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    Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
    Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
    Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
    Audiobook7 hours

    Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

    Written by Paul Bloom

    Narrated by Karen Cass

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    About this audiobook

    A controversial call to arms, Against Empathy argues that the natural impulse to share the feelings of others can lead to immoral choices in both public policy and in our intimate relationships with friends and family.

    Most people, including many policy makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers, have encouraged us to be more empathetic—to feel the pain and pleasure of others. Yale researcher and author Paul Bloom argues that this is a mistake. Far from leading us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, and draw upon a more distanced compassion. 

    Based on groundbreaking scientific findings, Against Empathy makes the case that some of the worst decisions that individuals and nations make—from who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to put in prison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With clear and witty prose, Bloom demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from culture and education to foreign policy and war. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and ultimately more moral.

    Bound to be controversial, Against Empathy shows us that, when it comes to major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our empathetic emotions is often the most compassionate choice we can make.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateDec 6, 2016
    ISBN9780062571847
    Author

    Paul Bloom

    Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. His research explores the psychology of morality, identity, and pleasure. Bloom is the recipient of multiple awards and honors, including, most recently, the million-dollar Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize. He has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Atlantic Monthly. He is the author or editor of eight books, including Against Empathy, Just Babies, How Pleasure Works, Descartes’ Baby, and, most recently, The Sweet Spot.

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    Reviews for Against Empathy

    4/5

    154 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      It's an expanded collection of articles. I like the thesis of the book but I found it too long and boring. That's why it took so much time to read it

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      If I wasn't already part of the choir to which he preaches, I would have given it 3 stars. However, if I'm being honest with you fellow nonfiction nerds, my confirmation bias motivated the fourth star. All of that being said, the book is excellent.

      Bloom has a wonderful conversational style that is easy to flow with that you more easily forget that you're learning along the way. So much so, that sometimes I found the points belabored; not necessarily repetitive, but at times, belabored. Obviously, as Bloom acknowledges, empathy is clearly not a panacea for the ills of the world but neither is it worthy of or derision. It almost certainly is important to growing and maintaining close relationships, though it can be destructive even in those contexts.

      5 stars for the narration. The narrator is now amongst my favorite narrators. She balances the need for some affective tone in her reading while not allowing that affective tone to become distracting.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      "Empathy is a gun that points both ways"

      That is a quote from Paul Bloom, who views empathy as leading us to do both good and evil. Defining empathy as feeling what another person is feeling, he sets about to demonstrate how it leads to biased decisions, can be dumb and even racist. Whilst empathy can lead to decisions that benefit our immediate family, friends and neighbours, it is poor when it comes to those outside of our sight-zone. That in trying to do good, we can often do more harm than good. It is a poor predictor of moral goodness, political affiliation and world view.
      Paul Bloom builds a case for rational compassion, where we use our heads as well as our hearts. He questions empathy’s use in politics, in empathising with one group against another. He views empathy as something that can be manipulated by politicians to get us to feel the plight of certain groups, while cutting off from feeling the plight of others.
      My reason for dropping one star, is that he omits ‘projective identification’ as the mechanism behind empathy. This concept, from Melanie Klein, extends our understanding of just how we can enter the psyche of another or be entered by them. The more benign form of projective identification is empathy, but its more hostile form can lead to ensorcellment and brainwashing.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Although I was initially skeptical (I judged a book by its cover) I came away with an appreciation of the argument and have revised some of my own meditative practices as a result. Well worth your time!
    • 2/5
      This book was kind of trash because it doesn’t really give a good alternative on what to do, and empathy isn’t really something you can control. I feel like I expect higher standards from an academic than “just be rational” when rationality itself can be subjective.
    • 4/5
      Bloom is an original thinker. This trait is becoming ever more rare so I appreciate it very much. But who on earth decides to read an audiobook with a female voice while the author is a well respected male individual
    • 4/5
      Interesting discussion of the drawbacks of using empathy in moral decision-making.
    • 1/5
      We Homo sapiens are by default compassionate animals. This is our basic evolutionary drive. I believe the landscape that the author described in the book about the rational society is a myth. We Homo sapiens are not rational civil intellectuals, rather empathetic animals. And we currently have been evolving for 350,000 years. I estimate that, sure, we are heading to a more and more rational civilization, but 350,000 years is still too short for an advanced developed civilization. We are, after all, an average species on an average planet. But why against compassion. We are actually doing really great under this "not-quite-rational-but-very-compassionate" world.

      No matter how the society evolves, the compassionate ones always have comparative advantage in survival. I will always stand on the "The Age of Empathy" (Frans de Waal) side.
    • 3/5
      At the risk of sounding "snarky," the author should have had more empathy for readers than to attempt to transform what would be a fascinating essay into a book-length odyssey. Very early in the audiobook, the narrator suggested: "If you listen to one chapter, this should be it." That's how far I made it: one chapter. Barely. I'll take a big part of the blame. I checked this audiobook out of the library at a time when I was really looking for less weighty topic. Perhaps I just wasn't in the right mindset. But the topic intrigued me: does the natural impulse to share the feelings of others actually cause more harm than good? Can we blame empathy for decisions that range from war declarations to problems in our criminal justice system? The early chapter provided a thumbnail glimpse of this interesting theory. For this reader, the "CliffsNotes" version was sufficient.