ENHANCEMENT OF EMPATHY IN THE CONTEXT OF CONTEMPORARY MORAL NATURALISM AND NEOLIBERAL INDIVIDUALISM

Abstract

This paper focuses on proposals and practices for enhancement of empathy and related capacities, which have been formulated within the debate about moral enhancement and in the field of social neuroscience, in order to consider their understanding
of the social and moral subject in relation to conceptions of the subject, widespread in society. Although empathy is supposed to serve as the basis of sociality and morality, guaranteed by ancient evolutionary neural mechanisms, its research using neuroscientific
methods and the popularization of proposals for its enhancement redefine morality and sociability on individualistic grounds. The contemporary popularity of empathy and proposals for its improvement can be understood as a result of correspondence
between contemporary scientific naturalism and the neoliberal social context.