Virtues & Vocations, Part 21: Is Empathy a Threat?

0:00Welcome to our webinar, virtues and vocations, conversations on character and the common good. In this series, we share conversations about how education and work can promote human flourishing. This series is part of virtues and vocations, a national forum, housed at the Institute for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, and supported by the Kern Family Foundation. Virtues and vocations seeks to foster a community of practice among scholars and practitioners across discipline who are keen to understand how best cultivate character and moral purpose in higher education and the professions themselves. This webinar is one of the ways we facilitate these conversations. My name is Suzanne Chenhan and I direct the Institute for Social Concerns and I'm host for this series. Today, we are thrilled to welcome Jennifer Salai on Is Empathy a Threat.

1:06Jennifer is a non-fiction book critic for The New York Times. Before joining The New York Times, Jennifer was a senior editor for Reviews at Harper's magazine. Her writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, and Slate. She attended the University of Toronto where she studied political science and peace and conflict. She holds a master's degree in international relations from the London School of Economics. Welcome Jennifer. Hi, thanks so much for having me. So we usually like to ease our conversation partners in a bit and so I would love to know how someone who studied political science, peace and conflict, international relations ends up as a non-fiction book editor at The New York Times. Well, I should say so as you mentioned in your introduction, I worked at Harper's magazine

2:08for a number of years and when I was there for most of the time, I edited the review section. And for a long time, when I did write about books, I would often write about fiction. I've always been an avid fiction reader despite my scholarly background, I guess, in international relations. And then what happened was after I left Harper's and started working at The Times, I was an editor on the bookstask, editing reviews of fiction as well as non-fiction. And at a certain point, they wanted a book critic who would focus specifically on non-fiction. And I had written occasionally about non-fiction at that point. That was also, you know, a genre that I was interested in. And so at that point, when I applied for the job and when I got it, I think that there was this notion at the time that there were a lot of political books coming out.

3:11This was in 2017 and there, you know, 20, I think I'd begin in the beginning of 2018 in this job. And there were a number of books written about the new administration, new-ish administration. And they wanted a critic who had an eye toward those books who was interested in covering, you know, the political memoirs, the big history books that maybe tried to contextualize, you know, American politics. And you know, those were things that I'd always been reading, not just in terms of work, but also, you know, in my own time. And so it was a, it was a chance to really explore where, where this country is. And on top of that, I will say, you know, the thing, nice thing about non-fiction is that it doesn't only cover, you know, big history, big politics. I've also had a chance to review you books about science, you know, lots of memoirs.

4:12I mean, sometimes it's true I miss writing about fiction, but for the most part, I do feel like non-fiction is, you know, it sort of encompasses life, I guess. And so there's a chance to really write about different subjects. Great. One of the things I noted on your website, you talk about journalistic ethics. And you note that you don't review books of friends or enemies, you don't, on proclists, you don't take solicitations. So how does it, how do you end up reviewing particular books for those unfamiliar with the nature of your work? So I mean, you know, we keep track on the bookstuffs here at the times of the books that are coming out. We try to, you know, look as far ahead as possible. So several months in advance, we'll see the books that are coming out. I mean, you know, I review generally, I would say about a book a week. It depends. I mean, there are some, there are some weeks where I'm working on a longer essay like this

5:13one that will include several books. So maybe the week before I don't have a review, but you know, a book a week. And that is a lot in one sense. But on the other hand, if you think of how much is published, it's not that much at all. There's just a huge number of books that are published, a huge number of nonfiction books. You know, we at the times in the book review, the editors assign books to other critics, freelance critics to write about this book. So I do, when I see the books that are coming out, you know, I'll look at things, I'll keep an eye on things that are interesting to me. Also sometimes, you know, my editors, and I will talk about things that look like, you know, there are important books to have somebody weigh in on. And so, you know, there have been a number of instances where I review memoirs by political figures or, and so in that sense, those are books that, you know, I can't review every one of those because in fact, there are many more of those books that are published than

6:17I'm even able, even able to review. But that is one part of my beat, but it's not the only part of my beat, I should say. I think it's really important, and I think that there's this understanding that critics should not only look at books that are news, that books that are political memoirs, but also, you know, books that are interesting that maybe have nothing to do with the political cycle, books that are aesthetically pleasing, you know, I think that it's nice to have a variety of those things, and that sort of keeps one's sensibility fresh. So one of the things when I teach in class and assign a book, I always have, try to have a range of books that I absolutely love, and books that I really don't like. And it's best when a book is kind of a mix of both, because I think it generates the best conversation. Do you prefer to edit books that you just write or absolutely love it write and write

