by The Conversation / © 2025, Fast Company. Mansueto Ventures, LLC. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, billionaire Elon Musk offered his thoughts about what motivates political progressives to support immigration. In his view, the culprit was empathy, which he called “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.”
Empathy can make people weaker. “Empathy fatigue” [is] a major source of burnout among counselors, nurses and even neurosurgeons. These professionals devote their lives to helping others, yet the empathy they feel for their clients and patients wears them down, making it harder to do their jobs.
However, we believe that, at its core, empathy is a form of mental strength that enables us to better understand the impact of our actions on others, and to make informed choices.
The philosophical roots of empathy skepticism
The general idea of being moved by others’ suffering has been a subject of philosophical attention for millennia, under labels such as “pity,” “sympathy” and “compassion.”
One of the earliest warnings about pity in Western philosophy comes from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus. Feeling sorry for another person or feeling pity for them compromises our freedom, in Epictetus’s view. Negative feelings are unpleasant, and nobody would choose them for themselves. Empathy would clearly fall into this category, keeping us from living the good life.
A similar objection emerged much later from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Like Epictetus, Nietzsche worried that pity or compassion was a burden on the individual, preventing them from living the good life. Nietzsche warns that such feelings could impair the very people who try to help others.
Recall the phenomenon of empathy fatigue. One psychological explanation for why empathic people experience fatigue and even burnout is that empathy involves a kind of mirroring of other people’s mental life, a mirroring that can be physically unpleasant. When someone you love is in pain, you don’t just believe that they are in pain; you may feel it as if it is actually happening to you.
Empathy is thus difficult to bear precisely because being in pain is difficult to bear.
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