Every conference, MBA class, and LinkedIn sermon eventually reaches that ritual moment when someone solemnly declares that true leaders must be "EMPATHETIC”. Heads nod, consultants smile, rooms beam in self-congratulatory euphoria. But the cult of empathy is not wisdom—it is mostly a distraction. True morality demands wisdom and responsibility, not just emotional resonance.
The subtle irony is that “empathy” is neither ancient nor noble. The term itself was coined by Edward Titchener just over a century ago, as "Einfühlung"—a theory of aesthetic projection. We gaze at a painting, imagining ourselves moving with its lines, and call this “empathy.” Only later did psychology and politics co-opt the term: Jaspers turned it into a diagnostic tool, Rogers into a therapeutic posture, diversity officers into a recruitment slogan. With each new use, its meaning slipped, mutated, and thinned—until it became the moral fast food of modern leadership manuals: sweet, cheap, and nutritionally empty.
Even the best case for empathy is flawed. Neuroscience tells us that empathy is naturally biased: we feel more for those like us, less for the distant, the foreign, or the inconvenient. Paul Bloom calls it “a spotlight on the familiar,” which blinds us to justice. Worse, empathy exhausts: Leaders burn out from emotional overload and retreat into cynicism. It remains a seductive shortcut—making leadership appear caring while sidestepping the harder virtues: courage, compassion, and justice.
Classic philosophers knew better. Hume and Smith spoke of "sympathy": a fellow-feeling disciplined by judgment. Sympathy always entailed evaluation by an "impartial spectator", anchored in a standard of the good. Kant pushed further: morality is not feeling at all, but obligation, a duty to treat every person as an end. Levinas radicalised the point: the face of the Other calls us unconditionally—not because of how WE feel, but because of who THEY are. Empathy collapses "Other" into self-resonance; morality insists we recognise and respond to Others as truly distinct.
In the Gospel of Luke, the Samaritan did not stop because he “felt into” the Jew’s pain. He stopped because he recognised an obligation: a neighbour is not someone I empathise with, but anyone in need—even an enemy. That leap—from particular empathy to universal justice, from sentiment to virtue—is the essence of good character. To enshrine empathy as pinnacle of leadership is not just lazy, but dangerous: it reduces ethics to sentimentalism while structural injustice roars on.
Business does not need more empathic sugarcoating. It needs leaders who judge wisely, act courageously, and build practices grounded in justice. Empathy may open the door, but only love, truth, and justice walk through it.
If our boardrooms continue to reify empathy, they will easily end up like the Levite in the fable: pious, well-meaning—and ultimately complicit in leaving the vulnerable behind.
#leadership #ethics #justice #virtueethics #empathytrap