7:18about those books, or write about books that you find problematic, or does it not matter in your critics, yes. Yeah, you know, it's interesting, I've had this conversation with other critics too, and I think I can't speak for every critic, but I do think that there are critics who find writing about books that you find, you know, have a real problem, and then you sort of have an argument to make to say, this is why this book doesn't work, this is why this book isn't good, this is why this book maybe is not quite truthful. You know, to a certain extent, the argument is presented for you. I mean, so there's something, I don't want to say that it's easier to review those books, but it's more straightforward in the way. It's almost like you're, you know, I mean, not that you're a lawyer per se, but the way that lawyers sort of construct arguments, they're sort of an end goal in mind, whereas

8:19I think writing about books that you love, I mean, you're sort of trying to translate and experience that, you know, is moving, that's powerful, but also that you know is maybe particular to yourself, and that has something that resonates with your own taste, and you're trying to sort of translate that in a way that's comprehensible to an audience. You know, that can be really rewarding, but it is challenging. I think it's really important. I couldn't imagine the job being one or the other where you're only writing about books that you love or you're only trying to sort of clear the field and write about books that you think are not very good. I think you need to have a mix of both, but yeah, I mean, I guess that's how I sort of see them in my mind. That's not always the case though, sometimes a book that you dislike trying to sort of articulate the reasons for it in such a way that, you know, it's persuasive, that's

9:25its own challenge as well, I think. So how do you navigate the politics of the moment, but also of the nature of the books that you're writing? So how can you write a review of something that is itself somewhat politicized without politicizing it further, or being politically relevant or taking a side or a position? How do you maintain that analytic objectivity if that's what it is? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's interesting with books, because especially if you're dealing with a book by a political figure, say, you have to sort of look at the book as a book, even if the writer of the book wasn't necessarily thinking of it as a work of art. I mean, they were presumably trying to think of an audience for it, trying to sort of they or their ghost writers, for example, might have been trying to sort of phrase things

10:30in a particular way. So you want to see the book as a book. But you're also, you know, I think with these books, you do have to look at the context into which they're published. I think that that's part of the responsibility of a critic. I mean, if we only treat, you know, memoirs by political figures as aesthetic items, then we're not really doing our responsibility as a critic. You know, I think to a certain extent, it's unavoidable when you're reviewing certain books to, you do have to sort of bring in these larger political questions, I think. I think at the same time, you're always trying to sort of test it against the intentions of the book and what the book is trying to do. And you know, that sort of helps, I think, keep a productive tension within the piece itself. You know, it's not, it is not my job, I'm not somebody who's trying to tell people how to vote or who to vote for.

11:32I think at the same time, though, there are these urgent political questions that I think it's impossible to ignore. And I think part of what I see the benefit of books as well as criticism is I do think that we live at a time where, you know, everything sort of moving faster and faster and people are sort of encouraged to just react to stuff. You know, we see stuff online as just sort of for engagement and attention getting is trying to sort of ping our knee-jerk responses. And I think the nice thing about being able to think about books on a regular basis and to sort of see how they speak to one another is to sort of think, okay, well, what is this, what is this saying to us? What sort of questions does this raise? Like it encourages a way of slowing down, which I think is helpful regardless of one's politics, maybe. Great. So I want to transition and talk a little bit about how you came to this particular piece

12:32on is empathy of threats. So where does the idea evolve from? Why was this one of the more extended right reviews that you wrote? Give us a little background in context if you don't mind. Sure. So, you know, I remember about, this was even before I had a job only writing reviews, but when I was on the books desk and I guess around, you know, after Donald Trump won the election of 2016, I noticed that there was this conversation about empathy that, you know, empathy, I think, is something that for a long time has been considered, you know, a good thing, a virtue. And what I noticed was there was sort of this new, I guess, debate that seemed to be emerging on the one hand, you had some people, and I can, you know, I will say that I'm speaking maybe more in terms of the conversations that I would see in pieces by writers and journalists,

13:36et cetera, of, okay, we need to think more in terms of where are our blind spots? Like, who should, who have we traditionally extended empathy to and who should we be extending it to now? And so I was very curious about that debate, and then there was sort of a backlash to that. There were a bunch of progressives who were saying, oh, wait a second, you go to a diner and you talk to some people who voted for Trump, and that's become its own kind of genre of empathetic, quote unquote, empathetic identification. So that sort of sat with me, and then I just, I never actually wrote anything about it. And then I noticed, you know, there were essays coming out, there was a book, I can't remember if it came up, maybe right before the election by Paul Bloom against empathy, which was a really fascinating, I think, provocative title, and his argument, which was more general, he's a psychologist, he was arguing that essentially empathy is something that we treat

