Historically, the essence of empathy resided in the philosophies of some of Western culture’s best-known and most-respected intellectuals. Adam Smith and David Hume did not necessarily use the word “empathy,” but they nonetheless equated “sympathy” with “empathy” and advocated that putting oneself in another’s shoes is somewhat of a building block for having a good moral compass (Bloom 39, 68-69). Twentieth-century psychologist E.B. Titchener translated aesthetician Theodor Lipps’s “Einfuhlung,” “which meant the process of ‘feeling one’s way into’ an art or another person,” as “empathy” to provide a new terminological tool to describe this affective phenomenon. As Suzanne Keane points out in “Narrative Empathy,” Titchener’s explanation of empathy relied on the reading experience to capture its meaning:

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We have a natural tendency to feel ourselves into what we perceive or imagine. As we read about the forest, we may, as it were, become the explorer; we feel ourselves the gloom, the silence, the humidity, the oppression, the sense of lurking danger; everything is strange but it is to us that strange experience has come. (Titchener 198 qtd. in Keane 1286).

 

In short, the circulating notion and definition of empathy can be reduced to what Keane describes as “I feel what you feel. I feel your pain” (1285). Keane also differentiates “sympathy” from this experience, since “sympathy” takes “empathy” a step further: “I feel a supportive emotion about your feelings. I feel pity for your pain” (1286). Thus, empathy can lead to sympathy, but these terms are nonetheless not interchangeable.

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More recently, in Against Empathy, psychologist Paul Bloom attacks the very essences of sympathy and empathy that philosophers like Smith and Hume hailed as segues to good moral decisions. Refuting this standard view, Bloom points out that empathy, although it most certainly can be a force of good, can also find its way into destructive and even toxic decision-making. For Bloom, because empathy occurs in the here and now, it propels the empathic experiencer to forgo rationalization and could propel that same empathic experiencer to dismiss the notion of the greater good. Not only does Bloom refer to Tania Singer’s laboratory research which shows that there is a clear cognitive difference between the activation of empathy and compassion in the brain (43), Bloom demonstrates this—perhaps surprising—paradox with numerous examples of empathy gone wrong. For instance, Bloom expounds his argument against empathy by providing the psychological study in which people were more compelled to help the person they knew were in dire need of a transplant ahead of the people who were also in dire need and at the forefront of the same list. This example illuminates the way that human empathy propels people to skewed moral judgements. Moreover, Bloom points out:

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Intellectually, a white American might believe that a black person matters just as much as a white person, but he or she will typically find it a lot easier to empathize with the plight of the latter than the former. In this regard, empathy distorts our moral judgements in pretty much the same way that prejudice does. (Bloom 31).

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To further advance his case against empathy, Bloom reminds us that some of the best-known humanitarians arrived at their moral choices not by empathy, but by sheer rationalization. Drawing upon the work of psychologist Peter Singer, Bloom takes into consideration the case of Zell Kravinsky who donated the majority of his multi-million dollar assets to charity and did not stop there (26). Citing scientific studies that show the risk of dying as a result of making a kidney donation to be 1 in 4,000, Singer or Kravinsky says that not making the donation would have meant he valued life at 4,000 times that of a stranger, a valuation he finds totally unjustified. (Singer as qtd. in Bloom, 2016, p. 26).  Thus, for Bloom and for Singer, individuals that favor “cold logic and reasoning” over empathy tend to make more morally sound choices—a process that Bloom terms rational compassion and strongly advocates for. 

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As Lauren Berlant theorizes, even compassion, like empathy, proves to be a tricky affective state. In the introduction to Compassion: The Culture and Poetics of an Emotion, Berlant outlines the current state of compassion in the sociopolitical arena. She argues that “the national dispute about compassion … has been organized by the gap between its democratic promise and its historic class hierarchies” (1). Berlant describes “compassionate conservatism” as promoting the idea that “society’s poorest members can achieve the good life through work, family, and community participation,” therefore “rephrasing the embodied indignities of structural inequality as opportunities for individuals to reach out to each other” (4). 

