A Muscular Empathy

Release Date: 
December 14, 2011
Original URL: 
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/a-muscular-empathy/249984/
Publication name: 
The Atlantic

Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case for a "muscular empathy," rooted in a curiosity and a rigorous - not simplified - investigation of the decisions we might make were we in different times or in others' shoes. "It's all fine and good to declare that you would have freed your slaves," writes Coates. "But it's much more interesting to assume that you wouldn't and then ask 'Why?'"