14:38as is unalloyed good, but in fact, it can lead us astray. And what politics and, you know, what politics really needs and policy making really needs is something that is more akin to sort of rational compassion, that people should sort of try to step outside of their own immediate experience. And instead of just feeling for other people, they should think more broadly. And so I was noticing these sort of different debates taking place. And I guess the thing that really prompted me to write this piece in the end was one of the opinion columnists at the New York Times, David French had written a column about how he had noticed that there were some books coming out by Christians saying that in fact, empathy is dangerous, empathy has been leading us astray. One of those books by Joe Regney, which I mentioned in my essay, actually does explicitly cite Paul Bloom, but he makes a different kind of argument.

15:42And so when I was looking at all these texts, I guess, I really was just sort of curious about what this was reflecting, what kind of questions it was bringing to the fore, and how it sort of responded to changes in the political moment. And so that's how I ended up writing about it at length. There was enough stuff there, I guess. One of the things that I noted in reading your review, but then looking at some of the pieces that you reference, there is this sort of backlash against empathy, people talking about toxic empathy, where this notion of suicidal empathy. And yeah, it seems that people are defining empathy in different ways. And it struck me that maybe part of the problem is we're not all talking necessarily about the same thing. To what extent do you think that part of this is definitional, where you know, sort of

16:48the deployment of empathy in public discourse versus how we mean it in a more analytic sense, or how do you account for that definitional question? Yeah, so I was fascinated to learn, as I started my research, the term empathy, the word empathy, I should say, is relatively new. And it comes from early 20th century German aesthetics of all things, and it's this idea of feeling oneself into a work. So, you know, I think I was struck by the fact that, you know, I mean, even the books that are quote unquote, against empathy, argue that we should have some sort of sympathy, compassion, love, I mean, there's different sort of ways of defining how we should interact with others. I think that there is a notion, and I, you notice it in Paul Bloom's book, you notice it

17:50to a certain extent, maybe in the books by Alibas Stucky and Joe Rigny, which is that empathy is connected to a feeling that is often extremely parochial, that it works. I think Bloom uses the term like a spotlight. Like if you really think about empathy as a feeling, not as a mode of thinking, but as a feeling, if you try to feel yourself into the position of one other person, maybe you can do it. But if you try to feel yourself into the position of a thousand people, it's just, it's impossible. It's just there's a limit to the way that our minds work, the way that identification works. And so, you know, I think I was very struck by this question of definition and how that leads to a lot of, I think, controversy and debate, but I think also at the same time what I did notice, and this is why I was very interested in this now, was that now I

18:53think the conversation about empathy has taken another turn where, yes, I mean, you know, Elon Musk talks about suicidal empathy. So he's talking about maybe a particular kind of empathy, but he also does say that empathy is a bug in our makeup and that it's you, it's too easily exploited and therefore it's dangerous. And Alibas Stucky and Joe Rigny, they don't say the same thing, but it sort of stems, I think, from a similar suspicion that there's something about empathy that's too easily weaponized. And so it is in fact dangerous, it's not just something that's insufficient, it's not just something like a building block on which we have to sort of build other, another form of ethics, that it in fact is something that can really lead people astray. And I was really fascinated by that. And I think you know, I think right now when you look at the empathy conversations, you

19:57know, I began the essay with a quote, a fake quote by Hannah Arendt, that circulates, I still see it circulating, it's really fascinating to me. I see it online circulating where, you know, there seems to be this desire to attribute to Hannah Arendt, something she never said, which is the death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs that the culture is about to fall into barbarism. I mean, it sounds great, but there's no record. There's no record that she ever said it, but I do think that there is this desire right now. I think right now, you know, you sort of see politics has sort of reached this point where, you know, the notion of, you know, that they're, the notion that there are some people who are not only not deserving of sympathy, but, you know, the way that they can be treated, but there, that cruelty isn't necessarily something to be avoided, that sometimes cruelty

