Moral Imagination

Due to President Obama, the word "empathy" is getting tossed around a lot lately. What interests me is that his definition of the word "empathy" is central to what ethicists call "moral imagination." And moral imagination is central to government ethics.

Here's Pres. Obama's definition of "empathy" from his book The Audacity of Hope:

It is at the heart of my moral code, and it is how I understand the Golden Rule — not simply as a call to sympathy or charity, but as something more demanding, a call to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes.

In his 1993 book, Moral Imagination, Mark Johnson defined "moral imagination" as follows:

an ability to imaginatively discern various possibilities for acting in a given situation and to envision the potential help and harm that are likely to result from a given action.

How can you "envision the potential help and harm" of your actions if you cannot see through others' eyes? What does the term "appearance of impropriety" mean to someone who can't think how one's actions appear to others?

A person without Obaman empathy, without moral imagination, is a moral klutz who says hurtful things, who does hurtful things, and who thinks only of how the response to what he does might affect his reputation, if even that.

It's not surprising that the politician who ends up in a scandal is often just that sort of moral klutz. And it's not surprising that one of the first things that comes out of the mouth of such a person when he's been caught is, "I'm sorry if you were hurt," as if the problem were the victim's thin skin, not the thick moral imagination of the person who did the harm.

Our popular media are often good at bringing a moral imagination to situations. Our ethics training needs to focus on this, at all levels of education, and certainly with respect to government officials and employees, who are so often in the position of affecting the lives of thousands or millions. Moral imagination is, as Pres. Obama said, "demanding." It doesn't come naturally.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
rwechsler@cityethics.org
203-230-2548