Empathy Under Attack

Empathy Under Attack: A Weakness or an Essential Human Strength?

 Something rather surprising has happened to empathy. An attribute traditionally associated with humanity, understanding and civilised behaviour is increasingly being presented as a source of social weakness.

In February 2025, Elon Musk told Joe Rogan that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy”. He argued that empathy could be exploited: people might respond compassionately to an individual or group without adequately considering the wider consequences for society. Importantly, Musk did not reject concern for other people altogether. He also said that empathy could be good but maintained that it needed to be thought through rather than followed automatically.

More recently, Robert Jenrick has introduced similar language into the British political debate. In August 2026, while advancing Reform UK’s proposals for major changes to the welfare system, he described aspects of existing provision as “suicidal empathy”. Reform argues that excessive welfare provision can encourage dependency, impose unfair costs upon taxpayers and fail to help enough people back into employment. Critics, including disability organisations and political opponents, argue that the proposed changes would remove essential support from some of the most vulnerable people in society.

There is a serious issue buried within this controversy. Compassion does not automatically produce good policy. Emotional responses can be selective. Resources are limited. Governments have responsibilities not simply towards one individual but towards millions of citizens.

But none of this establishes that empathy itself is a weakness.

Indeed, it may reveal precisely why we need to understand empathy more carefully.

What do we mean by empathy?

At its simplest, empathy is the ability to imagine oneself in another person’s position and to understand that person’s feelings, desires, ideas and actions. It enables us, at least temporarily, to move beyond our own standpoint and consider how the world might appear to somebody else.

This apparently simple definition contains something of considerable moral importance.

Every human being experiences the world from a particular position. Our upbringing, relationships, economic circumstances, education, culture, opportunities and experiences influence our understanding. We cannot literally become another person, but imagination allows us to recognise that our own experience of reality is not the only possible one.

Empathy therefore involves an attempt to understand before we judge.

But—and this is crucial—understanding is not the same as agreeing.

This distinction is frequently lost in contemporary arguments about empathy.

Imagine, for example, a young person who steals money because he does not have enough to pay his rent. We may be able to understand his desperation. We can imagine the anxiety produced by possible homelessness and appreciate the pressures that contributed to his decision.

Yet we can still believe that stealing was wrong.

We can understand the person without approving the action.

We can empathise while continuing to make a moral judgement.

This example exposes an important weakness in the contemporary attack upon it. Empathy does not require us to abandon judgement, responsibility, law or morality. It requires us to make our judgement with a fuller understanding of the human circumstances involved.

That is very different.

Empathy is not simply sympathy

The distinction also helps us understand the difference between empathy and sympathy.

Sympathy commonly involves feelings of concern, sorrow or support for another person. Empathy asks something slightly different of us. It asks us to enter imaginatively into another person’s situation and try to understand how that situation appears from his or her perspective.

Consequently, it is perfectly possible to empathise with somebody whose behaviour we oppose.

A judge might understand the circumstances that contributed to an offence while still imposing punishment.

A teacher might understand why a pupil behaved badly while still insisting upon appropriate standards.

An employer might understand why an employee has failed to fulfil an obligation while still requiring accountability.

A government can recognise hardship while also considering affordability and the responsibilities of citizens.

Empathy does not abolish boundaries. It enables boundaries to be applied with understanding.

This is perhaps the most important response to the idea of “suicidal empathy”. If compassion is understood as the automatic acceptance of every claim made upon us, then of course it can become unwise. But that is not empathy properly understood.

Empathy supplies information to moral judgement; it does not replace moral judgement.

There is more than one kind of empathy

Another reason for confusion is that empathy is not a single response. Instead, there are three distinct responses.

The first is perspective-taking, or cognitive empathy. This is the capacity to see a situation from another person’s point of view. We may not experience that person’s emotions ourselves, but we can understand something of the reasoning, circumstances and perceptions behind them.

The second is emotional empathy. Here there is a stronger emotional resonance. Another person’s fear, grief, distress or happiness affects us emotionally. Their experience produces a response within us.

The third is empathic concern, or compassionate empathy. This goes beyond simply identifying another person’s feelings. We recognise what somebody is experiencing, understand something of its effects upon them and become concerned about their wellbeing.