20:57is necessary for the health of the body politic. I mean, that's something that Alibeth Stucky talks about in her book where, you know, she says, yes, I feel some sympathy for, for example, like an undocumented immigrant, but at the same time, in the larger picture of things, you know, for the politics, for the kind of polity that we need, we have to sort of put our, put aside our knee jerk empathetic identification with a fellow human in order to pursue policies that would be better for the country as a whole. That's the argument that she is making in part in her book. It seems in that, in that particular book, I'm reflecting on there were, there was a response from two psychologists that talk about the empathy as emotional and cognitive, and it's, it seems that these critiques are really relying heavily on the emotional dimension of it. So, right, you see someone suffering and you have extraordinary sympathy, and not sufficiently

22:02on the cognitive dimension, which is about promoting understanding of, right, to be cognizant of that understanding. It also seems to me that there's a confusion in her argument about a sort of justice and mercy, right, so that there need to, that empathy, which really in her work, I see much more as a kind of crude sympathy, is something that should invoke sort of exceptionalism to policy, to thoughtfulness, as opposed to amplifying our understanding of the human condition. And I wonder if, in your thinking and in writing this, this distinction between emotional and cognitive made sense, I noted in the book, in the review that you reached out to Paul Bloom to have a, great, I would love to hear more about kind of that tension, but also, yeah, what did Paul

23:08Bloom have to say? Yeah, I mean, it was really interesting. I mean, his book is, is very interesting. I mean, he, he does see a real distinction between empathetic identification, which is, I think, you know, it's not necessarily totally irrational, but it isn't the same as, you know, rational compassion. And, you know, I think, you know, when you mentioned Ali Beth Stucky's book, and I think you see it in, in Joe Rigni's book, and I think you see it also in a popular understanding of how empathy works, that it really is, I think people emphasize the feeling element, because I think often we start talking a lot about empathy in the context of dehumanization, for instance, and in Bloom's book, you know, he, he mentions this question of, is empathy the break or is it the gas? That, you know, he gives the example, because I'm, you know, when he was working

24:12on his book, that people would talk about the, for example, the garden and Nazi camp, that if the guard in the Nazi camp feels some empathy for the people who are imprisoned there, then that would stop him from doing cruel things, that that is the idea, that if you feel empathy for somebody, you cannot, you know, it, it just sort of, it, it stops you from doing, enacting cruelty. And his argument, and it's interesting because he says, yeah, I could sort of see that, I could sort of see that, but he also emphasizes that in fact, the Nazi guard is probably also working from a place of empathetic identification with other Nazis. I mean, that that, that that is a very powerful, but the idea that empathy can work as a break, discounts the fact that it just as or maybe more often works as the gas to make you feel solidarity with other people, which can

25:20completely enable acts of cruelty as we've seen historically. So, you know, I mean, I think what, what Bloom does and what, you know, even Arrent does, and I talk about this at the end of the essay is that they both emphasize thinking, and they see it as distinct from this notion of empathetic identification, that what you need is to use your imagination. I think Arrent has the term to use your imagination to go visiting, to train your imagination to go visiting, which I think is a really lovely phrase, and so it's not necessarily about feeling something, it's about sort of stepping back, imagining yourself in not being somebody else, but being in the position of somebody else, and then trying to figure out, okay, well, what kind of politics and policies can we have to enable human flourishing that recognizes the fact that we all have different experiences,

26:25we're born into different circumstances, we're born into different bodies, we're born into different ways of looking at the world, different cultures, and that takes that as something to build on. And I like that idea, I think the thing that I was sort of struck by as I was writing the piece was that that sounds really great, and but at the same time, to a certain extent, it sounds a little abstract right now, it sounds a little bit, you know, the sort of John Rawls and the idea of the veil of ignorance, which I think is connected to, you know, what Bloom and Arrent are saying, which is that, okay, you step back, you imagine that you're not the person, but that you're in their position, that that does sound good, and I think that it maybe is a helpful thought exercise, but I think in the heat of politics, when things are just so moving so quickly as well, it sounds a little bit abstract, and so I guess the question is,

27:29is that I still think it's really helpful to think about, I just don't know if maybe it's insufficient to a certain extent, depending on the moment. Right, so I actually really love that section where you return to Hannah Arrent and then bring in Rawls, and you have this great quote from her, where she says it's an active process of making present the standpoints of those who are absent, and you know, but then go on to say that both Arrent and Rawls assume pluralism, they assume that fairness is an unequivocal good, is it? And when I read it, I thought it's not that it's abstract, because I think some of the emotive ways of understanding empathy are pretty abstract, it's that perhaps we can't assume pluralism and that fairness is an unequivocal good,

