A coloured detail from a lino-style illustration by Space Ink
Visit: SpaceInkShop on etsy.com
I.
Interestingly, whilst the word empathy has Ancient Greek roots, the complex modern concept it refers to originates in 19th-century German aesthetics: Einfühlung described the projection of self into a work of art [1].
This term was translated into English and given a wider psychological meaning by Edward B. Titchener in 1909. Since then, the word has become central to ethical and political debates - serving as something closely related to, yet distinctly separate from, older concepts such as sympathy and compassion.
II.
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk famously expressed his dislike for the word empathy, viewing it as a type of false coinage [2] privileged by the radical left to manipulate and exploit human feeling for ideological ends.
Taken to its logical extreme, Kirk argued, empathy is not only socially damaging, but suicidal for those who fail to recognise it as an irrational and pathological form of behaviour that, in a Nietzschean sense, is "more dangerous than any vice" [3].
III.
The specific term - suicidal empathy - was coined by Lebanese-born Canadian marketing professor Gad Saad, a long-term opponent of political correctness and social justice activism (or what is frequently termed wokeism) in academia.
According to Saad, when an individual or a governing class is psychologically conditioned to believe that empathy is the highest moral virtue, then their decision-making process becomes fatally compromised [4].
Thus, for example, we might witness the rights of illegal migrants - belonging to cultures with beliefs, values, and customs entirely alien (and in some cases openly hostile) to those of the native population - being prioritised, even when it risks national security.
IV.
Obviously, this is a controversial idea.
Popularised by figures such as Kirk, Elon Musk, and others on the right of the political spectrum concerned with rapid demographic and cultural change in the West, it is fiercely contested by those who - wishing to abolish not only national borders but all barriers between self and others - preach that love is universal and unconditional.
For the latter, sympathy no longer suffices. Only the deeper sentiment of empathy as total identification promises to heal the world via a process that, somewhat paradoxically, involves the simultaneous celebration of diversity while negating all differences between people in the name of Humanity.
It's clearly a post-Christian vision (and as such one that would horrify Nietzsche).
And yet, ironically, those on the right who wish to defend the nation state, often turn to a medieval Catholic doctrine - ordo amoris - to justify their rejection of empathy. While they may feel a moral obligation to love strangers and sympathise with their hardships, they believe their primary duty is to care for their own family first, followed by their neighbours, and then members of the wider community and nation.
Only after these obligations are met can the interests of the rest of the world be taken into consideration [5].
V.
As a Nietzsche scholar back in the day, I did not have to deal with the word empathy [Einfühlung]. In fact, I'm not sure it even appears in his writings [6].
For as indicated, while the verb sich einfühlen existed in German Romantic poetry, the noun Einfühlung was only popularised as a term in aesthetics in the 1870s. By the time it became a concept in German psychology (thanks to Theodor Lipps), Nietzsche was already pushing up daisies.
Heidegger, meanwhile, preferred to speak of Mitsein and offered no specific theory of empathy per se. In fact, he critiqued the concept, arguing that there was no conceptual need for such, as human beings are already ontologically with-one-another rather than existing as merely isolated individuals.
In other words, it's not Einfühlung that explains human solidarity and connectedness - relationality is fundamental to Dasein and we are always already living in a shared world [7].
VI.
One philosopher who did write about empathy, however, was Wittgenstein - and he had some interesting things to say on the subject involving beetles in jars ... [8]
Actually, let me qualify that: Wittgenstein did not write extensively about empathy, but his later philosophy radically challenges how we understand the minds, emotions, and pain of others.
For Wittgenstein, there are no hidden mental or emotional states - so we don't need to be mindreaders [Gedankenleser] or empaths who can mystically intuit and experience the moods and feelings of others. There's no need either, argues Wittgenstein, to look inside ourselves to understand others.
Emotions are not private inner states; they are tied to language games and public expressions and behaviours; i.e., to shared forms of life [Lebensform]. Thus, to understand another person doesn't require a spiritual merger or total identification. Empathy is an everyday mechanism built directly into our communal practices.
But that means, of course, that when behaviour or language diverges too far from our shared background (due, for example, to species divides), true empathic understanding may reach a limit: If a lion could speak, we couldn't understand him [9].
And this remains true even if the lion speaks perfect English, because it unfolds into being in a world completely alien to our own.
Similarly, when encountering people from entirely different cultural frameworks, we cannot simply feel how or what they feel. Such understanding requires slow, patient immersion into a common language-game.