These distinctions are important because criticisms of empathy frequently concentrate upon the dangers of uncontrolled emotional identification while overlooking cognitive and reflective forms of empathy.

Musk’s concern about what he calls an “empathy exploit”, for example, is essentially a warning against allowing an immediate emotional response to override consideration of wider consequences.

There is some force in that warning.

Emotions are capable of being manipulated. A particularly distressing photograph or an individual story can sometimes affect us more strongly than statistical evidence concerning thousands of people. We may feel greater empathy towards people who resemble ourselves than towards strangers. Political campaigns, charities, advertisers and the media all understand the power of emotional identification.

But the appropriate response is not to suppress empathy. It is to combine emotional empathy with cognitive empathy, evidence and reflection.

The solution to poorly informed empathy is better-informed empathy.

Why empathy matters

Two apparently simple consequences of empathy are stronger relationships and more successful solutions. Both deserve greater attention.

Human relationships depend upon our ability to recognise that other people possess needs, feelings and perspectives different from our own.

A marriage in which neither partner attempts to understand the other is unlikely to flourish.

A workplace in which managers cannot imagine how decisions affect employees is likely to create resentment.

A political system in which decision-makers never attempt to understand the lives of those affected by policy becomes remote and technocratic.

And communities in which different groups cease trying to understand one another become increasingly susceptible to hostility and division.

Empathy does not guarantee agreement, but it makes meaningful disagreement possible.

Without empathy, we are tempted to interpret every situation exclusively from our own position. Other people then become irrational simply because their reasoning differs from ours; irresponsible because their choices differ from ours; or threatening because their interests conflict with ours.

Empathy introduces another possibility: perhaps somebody can disagree with us without being foolish or malicious. Perhaps circumstances that appear straightforward from outside are more complicated when experienced from within.

That recognition strengthens relationships because people are more likely to trust those who genuinely attempt to understand them.

It also contributes to successful solutions.

Many social problems cannot be resolved simply by imposing one perspective upon everybody involved. Effective solutions frequently depend upon understanding why people behave as they do, what obstacles they encounter, what they fear, what they value and how proposed changes will affect their lives.

This applies to families and workplaces, but it applies equally to public policy.

Empathy and the welfare debate

Consider welfare policy.

A purely financial perspective asks how much the welfare system costs and how expenditure can be reduced.

A purely individualistic perspective may ask whether claimants have fulfilled their personal responsibilities.

An empathetic perspective introduces additional questions.

What is it like to live with a severe disability?

What barriers prevent somebody from returning to work?

How does long-term unemployment affect confidence and identity?

What happens to a family when income suddenly disappears?

What is the experience of an employer trying to support an employee with a long-term health problem?

And what does it feel like to work, pay taxes and believe that the system is being abused by others?

That final question is important. Genuine empathy cannot operate only in one political direction.

If empathy means taking other perspectives seriously, then it must extend to taxpayers as well as claimants, victims as well as offenders, citizens concerned about public services as well as people requiring those services.

This is where Musk’s warning contains an insight worth retaining: empathy becomes morally problematic when it is selective.

But selective empathy is not an argument against empathy. It is an argument for extending it.

The ethical question is not “Should we have empathy?” but “Whose circumstances have we failed to understand?”

Empathy and ethical agency

This is particularly important when we consider the relationship between empathy and ethical behaviour.

Human beings are not isolated economic units. We live within families, friendships, workplaces, communities and institutions. Our wellbeing depends continually upon the actions of people we may never meet.

We depend upon doctors, carers, teachers, engineers, farmers, refuse collectors, emergency workers and countless others. We depend upon previous generations for the institutions we inherit and upon future generations to accept the responsibilities we once accepted ourselves.

Human existence is therefore both individual and relational.

Ethical agency emerges within this social reality. We make choices for ourselves, but those choices affect others. We possess interests, but so do the people around us. We seek freedom, but our freedom exists alongside the freedom and vulnerability of other human beings.

Empathy enables us to recognise this interdependence.

Without it, ethical reasoning can easily deteriorate into sophisticated self-interest: What benefits me? What benefits my group? What reduces my costs?

Empathy introduces the morally disruptive question:

What is this like for somebody else?

