Empathy- A Smithian Idea
Where do we get our sense of right and wrong?
Adam Smith argued that sympathy (and empathy) is the starting point. All other societal constructs can be derived from our capacity to express sympathy and empathy-our ability to view the world from another person’s shoes.
But it’s not enough just to have empathy in isolation. In fact animals show empathy as well:- it’s the reason we (and animals) care for our offspring. What sets us apart from animals, however, is our ability to access empathy by way of the activities of our imagination.
Imagination is a capacity to think abstractly, to think about problems which are not in front of us, or not in the present. It’s our capacity to go beyond our instincts of being nice to others and be able to abstract that. For example, we have a capacity to imagine what our loved one would feel if we cheated them, or to take it further, we have a capacity to think about best way to organize our society and its institutions.
To use imagination to arrive at a moral life, however, requires collective action-its not something you can do alone. It’s something that society does together, and Smith’s perfect example was society’s attitude towards slavery.
People began realising at some early point in early AD that humans are in some way equal, and so the notion that slavery is wrong develops. But then, it takes 2000 years since the idea first troubled intellectuals, for people-at-large to realise that slavery is wrong-it’s a collective enterprise.
And finally we arrive at a point, where you will be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t a little bit bothered by the idea of slavery. So, collective imagination is a prescient prerequisite for societal progress.
This progress can be fast tracked by individuals, great leaders, like Lincoln on slavery, who convinced a society to extend their imagination, to convince masses to share with his vision on this issue. The art of politics then, is to appeal for people to see an issue through the universally accessible prism of empathy, and to access this empathy by capturing their imagination.
There are dangers to imagination as well. Imagination can lead to an obsession with self. We are capable of imagining things for ourselves like fame and fortune, or the lure of infidelity. Being able to imagine these things can trap us into a lifetime of disappointment, a purposeless existence. On the other hand, if one is successful in achieving these things, they are likely to suffer the hollow life.
