radical empathy

Radical Empathy Confronts Depression: Review of Matthew Ratcliffe’s The Experience of Depression

Over the summer I have been catching up on my reading. Matthew Ratcliffe’s Experiences of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology (Oxford University Press, 2015, 318 pp, (44.09 $US)) is an important and eye-opening book for anyone who engages with depression or… Read More ›

Review: Extreme Empathy [I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy by Cris Beam]

Beam is a would-be “bad girl,” who has written a very good book. In a world of constrained, limited empathy, the empathic person is a non-conformist. Beam is one of those, too, and succeeds in sustaining a nuanced skepticism about the alternating hype and over-valuation of empathy over against those who summarily dismiss it. Most ambivalently, she calls out the corporate infatuation with empathy. I paraphrase the corporate approach: Take a walk in the other person’s shoes in order to sell them another pair.