"In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy." - Captain C.M. Gilbert
Exchange between Gilbert and Goring
They walk among us.
Sheesh, I feel apprehensive about disagreeing with someone with such experience (edited because I initally confused the name with the historian of the Holocaust Martin Gilbert, but the same sentiment applies)
But I don't really agree. I have always thought that 'empathy' was vastly over-rated as a quality. Some of the most vicious despots have employed 'empathy' as a weapon (Trump does it all the time, he clearly can empathise with those he wants as part of his gang, and makes use of that to better manipulate them). I gather psychologists have just figured this out, hence the creation of the concept of 'the dark empath'.
Furthermore it's long been obvious to me that empathy tends to be so selective as to be pretty much useless when it comes to preventing evil or as a basis for improving society. People tend to empathise almost exclusively with those who resemble themselves and find it nearly impossible to do so with those who have had very different experiences or exist in very different contexts. (I think this is what 'neurodivergence' types mean when they talk about the 'double empathy problem')
In short, it's perfectly possible to be capable of empathy and still be evil, and not being good at empathy doesn't make one evil. The two things are largely unrelated.
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