Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 5 - Emotion and Empathy

  • Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut
  • Book:
    Literature and Moral Feeling
    Published online:
    21 April 2022
    Print publication:
    05 May 2022, pp 150-181

  • Summary

    The fifth chapter marks the turn from descriptive to normative ethics – thus, what ethical ideas should guide moral actions. This half of the book does not set out a detailed ethical theory but advocates a general criterion for setting ethical parameters and adjudicating among ethical–narrative prototypes. That criterion is an effortful generalization of empathy. The particular stress on empathy derives from the basic definition of ethics, presented at the beginning of the book. This chapter draws on current cognitive and affective science to outline an account of human emotion and empathy. This account differs from common views of empathy in several ways. Most obviously, it does not construe empathy as sharing the same emotion as a target. Rather, empathy is a scalar concept that refers, fundamentally, to experiencing the same emotional valence as a target. That positive or negative empathic feeling is based on one’s own experiences, which may be more or less similar to those of the target.