Course Description:

• Empathy is considered by many, maybe most, to be a good thing. We would all like to have and to be empathetic friends. To be called empathetic is to be praised. Surely, if we were all more empathetic, there would be more compassion, connection, and understanding in the world. But is empathy all it’s cracked up to be? What if empathy is sometimes a bad thing? For instance, is it okay to empathize with vicious people? What even is empathy anyways? We’ll dive into recent work in philosophy and psychology to get to the bottom of questions like these. 

Course Units:

• Empathy and Emotion

• Anti- vs. Pro-Empathy 

• Bounds of Empathy

• Empathy and Fiction