Kristina Lunz runs the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy in Germany, and is the author of The Future of Foreign Policy is Feminist. That was a really useful book, and so this follow-up immediately had my attention. In this shorter book, Lunz takes one of the foundational principles of her work – empathy – and explores its role in politics.
Empathy is the ability to see things from different points of view, which seems to me to be an obviously useful thing in our polarised times. Understanding someone’s views doesn’t mean you have to share them, but it can cast our own positions in a different light and help to interrogate them. “Maintaining a degree of doubt about your own opinion and repeatedly questioning your own position is the highest form of personal maturity,” Lunz argues, “especially if you can still stand up for the things you believe in.”
Empathy is an important first step towards understanding those who are different from us, finding common ground and making constructive dialogue possible. It means refraining from judgement, and “acknowledging the full humanity of every person.” It’s also not enough. Citing critics of empathy such as Paul Bloom in his book Against Empathy, Lunz points out that it’s a capacity that can be used and misused. It has limits, and empathy for some people can exclude others, making it no basis for moral judgement on its own. There comes a point where empathy for someone’s position crosses a line and becomes resistance, and changemakers find themselves balancing these two things.
It’s important that we do both, Lunz suggests, because traditional gender roles have often assigned empathy to women and resistance to men – often in the form of violence. That gives men licence to pursue action without empathy or compassion, while women feel the pain of those actions and are disempowered from doing anything about it. By holding empathy and resistance together, we can push for social change without sacrificing kindness.
Kindness is a rare commodity in modern debate, especially in the anonymous online world, and as a feminist Lunz experiences a dizzying amount of hate. Her commitment to kindness sometimes gets her into trouble with both sides of the ‘culture wars’ factions, who insist on black and white statements. “Humanity is more important than identity,” she insists. Relationships are more important than virtue signalling. And “we need to draw a line under the obsessive desire to be morally superior, always and everywhere; instead we need to turn towards true moral integrity which, knowing its own fallibility, automatically distances itself from moral superiority.”
This is a refreshing message at a time of division and tension, and the book draws on Lunz’s own story as a campaigner to ground the ideas in practical examples. As with her previous book, there are profiles of women campaigners who demonstrate the interplay of empathy and resistance, most of them from peace building movements. Peace makers, the book points out, don’t sit across from their opponents. They sit side by side, facing a common future. That resonates with me – like Alex Evans’ observation that it’s better to end culture wars than win them.
I’m pretty sure the way out of the ugly politics of the 2020s lies in this balance of empathy and resistance, and there is real wisdom in Lunz’s exploration of these themes.
- Empathy and Resistance is available from Earthbound Books
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