Just Empathy - Emotionally Engaged Perspective-Taking under Conditions of Oppression

• Applicant: Dr. Katharina Anna Sodoma
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy ; Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 567492359

Empathy – a form of emotionally engaged imaginative perspective-taking – is often considered as a dyadic phenomenon that has its place in close personal relationships. Nevertheless, empathy can have social and political preconditions as well as consequences. Conditions of different forms of oppression, such as racism and sexism, impact who is able and willing to empathize with whom regarding what kind of experiences. While oppression creates obstacles for empathy with oppressed perspectives, it enables and incentivizes empathy with privileged perspectives. Although it has been identified as a desideratum of empathy research, this connection between empathy and oppression has so far remained undertheorized. The present project aims to fill this lacuna by developing a systematic philosophical account of empathy under conditions of oppression. Special focus will be placed on elucidating the political, ethical, and epistemic significance of distortions in empathy that arise under conditions of oppression as well as the complex effects of oppression on the perspective of the oppressed, who are enabled and incentivized to empathize with privileged perspectives. Part I focuses on the political and ethical significance of distortions of empathy that arise under conditions of oppression. Work package I.A) explores the thesis that relative empathy deficits with the perspective of the oppressed constitute a form of “affective injustice”. Work package I.B) investigates whether this implies that we can wrong others by failing to empathize with them. Work package I.C) investigates the effects of oppression on empathy from the perspective of the oppressed by exploring whether “empathic resistance”, that is, resistance against taking up certain perspectives in imagination, can be a mode of political resistance. Part II focuses on the epistemic significance of distortions of empathy that arise under conditions of oppression. Work package II.A) lays the groundwork for this investigation by developing a novel account of the epistemic role of emotions. Based on this, work package II.B) develops an account of learning about the world by taking up others emotional perspective on their situation and argues that systematic empathy deficits give rise to specific epistemic obstacles. Work package II.C) considers the effects of oppression on empathy from the perspective of the oppressed by exploring whether being enabled and incentivized to empathize with the perspective of the privileged can contribute to the development of a “double consciousness”.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants