Empathy without morality is emotional self-justification

Ethics
1

Morality = social obligation
A socially constructed set of duties that shapes behaviour and defines what is considered good or bad.

Empathy = emotional response
The ability to understand the suffering or injustice of others. In this thesis: a mechanism that processes guilt and emotional discomfort.

Morality concerns action or non-action. If something is judged to be morally wrong, it is typically not done.
Empathy, in contrast, is the emotionally appropriate response to what is recognised as morally relevant.

Morality concerns action. Empathy concerns inner experience.

The question is what happens when inner experience does not turn into action.

The empathetic liar

When an individual recognises the suffering of others and responds with empathy, but does not act accordingly, this empathy can still reinforce their sense of moral adequacy.

In many cases, the awareness of what is socially regarded as “right” is sufficient to perceive oneself as a morally good person, even in the absence of corresponding action.

The empathy-less free one

When a Human recognises the suffering of others but does not respond with empathy, and does not allow socially forced morals to influence their actions, they position themselves outside this framework.

Their actions are not guided by empathy or social obligation, they are true to themselves.

Empathy without matching moral action can function as emotional self-justification, while morality only becomes fully real through action.

A way too absolute and binary thesis i came up with, thinking about the thesis of Morals being a social construct

2

It sounds like you view empathy as the emotional prerequisite to moral action. So if I see a man abusing a woman, and the appropriate moral action is to address the abuse, then empathy has to do with those emotional states which would lead to the appropriate moral action.

You then posit the idea that someone who sees the abuse, has “empathy” (as defined above), and yet abstains from performing the appropriate moral action, is involved in emotional self-justification. Self-justification is supposed to occur through proper moral action, and empathy is merely a means to proper moral action. But the one who takes the means of empathy and disconnects it from the end of moral action while nevertheless feeling justified has warped the order and purpose of empathy. Is this what you are saying?

3

A sadist has empathy for their victim.

Any ethical concern must somehow be apart from that empathy. Where morality might be thought of as a mere obligation imposed by social stricture, ethics concerns how we deal with other people.

And if that is so, then ethical considerations involve the other. One who is true only to themselves is not acting ethically.

4

Wouldn’t we choose the unempathetic person who dutifully carries out moral acts over the empathetic person who is less predictable in his actions?

This isn’t to dispense entirely with intent, but a world of good intent without moral conduct is a worse place to live than a world of blind action that results in moral acts.

I would also choose the person who from force of habit doesn’t require the pangs of empathy or force of intellect to emerge before acting in the ethically proper way.

5

Really? I don’t know whether that is true or not, but the two options you give both look to be impossible.

6

I think a good amount of ethical behavior occurs automatically without deliberation. We might philosophize (even perhaps accurately so) as to the origins of the behavior, and we might have arrived at our ethical habits through experience and deliberatio, or however it is one creates the proper character, but that background wouldn’t be our primary driver at the moment.

I don’t consider stealing, murdering, or whatever but then talk myself out of it. If I’m having to think of the suffering my murdering will cause to stop me, I’m more of a concern than the person who just dismisses the idea without having to work through it.

Isn’t that consistent with a virtuous character?

My allusion is to Aristotle, but I see it the same in certain religious contexts, where acceptance and repetition of proper conduct leads to habitually acting morally without hand wringing.

7

You’re assuming empathy is meant to lead to moral action. I’m not saying that. I’m describing empathy as an emotional response to suffering, not something defined by what it leads to. I also don’t think self-justification is supposed to come from moral action, I think sympathizing or empathizing with the victim for your own feelings is generally egoistic because it recenters the situation on the self. The point is that empathy and action can come apart, and when they do, the feeling itself can still create a sense of moral justification without any action.

I’m sorry if I misunderstood you.

8

A sadist is still acting for themselves in terms of motivation, even though another person is involved. So involving the other does not automatically make something ethical. BDSM and CNC make this clearer, the acts can look extreme, but they are only considered acceptable because of consent, not because they are other oriented. So ethics is not simply about relation to others, it depends on consent and harm, not whether the action is self driven or not.

9

That doesn’t follow. It is how sadism deals with the other person that renders it unethical. Consent is about the other.

10

Okay, but then let me ask a few questions. If “self-justification” is bad, then what is good? What is the opposite? And if “sympathizing or empathizing with the victim for your own feelings is generally egoistic,” then what is not egoistic? What is the opposite? If X is inappropriate, then what is the appropriate alternative, Y?

For example, if I offer a critique to someone swinging a baseball bat, “Your stance is imbalanced between your two legs,” then I am at the same time proposing that they do the opposite, i.e. maintain a stance that balances the weight of the body between the two legs. The negation-critique “imbalance” conceptually presupposes a positive proposal of “balanced,” and if someone does not know what “balanced” is then they cannot use the word “imbalance” coherently.

12

Sure, I agree with that, but it looks to me as if you switched from talking about intention to talking about deliberation, and that you also moved away from a “worlds” conception.

I would say that to talk about a “world of good intent without moral conduct” and a “world of blind action that results in moral acts” is to talk about impossible things, and that this is because action is ultimately guided by intent, and intent is not blind. For example, if all (volitional) action proceeds from intent; and if “moral conduct” is a species of good (volitional) action; then moral conduct will proceed from good intent (whether directly through deliberation or remotely through habit).

But I agree that moral action need not involve deliberation, and that in many cases deliberation impedes moral action. Still, for Aristotle the emotions (or the passions) are part of the package that “habit” contains. A habitus bypasses deliberations precisely because it has been built into non-deliberative aspects of our being, such as the “emotional layer” (if you like). On a Thomistic view habitus is a kind of latent, solidified form of intention—one that contains a kind of inertia. Having intended and acted in such a way for such a long time, this way of being/acting becomes co-natural to me. I have molded myself into a shape that retains its form even apart from conscious or deliberative application.

So I can act out of habitus without deliberation, and also without immediate intention, but the habitus still depends on the immediate intention which I have exercised in the past, and therefore I don’t think we can have a world where there is no intention (“blind action”) and nevertheless there are “moral acts” resulting from habitus.