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While empathy proves to be a difficult affective state to theorize for many across the disciplines, rhetoric and composition scholars have likewise been interested in the concept. In his article, Eric Leake (2016) claims that what he calls rhetoric and disposition is an effective approach to the teaching of empathy in the writing classroom. Leake describes this approach as not only teaching students how to read and identify with different perspectives in texts but also teaching empathy in such a way that transfers outside of the writing classroom and into the world for positive social ends. While Leake advocates for a pedagogy of empathy, similarly to scholars like Bloom and Berlant, he also explores the downsides of empathy and especially the way empathy can become a way for “othering” and pity rather than identification through difference. Ultimately, he urges rhetoric and composition to teachers to realize the opportunity we have at, basically, making a difference and helping make the world a better place. 

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In tandem with Leake’s approach to empathy, Lisa Blankenship’s (2019) recent book Changing the Subject: A Theory of Rhetorical Empathy is the first in the field of rhetoric and composition to fully theorize the concept of rhetorical empathy. While Blankenship agrees that there are many definitions of empathy, which is not made any easier by the interdisciplinary use of the word, her concept of rhetorical empathy works reciprocally between the writer and their audience via shared vulnerability and the possibility for meaningful change in both the writer and the audience. In Blankenship’s online research and rhetorical analyses of the conversations between gay-rights activists and their opponents, she identified four key characteristics of rhetorical empathy. These include “yielding to an Other by sharing and listening to personal stories”; “considering motives behind speech acts and action”; “engaging in reflection and self-critique”; and “addressing difference, power, and embodiment” (p. 20) Importantly, in the last chapter of the book, Blankenship discusses her own experience in the composition classroom and with implementing her theory by asking students to compose writing assignments that fuse the personal with the political, like asking students to write research papers that are reflective and incorporate personal narrative in order to make an argument. By fusing the personal with the political and asking students to engage in critical self-reflection, Blankenship’s approach to teaching writing mirrors the four characteristics of rhetorical empathy but also mirrors that of Leake’s approach to teaching empathy by helping students identify with different textual perspectives and by asking to students to consider their immediate social contexts. 

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Importantly to the discussion of linking affect with multimodality, in Non-discursive Rhetoric: Image and Affect in Multimodal Composition, a proposition of a language theory that encompasses non-discursive symbols, Joddy Murray (2009) repudiates the traditional idea that feelings, emotions, and affect dwell in a space far removed from reason and rationality. In fact, Murray points out that, historically, rhetors were often well aware that image impacts emotion but were unfortunately limited to the understanding that rhetoric encompasses only one medium. Drawing upon advances in neuroscience as well as postmodern theories of language, Murray argues that since image and emotion are intertwined in a reciprocal relationship, and that since emotions are constantly present, reason is inherently affective. 

 

Moreover, in “Images, Words, and Narrative Epistemology,” Kristie S. Fleckenstein (1996) exposes the historical emphasis on linguistic text as a form of oppression. From Plato’s distrust of “imagistic knowledge” to the Scientific Revolution which overly accentuated “rationalism and empiricism,” Fleckenstein (1996) outlines how “the discrediting of imagistic thinking” became solidified in our culture (916). However, Fleckenstein’s arguments prove that such distrust of imagery stifles us from fully embracing the potential to create meaning. She stipulates:

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While it may provide the detachment necessary for us to deal with psychological trauma, the distancing of language from the context of individual experience also allows us to justify and accept morally ambiguous actions (war, capital punishment, and so on). Such dereferentialization severs word from emotion, implicitly emphasizing the specious dualism between reason and emotion, meaning and feeling, dominant in our Western culture. Dereferentialization offers us tools to legitimate or rationalize almost anything. 920

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In other words, Fleckenstein argues that linguistic texts have historically propelled the audience to logical reasoning and rationalization over emotional understanding. On the other hand, Fleckenstein points out that “imagery, because it provides an alternate way of organizing thought, reality and self, compensates for the coercive force and structural limitations of language” (920). In her own analysis of VAS: An Opera in Flatland, Alison Gibbons (2008) concludes that multimodal works provide readers with extra cognitive demands in comparison with the conventional novel because “multiple forms work in synchronicity to communicate narrative meaning” and because such synchronicity allows for the audience to heighten its cognitive perception (p. 120). For scholars like Gibbons (2008), Fleckenstein (1996), and Murray (2009),  support the idea that moving beyond the alphabetic increases new affective opportunities, and as Murray shows, not to the detriment of reason.

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