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ABSTRACT: This has been called the Age of Empathy; empathy is seen as the glue that holds society together, the capacity without which humans would not have evolved, it is the ability to accurately perceive others internal states and to have affective responses to them. Empathy is most likely to emerge with those with whom we are familiar, those that are an 'us.' Universally, humans divide 'us' and 'them.' Those in the out-group are treated with disdain, and sometimes with lethal actions. In human history and psychology, trends often move in opposite directions. Empathy has a limited domain, and is accompanied by hostility to 'outsiders.'
In 2009, it was declared that "empathy research is suddenly everywhere!" (Decety and lekes, 2009, vii). That same year one book appeared entitled The Age of Empathy and another says that we reside within The Empathie Civilization. Yale psychologist Paul Bloom proclaims, "Empathy is what makes us human" (2013, 121). To Martin Hoffman, it is "the glue that makes social life possible" (2000, 3). "Without the capacity to put ourselves cognitively and emotionally in someone else's shoes," anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy writes, "...Homo sapiens would never have evolved at all." It is this interest in knowing what others feel and think, "their fears and motives" that distinguishes us from all other creatures. "Only among humans do we find large-scale cooperative endeavors involving people who are not necessarily close kin" (Hrdy, 2009, 28, 9). Given this celebration, it is not surprising that there has been a slight backlash. A recent New Yorker article is sub-titled "The case against empathy."
This paper examines the nature of empathy, if it is what most distinguishes humans, to what other phenomenon it is connected, and what it reveals about being human. What a remarkable attribute empathy is; it has enhanced our species in crucial ways. Yet, humans being creatures of contradiction, there is an opposite side to our psychology. We divide us and them, and can have great hostility towards those in the out-group. Homo sapiens have performed the most brutal and barbaric actions on those we despise. As well as the positive sides of being empathie, this paper details where empathy is likely to occur, what the limits of being empathie are,...