28:29and that's what really erodes that position, that decision shouldn't be based on the standpoint of those not in the room, that decision should be made on the basis of those who deserve to be in the room, who've done what's required to be in the room, is more politics of the moment or the way of thinking. Yeah, yeah, I think that that's, I think that that is exactly right, that there is sort of a presumption on the part of Arrent, Rawls, which I think for a long time was maybe considered such a sort of unquestioned idea that to accept people didn't really have to really think about it, but it's like, oh yes, is this a pluralistic society? Is that considered the goal? And I think what you see right now in a lot of the sort of most divisive debates, politically, is that there's not necessarily agreement about that. And so I think that, yeah,

29:35I think that that and that, I have to say that sort of, it's funny when you're working on a piece like this where you have like very, you know, you've got all these different viewpoints and different texts that you're dealing with with different perspectives is, you know, I'm somebody who, I mean, there are all kinds of different approaches to writing essays like this. I have some a little bit of an outline, but I usually depart from it because I do feel like in the act of writing, it is an act of discovery. Oftentimes where you're sort of seeing how these things work together, work separately and seeing how they coalesce where they disagree, you know, where different writers disagree and and sort of trying to find your way to this notion of, okay, well, what does this mean? And I think that that was what I was sort of struck by at the end of the piece when I came to that point where I was like, oh, wait a second, we are in a moment right now where, you know, I mentioned

30:40the essay where there are these, you know, there are these memes coming out from government accounts, which I think would have been hard to imagine a few years ago, even, you know, maybe eight years ago, seven or eight years ago during the first term of President Trump, which is you have these memes that aren't just stating actual policy, but that are actually saying, you know, presenting these images of, of, you know, people and and and yeah, that there's a sense that it's not just, okay, we're in a moment where these policies are being enacted, but we're in a moment now of different kinds of empathetic identifications. I guess it's one way of putting it. And so, yeah, I was, I was very sort of struck by that, I guess. I would have returned a little bit to the war toward the beginning of the article, and you have this beautiful conversation about how people imagine fiction as a place to cultivate

31:44empathy and even art as spaces of cultivation. And you have this fabulous Sadie Smith quote that I absolutely love that I want to talk a little bit about. You say that she says, you can fool yourself writing a novel that you're saving the world. You know, one by one, opening the hearts of people so they become better, but people's hearts can be opened extensively and they can do nothing. You have to be careful with that idea. And I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about that notion because that seems critically important that even if we imagined a kind of empathy that were closer to the way roles and a rent think, you have it and you do nothing with it. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that that, you know, I think that the, and I will say this, if somebody who's worked in this, you know, this field of books and writing for a long time, that idea

32:45is persistent. It's extremely seductive. I think, you know, writers love to believe it. And readers, I think also love to believe it that, oh, you know, reading helps you be a good person essentially that if you open yourself up to other people's experiences, even the experiences of imaginary characters and scenarios that you will have sort of train yourself to have this magnanimous understanding of others and the world will be a better place. And I think what we see now is sort of a recognition of the real limitations of that. And I think what Smith was getting at in that quote on top of that is, yes, I can, you know, I can cry when I read something or I can get really sort of the sense of righteous indignation when somebody is treated unjustly. That doesn't necessarily translate into action, let alone political change. And so I think that that, you know,

33:53I think that the idea that we can feel lots of things, but, you know, and we can, you know, we can look at the news and be upset about something, but that doesn't necessarily mean that things change. I think, you know, again, it sort of, it reminds me again of what I was saying about blooms, distinction between, or this notion of empathy being the breaks that, okay, well, it might be the case that, you know, we can sympathize with characters and books that we read. And then we still don't do anything. But maybe what it does mean, and I don't know, this is an open question, but it does mean maybe that if you are put into a situation where you actually have some sort of power to act in a way that could either help somebody or hurt somebody directly, that maybe you don't hurt them. Maybe that's the, maybe that's the sort of expansion of our moral and that which is a very, it's not so much political as it's sort of one-to-one, it's relational. It's the way that maybe we

34:57interact with other people in our lives, that maybe we have more of an understanding of where they're coming from. And so we don't act in such a way that's hurtful. Maybe that's a much sort of more modest, humbler kind of empathetic identification, but maybe that's real? I don't know. I think it's an open question. Yeah, I think that's a super, it's just a compelling way to think about it. I had a conversation with someone over the summer who I would say has solidarity with a very different way of thinking, if we talk in the language of solidarity, different ways of understanding reality and what's right and what's wrong, but the person's favorite book was also my favorite book, which is crime and punishment. We connected on the fact that we had both read the book several times and it was an important book to our thinking. Yeah, I could discern no relationship

