Empathy and morality / edited by Heidi L. Maibom.

Date:
[2014]
  • Books

About this work

Description

The relationship between empathy and morality has long been debated. Adam Smith and David Hume famously argued that our tendency to feel with our fellow human beings played a foundational role in morality. And while recent decades have seen a resurgence of interest in the idea that empathy or sympathy is central to moral judgment and motivation, the view is nonetheless increasingly attacked. Empathy is so morally limited, some argue, that we should focus our attention elsewhere. Yet the importance of our capacities to feel with and for others is hard to deny. This collection is dedicated to the question of the importance of these capacities to morality. It brings together twelve original papers in philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, and neuroscience to give a comprehensive overview of the issue and includes an extensive survey of empathy and empathy-related emotions. Some contributors argue that empathy is essential to core cases of moral judgments, others that empathic concern and moral considerations give rise to wholly distinct motives. Contributors look at such issues as the absence of empathy in psychopaths, the use of empathy training for rehabilitating violent offenders, and the presence of empathy in other primates. The volume is distinctive in focusing on the moral import of empathy and sympathy.

Publication/Creation

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2014]

Physical description

viii, 303 pages ; 25 cm

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction : (almost) everything you ever wanted to know about empathy / Heidi L. Maibom -- Empathy-induced altruism and morality : no necessary connection / C. Daniel Batson -- Empathy and morality : a developmental psychology perspective / Tracy L. Spinrad and Nancy Eisenberg -- Empathy, justice, and social change / Martin L. Hoffman -- Empathy, emotion regulation, and moral judgment / Antti Kauppinen -- At the empathetic center of our moral lives / K. Richard Garrett and George Graham -- Empathy and moral deficits in psychopathy / Abigail A. Marsh -- Are empathy and morality linked? : insights from moral psychology, social and decision neuroscience, and philosophy / Giuseppe Ugazio, Jasminka Majdandžić, and Claus Lamm -- On empathy : a perspective from developmental psychopathology / R. Peter Hobson and Jessica A. Hobson -- Empathy in other apes / Kristin Andrews and Lori Gruen -- Psychological altruism, empathy, and offender rehabilitation / Tony Ward and Russil Durrant -- Empathy and morality in ethnographic perspective / Douglas Hollan.

Languages

Where to find it

  • LocationStatus
    History of Medicine
    PW.AQ
    Open shelves

Permanent link

Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9780199969470
  • 0199969477