engleski

Do People in Need Need Empathy?

Ethical, social, and political mechanisms of protecting the vulnerable are among key issues any society has to address. Next to the question of our responsibilities as members of an organized society towards the children, the elderly, the sick, the poor, etc., recent strong migration movement raised a controversy over the responsibility of the destination and transit countries towards refugees. In the field of (bio)medicine, every relevant ethical document strongly puts forward the demand of protecting the vulnerable – the group that either implicitly or explicitly includes immigrants and refugees. However, as I intend to demonstrate in the first part of presentation, even though they aim at providing guidance on how to deal with certain issues in practice, the authoritative ethics documents in the field of (bio)medicine are not especially helpful when it comes to the question of protection of the vulnerable (Zagorac, 2016). Scholarly debates as well exhaust themselves in identifying the criteria that define vulnerability, and in defining groups that can apply for some special form of protection. The terms often used in such discussions are ‘duty’ and ‘obligations’, but also ‘empathy’ and ‘compassion’. The underlying premise seems to be that if we cannot clearly formulate our duties and obligations towards the vulnerable, than we should act guided by our compassion and empathy. The aim of a second part of the presentation is to explore that suggestion. My approach is mainly a theoretical one centred around the question on the interdependence between vulnerability and empathy. On a practical side the question is whether empathy can offer reliable grounds for our actions towards people in need. It is certainly vital to examine the causes of vulnerability and the related duties of a stronger party, however it is equally important to ensure that the help we offer to the weak is not a mere demonstration of our power and a tribute to our feeling of humanity.

responsibility ; vulnerability ; duty ; empathy ; migrants

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