36:00between my thinking and this person's thinking. Maybe, right, that as you're saying, it's not about creating a more general positionality, but it's in enacting whatever our politics or our ethos is, we're more generous and less cruel in that that we have a sense, maybe? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think that that's a great example, because I think also, I mean, the thing about a work of great works of literature, like crime and punishment, or like any Dostoevsky, really, is that you read something in it, but I also think it's not, there are never really simple morality tales, right? I mean, there's sort of opening up a kind of experience that maybe can be extreme and that you sort of imagine what is that like?

37:01But that's not something that really answers anything. It just sort of opens up questions, maybe makes the world seem larger and more complicated. And so in that sense, I think it is really fascinating when people love the same book and have still totally different outlooks on the world. In reading the piece, one of the things I thought to myself was, oh geez, we have to, we should just stop talking about empathy because it's become like a term that's been like distorted and perverted and people are using it in different ways. And for me, right, because I think of empathy as a virtue and as a way of being that's all for the good in the world, it was kind of disheartening. It is your sense that empathy or there becomes terminology that we just can't talk about because it's taken on a life of its own, or do you see any hope for

38:05using that language or? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. Because my instinctual reaction is to say, no, wait a second, we need to talk about this more. If anything, it needs more discussion. I do think that one of the reasons why when Musk made his comment about suicidal empathy, when Stucky and Rigney's books came out, the reason why they got so much attention is because empathy is one of these words that for a long time seemed totally unquestioned and unquestionable. And then that's sort of the contrarian term, right? Right? Which is, and the same with Paul Bloom's book, in fact, to call a book against empathy is like a provocative attention getting moved. And so I think in that sense, you know,

39:07the idea that all these people have sort of argued in one way or another that empathy has become weaponized. But I feel like there's a way in which even though they're using the word to sort of provoke a reaction on the part of the audience, there's, and I'm not saying this about Bloom's book, which I actually think is a very sort of complex treatment of it, on scholarly treatment of it. But the way in which the anti-empathy stuff has also been weaponized, that it's a way of really shutting down the conversation, I think instead of really opening it up, I mean, I do think that Stucky and Rigney's books are interventions in the politics and the culture. I mean, they've make very clear that they want the audience to take from it an actionable plan. They're not presenting it as sort of this exploration of something that maybe you, the reader might have thought was as unalloyed good, and now they're sort of opening it up to different interpretations.

40:11That's not their goal. Their goal is to tell you know this thing that you thought was good as, in fact, dangerous and bad, perhaps bad. So I think that that's like a certain kind of book. I mean, it's more like a manifesto. Both of them are more like manifestos. Whereas a book like Bloom's, even though he makes a provocative argument, I think, you know, and it's definitely gets people's attention, he is sort of trying to encourage people to think more deeply about something that they hadn't really thought about before. And just purely to think, I think, you know, one of the things that he points out is he argues that policy making requires thinking. It's not just feelings. It's thinking. And if you have some feeling there, you really should be very self-aware of what kind of feeling is taking place. That's great. So does this mean you're writing a book on it? It's so funny. It's like I do feel like sometimes when I finish,

41:16you know, these notebooks, I've sort of immersed myself in that world. I'm like, okay, I've thought about that. And now I'm on to a book about owls. So yeah, I'm not sure that I'm the one to write a book about empathy. But I really do, you know, I really did appreciate the time that I got to think about it. That's great. And I want to turn to some of the audience questions. So the first one is, how is empathy related to culture? And how much do you think the idea of empathy as a threat is coming from the individualistic culture of the United States? Oh, that's a really interesting question. Actually, you know, I mean, I think that like any concept that has sort of maybe at one moment, one moment, it seems like it's, you know, just totally good. And then at the next moment, some people are saying, maybe it's bad. That is a cultural phenomenon. I think also the thing, you know, one of the things that Stucky in particular points out in her

42:21book is that she argues that empathy, she sees it as sort of a form of peer pressure, you know, that she sort of relates it to her own experience. I guess during the summer of 2020, during the Black Lives Matters protest where she was scrolling through Instagram, I guess, and saw everybody, like a lot of people had put up Black squares just indicate solidarity with Black Lives Matter, and that she felt this peer pressure to do it. But she didn't, you know, she felt also upset by it because she didn't necessarily want to put a Black Square on her Instagram feed. And so in that sense, you know, I think that Stucky Rigny also is responding to a culture where, and, and mosque for that matter, you know, they're saying, oh, you know, we are made to feel empathetic identification in cases where we shouldn't feel that. And that is like a cultural phenomenon. And, you know, maybe,

