Empathy and morality have a fundamental yet complex link. The complication stems from a lack of awareness of what morality implies, or from the numerous meanings and nature of empathy. By caring about the well-being of others, compassion makes us better people, but putting empathy at the center of morality may be a bad idea. This is not to say that morality should prohibit empathy from involving emotion. Emotions are fundamental and necessary components of moral judgment and behavior. Empathetic feelings, on the other hand, are not optimal for promoting morality. Taking into considerations, the moral judgment, moral conduct and moral development principles, and applying empathy in each scenario, a conclusion is derived that empathy is not necessary for any of the principles of morality. People can have a moral system without empathy (Prinz, 2). Moral norms regulate how human beings should relate to each other and nature. For example, agreeing that it is not right to litter the environment or prescribing that people should not evade taxes. It is very hard to relate empathy with morality in these contexts. Certain types of moral judgment do not involve emotions. For example taking cases where ethics overrules rational principles in a situation whereby “one might judge that it is bad to kill an innocent person even if his vital organs could be used to save five others who desperately need transplants.” Empathy is felt for the five people who need the organs to survive, but again it is immoral and unethical to kill an innocent person. In this case, empathy is not necessary.
There is no direct link between moral behavior and empathy. Empathy can interfere with the moral decision making of a person by introducing biasedness, for example, favoring akin in a group of individuals. It prevents rationalization of moral behavior violations, in a situation where morality and empathy conflicts, empathy can become a source of immoral conduct. Prinz argues that people suffering from psychopathologies have limited emotions and empathy capacity. Disregard characterizes psychopath individuals for the well-being of others; they have little appreciation of the moral doings. However, research using healthy people and patients who have neurological damage shows that utilitarian judgments are controlled and facilitated by lack of emphatical concerns.
Empathy is not necessary for moral conduct and moral motivation. Emotions involved in approval and disapproval of some facts may have greater force than those that require empathy. Emotions that show support are positive, and that explains why a person may do a good thing. Taking an instance of disapproval emotion of anger, when a person does a wrong thing, punishment will be imposed on him or her, and this is the contrast to empathy which does not entail any punishment for moral motivation. Both emotions are directed towards other people. Anger is a response to perceiving unfairness, cruelty and other immoral acts. On the other hand, empathy only addresses charitable acts.
Empathy evidently has many shortcomings in relationship to morality. It is not motivating and is occasioned by much biasness towards some people of little interests. Although it has some kind gestures, it should not be used as a core for the development of moral system.
Work cited
Prinz, Jesse. J. Is Empathy Necessary for Morality (2012), in: Coplan, A. and P. Goldie (eds.), Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
