I doubt most people referring to empathy as a justification truly understand or practice it. It often seems they mistake empathy for mercy toward whomever they consider unfortunate & still put people in categories.

Empathy isn’t supposed to be convenient: the challenge of guiding choices by empathy is empathizing with everyone without reservation. It’s not placing people in different categories of deserving & undeserving based on who they are, whether we agree with them, whether they’d reciprocate, their conduct, or anything.

As soon as someone makes such distinctions and defends them, they admit their position isn’t strict empathy, either: they’re following some consideration other than empathy. When I see the left & right disagree over empathy, it seems less over strict adherence to empathy (which neither seems to accept despite claims), and more over demanding the considerations their selective empathy follows (ie, reasons).

I’m not claiming we need to give the least deserving our empathy or that it’s wrong to deviate from strict empathy. I am claiming, however, if we justify a conclusion from a premise of strict empathy yet clearly don’t accept that premise, then our argument is unsound until we develop that justification into something more plausible.

While empathy isn’t hard, people are extraordinarily bad at it.