The Ethos of Empathy
Whether it’s our friends losing their jobs, trauma in the current political climate, or natural disasters affecting the lives of tens of thousands, the world often seems in need of empathy. Empathy and sympathy share the greek root pathos meaning “feeling or emotion.” The idea behind empathy isn’t limited to feeling pity for another’s circumstance, but instead to have a full understanding of that individual’s position. It is a process of “vicarious [experience],” the process of abstracting and re-positioning ourselves to understand the feelings and emotions others experience. Here is an easier way to define empathy. We come to understand the positions of others by way of their relation to their circumstance without having necessarily dealt with that circumstance ourselves.
The aphorism of “placing oneself in another’s shoes” is thought to exemplify empathy, but does it really? I claim that the way in which we understand and exercise empathy is definitionally incorrect. We should understand that empathy alone is definitionally both non-constructive and theoretically destructive, bringing into question the virtue of its character. The way in which we understand empathy through conventional exemplars (such as the shoe aphorism) is essentially wrong. Notwithstanding the nature of empathy and what it demands for, we empathize with others under the shoe model. When empathizing, instead of “understanding another person’s condition from their perspective” we come to understand the condition in relation to ourselves. Using the aphorism’s own terms, we remain ourselves in other’s shoes.
Empathy is generally understood through the aphorism of “putting oneself in another’s shoes.” I think this model describes the misinterpretation we have on being empathic. The answer lies within the statement itself. We are, as the line states, putting ourselves in other’s shoes; that is, we are being ourselves in another’s position. But to put yourself in another’s shoes is to miss the point of empathy altogether. Empathy is a process of disembodying our identitities and embodying another’s. We empathize with others by adopting their individual and idiosyncratic characteristics, however flawed, misinformed, or irrational their reasoning and speculations may be. This is truly what’s required to have an understanding of another’s position by way of their relation to it. This is what it means to “[understand] another person’s condition from their perspective.” We abstract ourselves from what Michael Sandel might call our ‘constitutive attachments.’ We replace our own social and economic rationale, cultural contexts, and political inclinations with theirs. To be empathic, we cannot be ourselves in another’s shoes, rather we become the person who owns them. By understanding another’s feelings through their perspective, we become one and the same individual sharing one and the same position. Here, an obvious problem begins to brew. In the empathic state, I can’t offer consolidation to someone’s depression because I am obliged to embrace that depression too. I can’t answer someone’s doubts because I must embody their uncertainty as well. The moral paradox of empathy is that in its most genuine use it seems utterly useless.
But of course, we seldom listen to a grieving friend without offering some words of advise or solidarity. However, this isn’t the purpose of empathy. Advise is an actualization of wisdom, and wisdom assumes a plurality of views. I come to understand others’ conditions insofar as I, as an autonomous self, perceive their condition. I put myself in their shoes. The cost of interpreting others’ positions through my perspective is that I fail to understand their position through their context. In order to understand conflicting or compatible views and positions, being empathic is necessary but insufficient. We never remain in the empathic state when we are asked to empathize with others for that would be nonconstructive by definition; nevertheless, it’s the right place to start. Having a full (or at the very least better) understanding of another’s position can lead us to best administer, address, advise, and correspond to opposing and sympathizing viewpoints.
I want to turn my attention to instances where it seems more difficult or impossible to relate with another’s position. These instances are where I believe we need to exercise empathy the most and yet we move furthest from that goal. Perhaps the reason why we feel upset when we turn on the news is not because we understand the situation of others, but instead, we interpret their positions by and through ourselves. Again, we are putting ourselves in their shoes. If we’ve empathized with others by projecting ourselves in their position, aren’t we then feeling upset for us in their circumstance? We often think “Jeez, I can’t imagine going through that” and here is where the truth lies. We never see others’ poitions through them, only in relation to ourselves. Practicing empathy through the shoe aphorism is to create hypothetical scenarios in which we are them, we are the ones in their position, and thus we feel pitty for ourselves.
In theory, empathy seems like an impossible virtue to hold but that shouldn’t deter us from practicing it definitionally. What being empathic teaches us is that however much our conditions seem to resemble one another, experiencing them first-hand will always seem like a burden being placed particularly onto us. The end of empathy is, to the best of our ability, to understand the positions of others relative to them. In the context of U.S. political affiliation, a hotly debated topic, we often turn to the shoe aphorism to discredit opposing views. When a liberal (a) puts themselves in the shoes of an Alt-Right affiliate (b), a tries to understand the position of b through a’s context, resulting unsurprisingly in gridlock and even more hostility towards b. We should understand other’s views not through or in relation to us, but them. Doing so would allow us to understand the causes of our indifferences; where and why we think and act the way we do.