43:25you know, to look at the turn that's taken place in the last year or so, maybe that sort of notion, what once was considered this, like, cultural value is now being questioned in different corners. That is, I think, I do think that because empathy does connect to how we relate to one another, it's, it's impossible for it not to have a cultural dimension. I'm not sure if that answers the, I don't know, that's great question, but another question, how can individuals put aside their avoidance of discomfort to get close to empathy? I think that is the underlying obstacle to embracing an acceptance of empathy. I mean, I do think that this question hits on something really important, which is this issue of comfort and discomfort because I do think that, you know,

44:27the way that empathy and empathetic identification when we think of it, how it works, people add are their comfort zone. It's very easy not to think about other people. I mean, it's very easy, I think, just to sort of think about, you know, oneself, one's own family, one's own friends, and just sort of move through the world in that direction, whereas I think that empathy often encourages the kind of identification that is not, not only uncomfortable, but inconvenient, like what kind of behavioral changes does it require of us? You know, I didn't talk about this in the essay, but for example, like people who have this empathetic identification with animals, I mean, I have some close friends who are really not just vegetarians, but vegans who really, you know, this, that has changed their behavior in such a way that I think is, it encourages like a behavioral change that isn't necessarily, that's a very small example,

45:31but that it encourages like a kind of discomfort with a way of living in the world that for a lot of people isn't an issue. Right, so it kind of changes behavior. Yeah, another one, looking at the current landscape where empathy itself has become partisan. What role do you think literary critics and cultural journalists should play in helping readers think more clearly? Cool, it's a big responsibility. Well, I mean, first of all, it's so interesting because I mean, I feel like, you know, it sort of also gets to the question of, and, and, you know, of how much influence do critics really have, especially in this day and age, when I think the latest statistic I saw more than half of Americans don't read a single book in a year. I mean, it's, you know, I mean, maybe they read reviews, I don't know. You know, I mean, I guess I can't speak for the way that other critics work, but I guess I could say

46:35for myself is that I feel like one of the things that I hope to do and that I hope to create with the pieces that I write, you know, it's just a chance for people to sort of slow down and maybe think more broadly of the kinds of things that are happening and the way that the ways in which that books really can encourage us to ask new questions. I think that that's like a really important mode of reading, which is what are these, what are the questions that are being raised here? I can't remember if we talked about this earlier, but I do feel like things in our culture now move so fast, you know, we're encouraged to just react to things and to be just very reactive. And you know, the way that I see that online is just there's a lot of content that's created just to generate like an immediate response. A lot of it is not even necessarily appealing to

47:37our thinking brains. It's just appealing to our reflexes and our nervous systems. And I think the nice things about books is that, you know, you spend time with them, you get to sit with them, you know, and so I hope that when it comes at least to books criticism, that there's a chance to sort of work our way through these questions that don't really lend themselves to immediate reactions. So a related question that someone is asking is about this conversation with Paul Bloom. The right, to a certain extent, you're combining original reporting with the book analysis and I read, is this a common thing? Is this okay? I mean, it's, I will say for these essays, it's different, like for critics, like I review a book, I am not, I don't, you know, I don't contact the author, like if I'm reviewing a book to say, you should read this book or you should not

48:38read this new book, that's a different kind of article. It's where I'm sort of spending time with the book on myself, thinking what I think about it and then writing a review. With ideas, pieces, you know, this was an instance where I think because the subject, I haven't, you know, there have been, I've written several of these notebooks that take into account different ideas and like different intellectual debates. There have, I haven't always called scholars or experts to talk about their books in those ones, but when I do, it's usually because there's like a very recent news related thing happening and this felt like the kind of subject where, you know, Bloom, I think I'm trying to remember if his book published in late 2015 or 2016 that things had happened since this book had come out, you know, a lot of things had happened and so I was sort of curious what he made of all of this and it was interesting to talk to him

