People seem to have a fucked understanding of empathy.
Empathy isn’t supposed to be convenient: the challenge of guiding choices by empathy is empathizing with everyone without reservation.
It’s not placing people in different categories of deserving & undeserving based on who they are, whether you agree with them, whether they’d reciprocate, their conduct, or anything.
As soon as you start making such distinctions and defending them, you admit your position isn’t strict empathy, either: you’re following some consideration other than empathy.
Your disagreement if any is not over strict adherence to empathy (which you don’t do), but it’s when to selectively follow empathy.
I’m not claiming you need to give the least deserving your empathy or that it’s wrong to deviate from strict empathy.
I am claiming, however, if you justify a conclusion from a premise of strict empathy yet clearly don’t accept that premise, then you better develop that justification to something you plausibly do accept or your argument is unsound.
Oh well in that case, let me lose all empathy I might have had over this event
People seem to have a fucked understanding of empathy.
Empathy isn’t supposed to be convenient: the challenge of guiding choices by empathy is empathizing with everyone without reservation. It’s not placing people in different categories of deserving & undeserving based on who they are, whether you agree with them, whether they’d reciprocate, their conduct, or anything.
As soon as you start making such distinctions and defending them, you admit your position isn’t strict empathy, either: you’re following some consideration other than empathy. Your disagreement if any is not over strict adherence to empathy (which you don’t do), but it’s when to selectively follow empathy.
I’m not claiming you need to give the least deserving your empathy or that it’s wrong to deviate from strict empathy. I am claiming, however, if you justify a conclusion from a premise of strict empathy yet clearly don’t accept that premise, then you better develop that justification to something you plausibly do accept or your argument is unsound.