Our aim in this paper is to argue that empathy is an intellectual virtue. Empathy enables agents to gain insight into other people’s emotions and beliefs. The agent who possesses this trait is: (i) driven to engage in acts of empathy by her epistemic desires; (ii) takes pleasure in doing so; (iii) is competent at the activity characteristic of empathy; and, (iv) has good judgment as to when it is epistemically appropriate to engage in empathy. After establishing that empathy meets (...) all the necessary conditions to be classified as an intellectual virtue, we proceed to discuss Battaly’s argument according to which empathy is a skill rather than a virtue. We contend, contra Battaly, that the agent who possesses the virtue of empathy: (a) sometimes foregoes opportunities to engage in the activity characteristic of empathy because it is the virtuous thing to do, (b) does not make deliberate errors, and (c) her actions are always ultimately aiming at epistemic goods. (shrink)

It has been proposed that the ways in which the criminal justice system treats offenders with Autism spectrum condition should duly account for how the condition influences the offenders’ behavior. While the recommendation appears plausible, what adhering to it means in practice remains unclear. A central feature of ASC is seen to be that people with the condition have difficulties with understanding and reacting to the mental states of others in what are commonly considered as adequate ways. This article aims (...) to clarify how the difficulties affect the moral weight to be given to the good and bad motives of offending in sentencing offenders with ASC. I start by explicating the main points of departure of the endeavor. After that I assess the moral significance of the good and bad motives of offenders with ASC in view of four cases and a comparison with how we commonly treat people who are not as able to understand and react to the mental states of others as neurotypical adults. I suggest that considerations pertaining to what has been called the primary orientation of morality provide grounds for deeming the good motives of offenders with ASC as morally significant as those of otherwise similar neurotypical offenders and the bad motives of offenders with ASC as less morally significant than those of otherwise similar neurotypical offenders. After considering three possible objections to the suggestion, I conclude by briefly elucidating its purported import. (shrink)

Emotion sharing plays a key role in many accounts of empathy. However, some equate emotion sharing with emotional “contagion” and thereby discount it as a form of empathy. In what follows, I clarify the nature of empathic emotion sharing and differentiate it from contagion. I first reflect on the notions of sharing an object and of sharing a life, arguing that each has four core features. I then argue that emotion sharing also has those features. These characteristics allow me to (...) distinguish emotion sharing from contagion and other phenomena like it. I end by offering positive reasons for seeing emotion sharing as a form of empathy – i.e., it provides knowledge of others’ mental states and aids in moral development. (shrink)

Aesthetics and social cognition are two disciplines rarely merged, despite the penetration of artworks into social, moral, and political concerns. In particular, participatory artworks involve direct social interaction and perception, and are more often than not motivated by, and aim towards, ethico-political ends. In the following, I fuse considerations aesthetic with considerations intersubjective, arguing that participatory artworks engage and exploit empathy’s biased character towards a recalibration of our social relationships, namely inclusion and exclusion. Although critics of empathy suggest that its (...) biased, manipulable, and narrow characteristics are detrimental to its moral promise, I argue that participatory artworks are successful intervention methods just insofar as they use these characteristics for their ethico-political gain. This is stimulated by their facilitation of affective, primary intersubjectivity, something I argue is unique to participatory art. After detailing these operations, I suggest that works that seek to address exclusion, rather than those that facilitate inclusion, have a greater potency in addressing and recalibrating empathy, in part owing to their provocation of empathy-related emotions and forms of fellow-feeling such as shame and compassion. (shrink)