49:43because he had a very sort of particular take on it, you know, he did sort of recognize that there were, you know, there was sort of this growing genre of against empathy, articles, and books coming out and, you know, he had his own perspective on it, which I thought was interesting to take into account. Great, so I'm going to sort of combine the last two questions. The first one is from a PhD student who's working with the author of Dark Sides of Empathy. Oh, look, and ask you, do you think empathy is a uniquely human ability? In that sense, is it part of what differentiates us from other beings and is it thus essential to promote it? Do we lose our humanity if we lose our empathy? So that's the first question and then the second one is how do you balance analytic distance with moral urgency in your criticism? Okay, so too good question. Sorry, I'm just writing them so

50:49I don't forget. Okay, I guess in terms of the first one, you know, I, yes, I think, I mean, I think that the psychological, I mean, the psychological studies on empathy do connect it to human traits. I mean, I do think that animals experience some sort of fellow feeling, but empathy, as I mentioned, you know, is a relatively recent term. The way that we understand it is very much reflected with ideas of humanity. As I said, you know, the absence of empathy is connected for a lot of writers to dehumanization. So I think that, you know, the sort of the way in which we sort of conceive of empathy is very much connected to how not just how we are as humans, but how we connect to one another as humans. At the same time, though, I think it is the case that animals feel some connection to other creatures, but I don't know if we would call that empathy. A few years ago,

51:53I reviewed a book called, if Nietzsche were a narwhal, it's basically arguing that in fact, human qualities are what accounts for the ways in which humans can be very cruel to one another, and so, you know, the author was pointing out that, you know, it's not like chickens commit genocide, you know, I mean, they just sort of, you know, they might fight, but they don't do the kinds of monstrous things that human beings often do, but I think one of the things that I also thought about when I was reviewing that book is that, yes, but at the same time, it's like humans will do things for other humans or other animals that just animals are not capable of doing. They don't live in the kind of society or system where, you know, the author of that book that I reviewed took care of honeybees, like he was very interested in that. I mean, you don't see other animals doing that kind of work, so I think that that question, you know, I feel like an expert on the psychology of empathy would

52:57really have to be the be-all and end-all to that answer, but the way I think of it is that it's definitely connected to that. And then the question about analytical, I can't remember the phrasing, something about analytical distance with moral urgency in your criticism. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, you know, because a lot of these books deal with questions and morals or ethics. I mean, it's unavoidable. You have to have that awareness, that element. I think I sort of see analytical distance as like a mode. It's maybe connected to what we were talking about in terms of what Arant said about training your imagination to go visiting, but instead of doing it with other humans, you're doing it with books and ideas, you know, you're trying to sort of take these different things into account. And then at the same time, you know, critics are people who have their own tastes, their own

54:00understandings of the world, and you know, those ideas are sort of processed through you, and then you write the essay or the reviews. So I think it's always, I'm always trying to be aware of both, I guess. I think it's important not to totally lose sight of one or the other, because then you're, if it's only moral urgency, then it's not criticism. And then if you're only being analytic and you're not sort of taking into account the world in which we live, it can just seem just like pure aestheticisms, which is also, you know, not quite really dealing with the book as a totality. Great. So one final question. I don't know if you can, if you're allowed to answer it, but so what's a piece of fiction you're currently reading and enjoying? Great question. I have to say this is not one that I'm currently reading, but this is a book that I read fairly recently that I loved that I recommend to a lot of people when they ask me,

55:06which is the director by Daniel Kilman. It came out, I think, this summer. And it's the story, it's actually based on an actual person. It's based on GW Papst, the filmmaker, the Austrian filmmaker who ended up, he lived in Hollywood for a while and was like a big deal working with Louise Brooks, credit garbo. And he ended up for whatever reason, getting pulled back toward Europe, toward Austria. And the book, the explanation given is that his mother was sick. And when he gets there, the war starts. And so he can't leave. And so he ends up, you know, getting corralled into making movies for the Nazi regime, but not propaganda films. They're actually supposed to be pure entertainment, what he wants to make and what he finds is sort of this very sort of, he's not himself a Nazi. He's like a liberal synthesizer, but he ends up feeling like he has a very interesting book, a certain kind of artistic freedom in that situation that he didn't have in Hollywood.

56:09So it sort of raises all these questions about complicity, you know, art, commercialism, and it's just a wonderfully written book. I mean, the way that it's sort of kaleidoscopic, where you get different people's perspectives. And it's just really beautifully done. Wonderful. Thank you for that. And thank you so much for this conversation. It really was by, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yeah, this was great. And thanks to everybody who joined us today, please join us again on December 1st when Karen Swallow Prior will join us to talk about vocation. So thank you. I really love this conversation. So did I. Thank you so much for having me.