Is Empathy Necessary for Morality?

Abstract

In this chapter I ask whether empathy is necessary for morality. This question can be disambiguated in several ways. Is empathy necessary for making moral judgments? Is empathy necessary for developing a moral sense? Is empathy necessary for moral motivation? Is empathy normatively necessary‐‐i.e., should we necessarily try to cultivate an empathy-based moral psychology? I argue that the answer to each of these questions is no. Empathy is less integral to morality, than some have thought, and potentially an impediment to moral motivation. Other moral emotions are more important.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 275 citations exist upstream.