UAP Associate Professor Max Stephenson has a new "Soundings" column out on "Neo-Liberalism and the Democratic Imperative of Empathetic Imagination." "I have argued in recent columns that democracy cannot long exist without its citizens possessing a least a modicum of compassion and empathy for their fellows. While reasonable individuals may debate how much empathy is necessary to create ties among citizens sufficient to join them in something resembling common cause, there is no doubt that democracy requires that its voters possess a measure of empathetic imagination, as this facility ultimately allows individuals to dignify others in society beyond families and specific kinship networks. If this is so for relatively homogeneous groups of citizens, and I would argue it is, this condition is especially vital for heterogeneous cultures, such as that in the United States. Fortunately, human beings as a species appear to possess at least the potential to develop robust empathetic imaginations. That is, we individually and collectively have the capacity to imagine the lives and circumstances of others very different from ourselves." Read more at this link.
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