That question does not give us an automatic answer. But ethical judgement without ever asking it is seriously incomplete.

Empathy is a capacity that can be developed

There is another important aspect of empathy that receives surprisingly little attention in political debate. It need not simply be regarded as a personality characteristic that some people possess and others lack.

Empathy can be cultivated.

These are some capacities that contribute to its development: self-awareness, experience, imagination, analytical skills, observational skills, communication skills, emotional intelligence and reflection.

Self-awareness matters because we need to recognise our own assumptions before we can appreciate those of somebody else.

Experience exposes us to people and circumstances beyond our familiar world.

Imagination enables us to consider what we have never personally experienced.

Observation helps us notice what another person may be communicating through behaviour as well as words.

Communication allows us to ask rather than merely assume.

Analytical skills prevent empathy from becoming detached from evidence.

Emotional intelligence helps us recognise and regulate both our own emotions and our responses to others.

And reflection enables us to reconsider our initial judgements.

Together, these capacities suggest a much richer understanding of empathy than simple emotional softness.

Properly developed, empathy is intellectually demanding.

It requires curiosity.

It requires imagination.

It requires listening.

It requires the humility to accept that our first interpretation might be wrong.

And it requires the discipline to distinguish understanding from agreement.

The strongest criticism of empathy is not that human beings should stop caring about one another. It is that compassion detached from reason can produce unintended consequences.

That criticism should be taken seriously.

Policies ought to be tested against evidence. Resources must be allocated. Personal responsibility matters. Incentives matter. Consequences matter.

But the relationship works in both directions.

Empathy needs reason, but reason also needs empathy.

Reason without empathy can calculate efficiently while overlooking human suffering.

An institution can achieve an impressive financial saving while transferring intolerable costs onto vulnerable individuals.

A company can become more efficient while destroying the trust of its workforce.

A government can reduce a statistic without understanding what the reduction means in actual human lives.

Numbers tell us how many people are affected.

Empathy helps us understand what being affected means.

A mature ethical judgement requires both.

The danger of the language we use

There is therefore something troubling about expressions such as “suicidal empathy”.

Language shapes social reality.

Once compassion is repeatedly presented as weakness, concern for vulnerable people can itself become suspect. Those who ask what happens to disabled people, refugees, unemployed people, minority groups or impoverished families can be portrayed not simply as mistaken but as dangerously naïve.

The object of public discussion then changes.

Instead of debating how best to help, we begin debating whether the impulse to help is itself a problem.

That is a profound transition.

Political leaders have every right to challenge policies they believe are ineffective. They should expose fraud, examine incentives, question expenditure and insist upon responsibility.

But criticism of policy should not be allowed to become contempt for the human capacity that enables us to recognise suffering in the first place.

What kind of society do we wish to become?

Perhaps the most important question raised by Musk and Jenrick is therefore not whether they are right or wrong about a particular policy.

It is what conception of human beings we wish to place at the centre of society.

Are we essentially self-interested individuals whose principal obligation is to protect ourselves against the claims of others?

Or are we also relational beings capable of imagination, mutual understanding, responsibility and concern?

Human experience suggests that we are both.

We need independence, but we also need one another.

We need responsibility, but sometimes we need help.

We need rules, but rules need humane application.

We need reason, but reason operates within a world inhabited by feeling human beings.

Empathy is consequently neither a substitute for judgement nor an invitation to abandon responsibility.

It is a means of seeing more completely.

The empathetic person does not necessarily say, “You are right.”

Sometimes the response will be:

“I understand why you did this, but I still believe it was wrong.”

At other times it may be:

“I had not understood what this situation was like for you, and I need to reconsider my judgement.”

Both responses require moral seriousness.

The first demonstrates that empathy does not prevent accountability.

The second demonstrates why empathy is indispensable.

The danger facing society is therefore not that we possess too much capacity to understand one another. It is that we may lose the willingness to attempt.

Empathy should certainly be disciplined by reason, evidence, responsibility and justice. But reason, responsibility and justice should themselves be informed by an understanding of the people upon whom our decisions fall.

Far from being the fundamental weakness of civilisation, critical, reflective and compassionate empathy may be one of the attributes without which civilisation cannot survive.