| Several theorists have recently called for the cultivation of empathy in light of its perceived contribution to morality. Yet the precise nature of empathy is not clear. For some, the idea of empathy calls up associations with caring, compassion, and helpfulness. For others, it is related to knowledge or understanding of foreign subjects' experiences. Nancy Sherman, like many recent proponents of empathy, is impressed by empathy for both its associations with other-regarding actions and attitudes and its associations with knowledge or understanding of foreign experiences. She thus argues that empathy is the precondition for other-regarding virtues. Further, she argues that, through enabling agents to avoid parochialism, empathy provides the possibility for cosmopolitan ethics.; This study explores the nature of empathy and its apparent relation to morality. In doing so, the study exposes a practically and ethically untenable view of intersubjectivity that underpins the traditional models from which theorists (viz., Sherman) commonly draw. A new approach to intersubjectivity, which is sensitive to the practical and ethical concerns raised in the first portion of the study, is then set forth. This alternative approach to intersubjectivity, coupled with the construal of empathy as a virtue, makes clearer the nature of empathy and its relation to morality. Significantly, however, the revised approach to empathy makes implausible the notion that empathy can provide the possibility for a cosmopolitan ethics. |
