What role does compassion play in morality? Is it necessary for morality? Is it, alone, sufficient for morality? To clarify some concepts here: Cognitive empathy is the capacity for understanding the mental states and motivations of others. However, psychopaths are quite adept at cognitive empathy, so understanding alone obviously isn't enough. Emotional empathy is the capacity for taking on the perspectives of others. Another form of empathy, compassion, is the capacity for correctly understanding the perspectives and conditions of others paired with the motivation to feel concern for their well-being. Compassion is not the uncritical assent to another person's desires to the exclusion of the desires of others. Compassion is also not about emotion alone -- it involves correctly identifying the needs of others, not just warm and fuzzy feelings about them. Yes, sometimes you will come across people whose motivations are in conflict. And yes, sometimes deciding what to do in those situations can be difficult. However, it is not necessary to choose to have compassion for one and not the other. Having compassion for both means understanding the perspectives and conditions of both and being motivated to feel concern for the well-being of both. It does not mean treating the desires of both people equally. Not all desires contribute to well-being, and they certainly do not do so equally. You can have compassion for two people equally while still realizing that the concerns on the table are not equal. Here's an extreme example: You have a ten dollar bill. Before you are two people. Craig is a cocaine addict and Teresa is a single mother. Craig asks for your ten dollar bill, explaining that he would like to roll it up to snort cocaine, and then set it on fire because he likes to watch things burn while he's high. He has plenty of money of his own, but he'd rather not go to an ATM because, well, he'd much rather get high right now than wait that long. Teresa would like to borrow ten dollars so that she has gas money to make it to a job interview. She's very short on time and likely won't make it to the interview unless you loan her the money now. If you give the money to Teresa and not Craig, have you had compassion for Teresa and not Craig. Not at all. You can easily have compassion for Craig, leading you to realize that this money would give him what he desires, but it would not truly contribute to his well-being. You could also easily realize that the money would do more good for Teresa than for Craig that Teresa's concerns are more important than Craig's at the moment. None of that requires you to stop thinking about Craig's well-being, even for a moment. Please note that the idea that compassion is integral to morality is open to both atheists and theists. Plenty of atheists value compassion and plenty of theists -- particularly Christians who practice situation ethics -- see the value of compassion in morality.
