Empathy and Sympathy: from Description to Prescription

This work has two distinct aims. The first is that of defining the terms “empathy” and “sympathy” in a univocal way in order to underline the difference between them. This first aim has to be achieved by means of a dialogue between the results of neuroscience, developmental psychology, and other types of empirical data on the one hand, and philosophy on the other. Much of the misconception regarding these terms has to do with the fact that they have been used by these different traditions without due interaction and dialogue between them. I will, thus, provide working definitions that can prove useful both because they will represent a bridge between these different research fields and because, since “empathy” and “sympathy” are particularly widespread concepts, we can easily lose track of what they really mean and of the etymological difference that should be remembered. The second aim regards the possibility of interpreting the concepts, as they are defined here, as providing some elements for the centenarian “is/ought question”. Do the two concepts show the passage between a description of how we are (“is”) and a prescription of how we should be (“ought”)? Will the question be the same Greene asks himself in the famous article “From neural “is” to moral “ought”: what are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology?” (Greene 2003)? If the definition of “empathy” as a certain neural circuit proves consistent and convincing, will I be drawing a normative conclusion from a simple description of a natural device? Will “sympathy” be drawn from “empathy” in this precise way? The definition of the two concepts will help understand this passage and will show that the question advanced by Greene is not exactly the one addressed here. The answer to this last issue will be twofold, since I will need to introduce between these two levels a metaethical one.