it might be like FOR US to be in another person's shoes. That said, I don't think the potential pitfall you mention can be eliminated, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to widen our own perspective by imagining how we might feel if we shared another's plight. That one exercise alone could change much about how we treat strangers in our midst whom society has scapegoated.
I'm in agreement with you and Arendt on this score. I don't think empathy is toxic, per se. It just isn't without its dangers, which are compounded by the fact that, in my experience, its association with love made it almost an unmitigated good and was rarely scrutinized, as a result. (I also don't think all understandings of empathy can be adequately described as "seeing-as.")
I was actually thinking about Arendt when I was writing for a different reason, though. It struck me that her notion of the public and the necessity of continually meeting as a public might be driven by the need to situate ourselves so we affect one another in a dialogic relation. Moreover, the new possibilities born in public, when people are in contact with one another, isn't so dissimilar from the new possibilities born of the woman's choice to touch Jesus's cloak. Also, I think the uncontrolled nature of love that I reference isn't so dissimilar to the unpredictability of action that arises in public for Arendt.
Is he saying a believer should feel no guilt or accountability for causing a person's poverty even when he has caused it?
Honestly, I think so. I'm not an expert in all things Doug Wilson, but reading between the lines, it seems as though part of the motivation behind propagating "the sin of empathy" is to make oneself responsible only to "God." I think the notion of imago Dei throws a wrench in the whole thing, making other people's force and God's force inseperably mixed, but he doesn't seem to think it's relevant to empathy.
Have you ever come across the work of Roshi Joan Halifax? Distinctions of empathy versus compassion have been done and well-recognized already, feels like this is trying to reinvent the wheel.
Thanks for reading and responding to my reflection, and for pointing me to Halifax. I have to admit that I had not read her work and am not deeply familiar with the broader literature on empathy. And I agree that the distinction between empathy and compassion isn’t particularly new; indeed, I was taught what empathy was through that very distinction! The contribution I aimed to make in this reflection was less to establish that distinction than to intervene in a particular moment. I aimed to suggest in light of the recent popularization of the phrase “toxic empathy,” which many find repugnant, myself included, that we might find ourselves tempted to defend empathy wholesale against detractors like Doug Wilson. However, empathy of the kind I describe has problems of its own, and, if we allow empathy to escape scrutiny, those problems might inhibit rather than foster our capacity to love.
RE: "When I feel someone touch me, for example, they feel me touch them. In this way, feeling operates more as a dialogue than a monologue." This makes sense to the way I experience things, but I am not conversant enough with the debate to even tell if this is 'right' or 'wrong.' I remember Professor Ron Nydam (?) speaking at length about sympathy and empathy and why the first is clearly insufficient. I admit (openly if not with great pride) that much of the debate leaves me confused. When I'm holding the hand of E. at the nursing home, I don't think at all if I'm showing pity, compassion, seeing-with, empathy or sympathy.
(P.S.: I think you are too hard on John Milton. I do think the submission/subservience of the Son in P.L. is not exactly the way the scriptures describe things.)
Hi Curt, thanks for reading my reflection! I think I agree with you about the inadequacy of those words to describe the experience that you do. However, I think what you are talking about is something that words and categories cannot do justice to. Ultimately, what I was trying to drive home was not so much that we should choose compassion over empathy, but that, if we identify empathy with love, we foolishly place limits around what love is.
Also, I didn't mean to be hard on Milton (apologies to Milton)! I don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to Milton. I just didn't like the sleight of hand that Wilson employs, where he makes a point about what Genesis says, but switches from reading Genesis to Paradise Lost. Which would be fine if he was using Paradise Lost as a kind of commentary of sorts, but instead, he employs Paradise Lost as if it speaks with the same authority as Genesis.