“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” – Albert Einstein
I must admit, I’m an avid reader of the National Review, despite being a young, Hispanic male; I suppose I’m a prized outlier from a demographic usually foreign to the National Review. I do tend to have conservative inclinations and sometimes nod my head in agreement with their articles. I like reading well-thought-out, intellectual articles, set apart from the usually vulgar journalism you see in the news media. What can I say? I’m weird.
But I came across this one article in the National Review that utterly infuriated me. It’s called, “Against Empathy.” I had to restrain my utter contempt for his antagonistic approach in explaining what he thinks constitutes empathy.
I thought his political conclusion was sound: President Obama feigns empathy to perpetuate his political agenda etc. Sure, I can see that, whatever. But en route to that conclusion, Mr. Williamson unjustly disparages empathy for the sake of glorifying sympathy.
First, just because he gives etymological elaboration from whence empathy arose does not mean that empathy is some tawdry, irrational feeling.
Secondly, in his glorification of sympathy, he fails to recognize that sympathy is very much akin to hubristic pity, which itself should be put up on a pedestal for criticism. I’m not a fervent adherent of Ayn Rand’s thought, but she did have a reasonable critique on pity (echoing Nietzsche): “But this was pity – this complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed. There was shame in this feeling – his own shame that he should have to pronounce such judgment upon a man, that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect.” (in The Fountainhead)
*** Quick sidebar: I once had a philosophy professor who met and conversed with Ayn Rand. His description of her? She was a feisty, angry, and mean woman. But, boy, was she intelligent… ***
As Mr. Williamson puts it, sympathy is feeling with the person. But in “feeling with the person” you make the audacious and arrogant presumption that you know exactly what that person is personally feeling. Sympathy demands arrogant consideration, presumptuous thought, and contrived analysis – empathy wisely precludes them.
The Ancient Greeks understood sympathy very differently from how we understand it today, something that Mr. Williamson fails to note.
Anyways, that is my opinion on the article. I believe empathy is a far more authentic disposition than sympathy. I think Daniel Goleman does justice to both empathy and sympathy in his seminal book, Emotional Intelligence. One sentence in Mr. Williamson’s article gave me hope however: “And that is why President Obama and those in sympathy with him prize empathy. Empathy, or the imitation of empathy, entirely negates the need for etc.” His article would have been interesting in my eyes if he had refrained from persecuting empathy itself and instead focused on his argument that what President Obama and his supposed cohorts are really doing is an “imitation of empathy.”
But I hate politics and I don’t really care about that part.
Idk 