Education Towards Empathy: Adorno’s Theory of Coldness Reconstructed | The Empathetic Emotions in the History of Philosophy | Oxford Academic
The argument in this chapter is that the idea of empathy should take centre stage in a reconstructed Adornian theory of ‘coldness’ without which, Adorno held, there could have been no Auschwitz. This is because the idea of ‘empathy’ is historically and interpretatively apposite, consonant with Adorno’s theoretical assumptions, and virtually implied by what he has to say about authoritarian personalities and the moral sentiments. It also fits nicely with the aims and assumptions of his critical social theory. However, what is bad about ‘coldness’ is, among other things, that it leads to indifference towards the pain and suffering of other people, and it is unclear whether such indifference is due to a deficit in ‘empathy’, ‘sympathy’, or a combination of the two. The conclusion is that if, as is widely assumed, the former is a necessary condition of the latter, the remedial aims of Adorno’s critical social theory are best served by what I call ‘education towards empathy’. A