Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

The empathy trap

Not necessarily, says Paul Bloom. It’s generally a bad moral guide, and can lead to indifference and even cruelty

issue 28 January 2017

Being against empathy sounds like being against flowers or sparrows. Surely empathy is a good thing? Isn’t one of the main problems with the world that there isn’t enough of the stuff going around? Paul Bloom of Yale University is here to argue otherwise. As he explains, while empathy can be a good thing in certain circumstances, in general it is a poor moral guide.

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