Posted: 4/26/2015
Claim Of Moral Superiority
U.S. President Barack Obama argued empathy as a criterion to nominate Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Some opponents of capital punishment claim empathy when arguing against such punishment.
Are these and other examples implicit claims of moral superiority over rationality? It sure looks like it.
Reason Trumps Empathy
Empathy can easily be an expression of regression towards the Dark Ages!
Empathy often commits injustice, because of bias and prejudice.
Empathy can easily lead to preferential treatment of some people over other people in similar circumstances or situations. Empathy is selective!
Empathy can easily make one blind and cloud one’s judgement.
Rationality or reason is not without empathy or compassion, but it is consciousness to strive towards more balance and justice for all. Rationality without empathy is without conscience.
Equanimity comes easier with rationality than with empathy.
Evolution Of Sympathy
Emphatic people are commonly more liked than rational people, because reason is still in short supply.
Human evolution has been slow over the past 2-3 million years. Rationality is perhaps only 3-5 thousand years old, but the evolution or reason has been and continues to be much faster.
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