Book ReviewThe Limits of Empathyde Waal, F. 2009: The Age of Empathy: Nature’sLessons for a Kinder Society. Harmony Books, NewYork. 304 pp. Hardback: $25.99. ISBN 978-0307407764.Reviewed by Clive D. L. Wynne, Department ofPsychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL32611, USA. E-mail: wynne@ufl.eduAfter reading Frans de Waal’s latest book, ‘The Ageof Empathy’, but before starting this review, I re-readmy review of de Waal’s earlier book, ‘Our Inner Ape’(2005), published in this journal [Ethology 112(2006) 310-311]. I rather wish I had not, because Isee that almost everything I might say about thisbook I already said about de Waal’s 2005 volume. Inthat review I mentioned that de Waal has a melliflu-ous writing style – he still does. I noted that de Waalwants to convince his readers that there is not asingle human psychological quality that cannot benoted in our cousin apes and monkeys – he stillclearly shows that aim. de Waal still shows a strongpreference for the anecdote, anthropomorphism andintuition over the controlled experiment that mayproduce results that dislodge a scientist’s prior expec-tations. His distaste for behaviorists remains as strongas ever – this time indicting them for inspiring theappalling Romanian orphanages of the Cold War era.His ambivalence towards the United States is stillevident. de Waal remains concerned to convince hisreader that love, cooperation – indeed the ‘empathy’of the newer book’s title – are not unique to humanbeings but a part of our ape heritage.Many of the same results are discussed again here:the alleged tendency of monkeys to console eachother and ‘make up’ after a conflict; the experimentby de Waal and his students that he believes showsthat monkeys are sensitive to unfair treatment; andstudies in which animals have been set in front ofmirrors that purport to show that individuals ofcertain species have a sense of self. The passage of4 yr has not tempted de Waal to add much to hisone-sided account of all these findings.All these points of similarity probably account forwhy I found so little to interest me in this latestvolume. The differences between this book and itspredecessor are just matters of emphasis. 2005’s ‘OurInner Ape’ was an attempt to convince the readerthat the bonobo – the ape that has sex every 90 minand never kills its fellows – should be our rolemodel, instead of the war mongering chimpanzee.2009’s ‘The Age of Empathy’ tells the reader that itis fine to feel empathy and to cooperate with othersof our kind: Nature does not make us red in toothand claw. Even chimpanzees are presented as havingconcern for their fellow beasts. Hooking on to thedefeat of the Republican Party in the United Statesin November 2008, the recent economic problems,and the election of Democrat Barack Obama to theU.S. presidency, de Waal wants to argue that greedis no longer good, and was never natural. Placinghimself in opposition to those who would interpretthe Darwinian injunction to survive and multiply asa call to individualism, de Waal concludes thatfellow feeling is mankind’s natural state. As anexample of his style, bridging from the ethological tothe current political situation, de Waal draws atten-tion to the alleged fact that the disgraced formerCEO of Enron, Jeff Skilling, was, according to deWaal, ‘a great fan of Dawkins’s Selfish Gene’ (p. 39).I presume that the placement of his earlier book,‘Chimpanzee politics’ (de Waal, 1982) on the read-ing list of the U.S. congress by Republican NewtGingrich is what inspires de Waal to address hiscomments to capitalists and other right wingers, butreally anyone who wanted to resist de Waal’sentreaties to empathy would find logical holes inthis book big enough to drive an elephant through.Elephants, according to de Waal, are a particularlyempathetic species.de Waal has heard of the naturalistic fallacy – theerroneous belief that the state of nature can deter-mine ethically appropriate courses of action – but hedoes not let it slow him down. ‘The Age of Empathy’is one long naturalistic fallacy: empathy is natural,therefore it is morally right. Of course I am notagainst empathy, but the claim that bonobos – orEthologyEthology 116 (2010) 383–384 ª 2010 Blackwell Verlag GmbH 383ethologyinternational journal of behavioural biologyany other ape or monkey – may console oneanother after conflicts, does not inform my choice ofthat course of action.In his too brief consideration of the naturalisticfallacy, de Waal suggests that close consideration ofour cousin apes will help us to understand ourselvesand our fellow human beings. ‘If a zoo plans a newenclosure, it takes into account whether the speciesto be kept is social or solitary, a climber or a digger,nocturnal or diurnal, and so on. Why should we, indesigning human society, act as if we’re oblivious tothe characteristics of our species?’ (p. 30). To whichthe obvious response is, ‘Sure. But why would youpay attention to the characteristics of other species?’Any zoo director who designed an enclosure for onespecies by studying some other – even closely relatedspecies – would not last long in the job. To makewhat de Waal is suggesting more concrete, considera hypothetical zoo desirous of an enclosure for Homosapiens. Would it be well advised to base the designof that enclosure on what we know are the require-ments of Pan troglodytes or Pan paniscus? Surely theanswer is self-evidently negative: neither the diet,housing, climate nor any other dimension would beappropriate.de Waal ends with a plea for more empathy. Well,that would be hard to disagree with. If people couldjust be nicer to each other the world would surely bea better place – as my grandmother was wont to say.But it does not take much thought to realize whyhuman societies uniformly write their laws underthe worst assumptions of human nature. This is notsome hangover from 19th-century Social Darwinism– as de Waal would have us believe – but a highlyadaptive response to the darker side of human nat-ure. The rules of society assume the worst of people,not because the worst is likely, desirable, or even‘natural’ (whatever that over-used word may mean),but simply because those are the cases where rulesand enforcement are required. The moment we thinkwe live in an ‘age of empathy’ is the moment wediscover why previous generations formed laws thatassumed the worst of human