Category Archives: ethics

Dissecting the empathic brain: An interview with Christian Keysers

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 21 July 2011

Why do we shudder when we watch a tarantula crawling across James Bond’s chest in a 007 movie? And what can looking into a monkey’s brain tell us about our capacity to share in the emotional experiences of other people? Answers to these questions appear in The Empathic Brain: How the Discovery of Mirror Neurons [...]

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Empathy with the enemy

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 16 June 2011

In the spring of 472 BC the people of Athens queued up to see the latest play written by Aeschylus, the founder of Greek tragedy. The Persians was an unusual production, and not only because it was based on an historical event rather than the usual legends of the gods. What must have really shocked [...]

Also posted in art, empathy through education, film, history, literature, peace building, politics | 1 Comment

Podcast: Empathy, mutual aid and the anarchist prince

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 19 April 2011

Peter Kropotkin was one of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century, who managed to multi-task as a Russian prince, renowned geographer and revolutionary anarchist. In this interview with Phonic FM, a wonderful community radio station based in Exeter, I discuss how Kropotkin’s ideas about ‘mutual aid’ relate to my own work on empathy, and why Kropotkin is a prophet for the art of living in the twenty-first century. The interview lasts around 50 minutes.

Also posted in history, interviews, peace building, philosophy, podcasts, politics, science | 1 Comment

Solstice Short Story Special: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 18 December 2010

To celebrate the Winter Solstice – or Christmas if that is your festival of choice – I invite you to read one of the most moving pieces of empathic fiction ever written. It is a short story by Ursula Le Guin, ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’, first published in 1973. Le Guin says she based her psychomyth parable on an idea from the philosopher William James where he imagined a world in which millions of people could be kept permanently happy on the single condition ‘that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment’. Here is the story in full.

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Is kindness good for you?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 14 November 2010

Just in case you missed it, yesterday – November 13 – was World Kindness Day. As part of the global festivities, I was interviewed in the latest issue of Psychologies Magazine about the relationship between kindness and empathy. As I point out, kindness is not without it’s problems:

‘It can sometimes be a little too easy to describe actions as “kind”. If a wealthy individual gives away some money to a charity, how valuable is their gift if it hasn’t involved much of a personal sacrifice?’

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The day empathy saved the world

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 24 October 2010

If you’ve ever sat up late wondering if empathy can save the world, I have good news for you. It can. Well, that is according to Robert McNamara, US Secretary of State from 1961 to 1968. In the Academy Award winning documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, the former bigwig in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations – who died last year aged 93 – reveals what he learned about war and foreign policy during his political career. The surprising first lesson is this: ‘empathize with your enemy’.

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Do we suffer from compassion fatigue?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 10 October 2010

The British photojournalist Don McCullin has just turned seventy-five. During a career that has now spanned half a century, perhaps his most unforgettable photograph is of an emaciated albino boy in the Biafran War in Nigeria, taken in 1969. He is leaning over on skeletal legs with an abnormally large head, clutching an empty tin [...]

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Time to get off the analyst's couch?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 26 September 2010

The history of outrospection is yet to be written. But when it is, you can bet the name of Peter Singer will be there. Singer is one of the world’s most influential moral philosophers, best known for his 1975 book Animal Liberation, which has become a foundational text of the animal liberation movement. But in the 1990s he also wrote another prescient book, How Are We To Live: Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest, which contains the kernels of an outrospective approach to thinking about the world.

Also posted in philosophy, psychology, reviews | 6 Comments

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