One of the concerns voiced by conservative critics who are uncomfortable with the idea of Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court is that she has made comments that suggest that her capacity to empathize with oppressed groups is something that might inform her judgments on the bench. Psychologists understand that empathy is an important quality that healthy individuals bring to their relations with others. So why be worried if Judge Sotomayor has a capacity for empathy?
The reasoning is as follows: Sotomayor's critics see her comments as betraying an underlying conviction that persons from different cultural backgrounds see the world in fundamentally different ways. The critics fear that this conviction is part of a culturally relativist approach to truth: if one's cultural background strongly influences how one sees the world, doesn't it follow that when different groups see an issue differently, there is no solid basis for deciding which view is the correct one? In other words, "empathy" seems to suggest "relativism" which seems to suggest "there are only different opinions, no final truths,"
Conservatives tend to not like relativism, but they especially despise it in judges who are charged with understanding what the Constitution has to say about legal issues. The fear is that rather than respecting the integrity of the Constitution, relativists will construe that document as meaning whatever they--based on their own cultural background--want it to mean.
This dispute can be illuminated by a brief history lesson, so bear with me for a moment. Historian Warren Susman pointed out that until the late 19th century, the most common term used for evaluating individuals was "character." To have character meant (and still means today) to measure up to certain fixed standards of virtue: honesty, diligence, honor, etc. Susman points out that the turn of the century saw an explosion of interest in a new evaluative term: personality. Although psychologists later adopted the word as a scientific term, in its original popular usage "personality" referred to an individual's capacity to be charming and likable (again, this persists: "she has a lot of personality.") The distinction between character and personality can be compressed into the observation that a serial killer can have a great personality-evidently this was true of Ted Bundy.
The distinction between character and personality is one index of much broader cultural shifts that occurred in American society around the turn of the 20th century. At bottom, these shifts had to do with the birth of what we now call the consumer economy-remember this was the period of Henry Ford's first assembly line. Basically, people with character were not particularly well adapted to work in large bureaucracies, and above all they weren't very reliable consumers. People with personality are just what you are looking for if you want to move a lot of product, because they want to dress well, drive the newest model, listen to the right music, etc.
My point? Today we are still fighting the battle between fixed standards and flexibility, although now the debate is likely to take shape around identity politics and relativism. Conservative newspaper columnists are fond of asserting that cultural relativism is foisted upon innocent college students by liberal professors, but I'm a college professor, and I can tell you that students walk into my classroom as dyed in the wool relativists. What makes them that way is our whole society, but the biggest promoters of relativism are business interests who benefit enormously from young people's lack of fixed standards and their constant pursuit of the latest thing. So, conservative critics, if you really want to tackle cultural relativism, leave Sonia Sotomayor alone and go after the giant corporations who are paying for your campaigns.
Peter G. Stromberg is the author of Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You.
