 My research question is basically how two concepts are related, namely our basic human capacity to have empathy with other people, a capacity that has been studied in the past decades by many different disciplines, particularly by neuroscience. And I'm interested how that human, deeply human capacity to empathize with others could be related to morality. In fact, this is a question that has already been studied by the philosophical tradition namely by David Hume and Adam Smith. Back then they talked about sympathy, but what they meant was empathy. And why one could think that these concepts are related is that by empathizing with others, we do have other oriented concern. And that's precisely what morality is about, to be concerned about others. Now, empathy more precisely, and many people think that, is the capacity to imagine or feel like other people feel. And if that is not other oriented concern, what else is it? So one could even think, and not philosophers who think that, that the both, empathy and morality are actually the same. Or that morality without empathy is impossible. Or that empathy causally brings about morality. More recently, this close link between empathy and morality has been questioned. And to bring this to the fore, think about the following scenario. Think about a father who has a lot of empathy for his daughter. We might think that this is a good thing, that this is what fathers and parents would generally should do, to be oriented towards the well-being of their children. But if they do empathize so strongly with their children, don't they disregard the concerns of other children? Many even think that the point of view of morality should be the point of view of impartiality. Whereas empathy leads us to partiality, to favor the person we empathize with. So there seems to be, if we look at it more closely, a deep conflict between empathy and morality, at least so some philosophers argue. So in light of this dispute, I'm interested in the following question. How can we make sense of the contribution of empathy to morality, if they're not so closely linked? But if we still think there is something to the intuition that empathy is other-oriented concern. More closely, my question is what the value of empathy is and what that value contributes to morality. So the philosophical method differs from the method that is being used by the scientists. For example, psychologists, they study how people behave. Neuroscientists, they look into people's brains and find out about specific mechanisms in the brain. What we philosophers are interested in, first and foremost, are our normative practices. So what we do is some kind of moral phenomenology. So we look at how people behave normatively speaking. That means how do people blame and praise each other, for example, for being not empathetic enough or for being empathetic? So we're interested in a normative concept of empathy because for empathy to play a role in our blaming and praising practices, it needs to be a kind of capacity that people are able to cultivate. If it were just a mechanism like vision and if somebody has bad vision, you couldn't blame or praise somebody for having bad vision, but you can blame and praise somebody for having empathy or for not having empathy enough. So that's what we need to get at, is this kind of normative concept of empathy? So we do conceptual analysis and we try to defend a normative concept of empathy. And what brings us to this normative concept is that we think about what is empathy good for. And if we better understand what empathy is good for, we have a better understanding what plays a role in our normative practices when it comes to empathy. So the findings I can provide are two-fold. On the one hand, I try to defend a normative concept of empathy that differs from merely psychological concepts of empathy. So a normative concept is one that tries to make sense of our normative practices and the way we use empathy in those normative practices. So the way I want to capture empathy is not merely by saying empathy is what we imagine how another person feels like. It's more than that. It's that in empathizing we actually come to evaluate whether a particular situation that elicits a person's feelings appropriately elicits those feelings and whether those feelings are actually appropriate responses to a particular situation. Take my friend Anna and suppose she's fearful of dogs and let's suppose further that she is in front of a dangerously looking barking dog and Anna comes to feel very fearful as a result. Now if I want to empathize with Anna, I have to evaluate that particular situation as dangerous myself so as to think that Anna's response is appropriate. If I think this is just a tiny little dog who's not dangerous at all, I would come to evaluate the situation differently and wouldn't empathize with Anna as a result. So in empathizing we already provide warrant that the particular emotional reaction of another person is justified by the situation. So there's much more normative content in a philosophical concept of empathy. Now when it comes to my second finding, I'm particularly interested what empathy is good for because this is what lays a role in our normative practices. And most generally what empathy in my view is good for is that it builds a relation, a close intimate bond with another person. This is what empathy is ultimately good for. But that's a very general description and what we need to do is to provide more concrete evaluative features of empathy that explain why it is good for creating that intimate bond. And there are three features to consider. On the one hand we can ask what's internally valuable about empathy or as we philosophers say what's intrinsically valuable. That particular quality is inherent to our empathizing and to our being empathized with, like if I empathize with your positive feelings, I add to your pleasantness and to the pleasantness of your feelings. And if I feel that I add to your pleasantness, I feel pleasant myself because I realize I have an effect on you. Conversely, if I empathize with your negative feelings, I provide further warrant to the disvalue that you experience. And ultimately, I provide further support to how you evaluate things. Empathy also has extrinsic value in virtue of the relation it has to others. Namely, if I empathize with your evaluative perspective, how you evaluate things. And in empathizing, I evaluate that you respond appropriately. I provide recognition that you see things correctly. And this adds to your self-trust and your self-esteem. So these are further evaluative dimensions that empathy has and that empathy is good for. Now, if we take these intrinsic and extrinsic features of empathy together, we also better understand that empathy is constitutively valuable. That means empathy also contributes to other goods, one of which is that it builds up our relationships. And relationships are one of our most important goods that might make our lives worth living. So in the end, empathy is a very important contribution to a good life. So once we better understand what the value of empathy is, and once we know that the value that really matters and what empathy is good for is what I try to capture as its relational value, we actually have a much better understanding what role empathy plays when it comes to morality. So what we need to do is to understand what that relational value requires of us. We certainly have reasons to empathize to the extent that we have reasons to bring about that relational value. Think about relationships. We do have reasons to empathize with our children to realize a flourishing parent-child relationship. But that by no means entails that we need to empathize with our children all the time on any silly occasion. We just need to empathize when things really matter to our children, when there are particularly suffering, etc. We need to empathize to the extent that we bring about the particular relational value that matters in that particular relationship. But that leaves a lot of room to actually think about other moral principles and concerns. So in philosophical theory it might have been very disputed how empathy and morality relate. But I do think once we're able to show what empathy is actually good for, we better understand what the reach but also what the limits of empathy are and that we only need to realize it and are required to realize it to the extent that we have to realize our relationships. But that we can also limit its demands and do what impartial morality requires. In fact, in our daily life, we negotiate between the demands of relationship-dependent empathy and impartial morality all the time. The outlook of my research is the following. What I'm most deeply interested in are personal relationships. An empathy and the study of empathy plays a big role in the study of relationships. What interests me in empathy is not only what precise role it plays in morality and what value it has, I'm also interested in pursuing further research and better understanding what kind of capacity empathy actually is. Is it a virtue? Is it a skill? Is it neither? How can we understand normatively speaking this specific human capacity of empathy? That's a line of further research I want to pursue. But when it comes to relationships, more generally, there are other very interesting attitudes that matter with regard to our human relationships. Trust is another of such attitudes that deserves philosophical study and in fact has been studied by philosophers. And there are various topics on what we owe others in virtue of our relationships. Are there relationship-dependent duties? How far do they go? There's an interesting debate in family ethics, whether adult children, for example, have any duties towards their aged parents and on what grounds. So there's still a lot to explore when it comes to the normative implications of personal relationships and I think that's a field that has been highly underestimated by ethical theorizing in our traditions.