Unfortunately, we live in an era where no one has the time or patience for that - an age where an increasing number of people only want to interact with those to whom they feel instant kinship or can immediately identify as one of their own.
Notes
[1] Readers who would like to know more may care to read Robert Vischer's Über das optische Formgefühl: Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik (1873), in which he discusses how viewers comprehend an artwork by projecting themselves (and their feelings) into its forms. For Vischer, this was a universal process; human beings having an innate capacity to empathise not only with other people and living organisms, but also inanimate objects. As this idea fell from favour in aesthetic theory during the early 20th-century, it was picked up by thinkers working in other fields of study - including psychology.
A section of this work is available in Empathy, form, and space: problems in German aesthetics, 1873-1893, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities / University of Chicago Press, 1994).
[2] What Kirk said was this: "I can't stand the word empathy, I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term, and it does a lot of damage. Sympathy is a better word because empathy means you are feeling what another person felt, and no one can feel what another person feels." He concedes, however, that as a political tool, empathy has been highly effective.
Quoted by Mark Powell, in 'The ten biggest lies about Charlie Kirk', in the Australian edition of The Spectator (19 Sept. 2025).
[3] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1968), § 2, p. 116.
The line in full reads: "What is more harmful than any vice? Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak - Christianity ..."
[4] See Gad Saad, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind (Broadside Books, 2026). Critics of the book have described it as a racist attempt to dehumanise others and undermine the natural human virtue of empathy.
In an essay in The Guardian titled 'Loathe thy neighbour: Elon Musk and the Christian right are waging war on empathy' (8 April 2025), Julia Carrie Wong discussed Saad's book among other works critical of empathy and described what was going on as a far-right attempt to "dismantle and discredit one of the essential tools for any society - our capacity to recognize and respond to suffering".
She continues: "We should see the campaign against empathy [...] for what it is: a flashing red light warning of fascist intent", and ends her essay by declaring: "Empathy is not a sin, a toxin, or an evolutionary dead end. It is a tool, and like all tools it can be a weapon. We are going to need it."
[5] In 2025, the American vice-president JD Vance's invocation of ordo amoris to defend the foreign aid policies of the second Trump administration caused quite a fuss. Even the Pope joined in, criticising Vance's interpretation of the doctrine saying that love has to be shown for all without exception.
Now, I'm no theologian - I'm not even a Christian of any denomination - but it does seem to me that ordo amoris is essentially an order of rank which does, in fact, establish a hierarchy of care. Certainly in the work of Augustine and, later, Thomas Aquinas, special regard is due to be paid to those persons with whom one has a more intimate connection, thanks to contingent factors such as the time and place of one's birth.
Readers who wish to know more are encouraged to read Augustine's De doctrina Christiana. This crucial theological text consists of four books that describe how to interpret the Scriptures. The first three books were published in 397 and the fourth was added in 426. An English translation by R. P. H. Green was published by the Clarendon Press in 1995.
See also, Summa Theologiae, by Thomas Aquinas, in which the idea of ordo amoris is developed alongside all the major theological teachings of the Church. This text was unfinished at the time of his death in 1274. The first English translation, published in 1911, was attributed to the Fathers of the English Dominican Province as the actual translator, Laurence Shapcote, wished to remain anonymous.
[6] When Nietzsche discussed our feelings for others - particularly others who were suffering or misfortunate in some manner - he usually spoke (for the most part negatively) about pity [Mitleid] - seeing it as a depressive, life-denying emotion inherited from Christianity (Zarathustra warns against it as a dangerous temptation).
However, Nietzsche did posit a noble model of compassion or sympathy rooted in strength and wellbeing; a generous form of fellow-feeling based not only on shared pain, but shared joy - a genuine rejoicing with others [Mitfreude].
[7] See Heidegger Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, (Blackwell, 1962), p. 162.
[8] Wittgenstein introduced his famous beetle in a box thought experiment to challenge the idea that our inner feelings are private objects. See § 293 of Philosophical Investigations (1953).
In brief, the analogy challenges the ridiculous idea that empathy relies upon the (psychic) ability to peek inside someone else's Schachtel so as to see what they are feeling (what their Käfer looks like). Empathy is about connection, not inspection: you do not need to
see the beetle to act with compassion. You simply need to respond to their public behaviour; if someone is crying, just put an arm round them and offer them a hanky to dry their eyes.
[9] This is one of the most famous lines in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Blackwell, 2008), p. 190.
Thanks to Ruth Malone for help with the Heidegger section.
