"It is an often taken for granted notion in contemporary Western everyday life that there is an intimate connection between empathy and moral action. Yet in recent years, this connection has come under scrutiny. In this article, we first ask the question, what is empathy? A brief survey over the psychological and philosophical approaches to the notion of empathy shows that it remains a highly contested concept. The field has a propensity to discuss empathy within the frame of sameness. We instead argue that in order to grasp empathy it is necessary to foreground otherness. Drawing on Hannah Arendt, we further argue, that when encountering the stranger, moral action requires both visiting the other – as distinct from empathic knowledge as well as thinking in order to judge what is right. Ultimately moral dilemmas are solved, not by having or demanding empathy, but by addressing the issues at hand in joint action''.

Matthiesen, Noomi; Klitmøller, Jacob