Empathy as a moral compass
Truth as an act of love in Metamodern times
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Truth.
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A word that carries immense weight, yet is often handled lightly. In my life, truth has never been self-evident. On the contrary. It was something absent, something hidden, distorted, or outright denied.
As a child, I grew up in an environment where feelings and experiences were often laughed away, ignored, manipulated or dismissed as exaggerated. My mother had her own truths, her own defenses, leaving little room for my inner reality. Later, in a relationship with a woman with covert narcissism, I learned once again that truth is not merely an abstract concept — it can become a tool of power, a smokescreen used to maintain control, sow confusion, and undermine identity.
These experiences shaped me, not only as a person but also as a thinker. They taught me that truth is not something we can simply measure or control; it is deeply intertwined with our longing for recognition, presence and connection. In that sense, truth is not a neutral category, but a condition of life itself.
This essay is an attempt to give form to my search. Not as a definitive argument, but as an invitation to approach truth differently: as a relational, empathic and present process. A metamodern reminder of truth as an act of love.
I do not write this as an expert, but as a human being. As someone who has loved and lost, who has sought truth in words and in silence, who knows the pain of alienation and the joy of recognition. My thinking is not an objective analysis, but a search rooted in lived experience. Empathy, love, truth, and connection are not abstractions for me; they are anchors. Together, they form a reminder of who we are at our deepest level.
Truth in transition
We are living in a time of transition — a tipping point where old frameworks are showing cracks and new ones are only tentatively taking shape. Modernity, with its faith in objective truth, universal laws, and progress, shaped our worldview for a long time. But this worldview also alienated us: people and nature, self and other, were reduced to objects; measurable, manageable — but stripped of soul.
The postmodern era brought a radical correction. Truth was deconstructed, perspectives multiplied, and grand narratives lost their self-evidence. What remained was a world of fragmentation, irony, and relativism. Instead of universal truths, we were left with subjective ones: this is my truth, that is your truth.
While liberating at first, this movement exhausted us in other ways. In the bottomlessness of everything-is-just-a-perspective, a longing grew for something real — something that could reconnect us to each other and to a greater whole.
Metamodernism offers a third way: truth as encounter. Truth not as possession, but as process. As something that arises in the space between people — in dialogue, in openness, in vulnerability.
Truth as an act of love.
Truth as an act of love
Truth is an incredibly rich and layered concept, precisely because it is philosophically, relationally and existentially charged. Truth is not only about facts, but also about experiencing, feeling, embodying and encountering.
​Truth can be seen as having three faces:
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​Truth as factuality (correspondence): that which aligns with reality, verifiable, objective.
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Truth as sincerity (authenticity): being true to your inner experience, daring to speak from your deepest inner world, truthfulness.
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Truth as relational openness (dialogue): truth arising between people, in the tension of encounter, mutual recognition, empathic attunement.
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In the metamodern view, these layers come together. Truth is not a static given, but a dynamic process of openness, attuning, testing, dialogue and embodiment. Truth is not about having the right answer, but about daring to persevere in the search itself — in connection with the other and with the greater whole.
Metamodernism invites us to see truth as neither absolute nor arbitrary. It is relational, fluid, but not without direction. It lives in the interspace of encounter, in the willingness to be touched. Truth is not a claim, but a process. Not a weapon, but a cradle. Not a possession, but an invitation. An invitation to empathic presence, to mutual listening, to daring to stay with what presents itself.
My personal quest revolves around exactly that: being repeatedly confronted with situations where truth was manipulated, denied, or used as a means of power. This gave rise to an intuitive understanding that truth is not only a matter of facts, but above all one of relational integrity, presence, and loving openness.
Perhaps, in the end, truth is nothing other than the willingness to be present with what is — in all its layers, beauty, and discomfort. And in that way, truth — like empathy — becomes an act of love.
But what happens when this truth is systematically absent?
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The absence of truth is not neutral
For those who grew up in a context where truth was manipulated or denied, all of this takes on a profound significance. I know how destructive it is when truth is used as a tool of power — as in my relationship with my mother, where feelings were denied, twisted, and dismissed. Or in the relationship with a narcissistic ex, where truth was wielded as a means of maintaining control. The absence of truth is not just confusing — it is destabilizing. It undermines the foundation of who you are.
The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott spoke of the false self: a mask that children develop when their true self is not seen or not sufficiently validated. When the true self is suppressed, truth becomes distorted. Living from the false self means living a subtle lie — a socially functioning mask, disconnected from the inner being. In such environments, truth is replaced by self-denial, by façades, by survival.
Jung stated that whoever identifies with the persona (the social mask) becomes alienated from the Self. In the shadow lie the parts of the personality that were not allowed to exist — and yet it’s there that the key to wholeness is found. Truth, then, is the process of integration. Not something static or merely factual, but an inner journey toward what has been repressed, hidden, or forgotten. Recognizing the shadow and shedding the persona is an act of truth: it is a return to authenticity, beyond what is socially desirable, to the true Self.
The German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han analyzes how modern society causes us to lose ourselves, the other, and the truth in a culture dominated by efficiency, transparency and control. According to Han, our age increasingly confuses truth with transparency. In doing so, truth loses its relational, vulnerable dimension. Han points out that this version of truth becomes violent, because it leaves no space for the unspoken, the mysterious, the uncertain.
When truth is used as an instrument of domination, it becomes untruthful — in relationships, in upbringing, in society. This is not a neutral occurrence, but something that deeply undermines our ability to form loving relationships. And it painfully teaches us that truth is not merely a concept, but a fundamental condition for genuine connection, for preserving the self, and for nurturing love.
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Emotional revolution
We are living through what could be called an emotional revolution — a shift from head to heart, from reduction to wholeness, from irony to genuine involvement. This is the seed of metamodernism: a cultural sensibility that does not wish to return to naïve certainties, but that dares to open space again for engagement, meaning, hope, and narrative — and yes, even for universal truths. Not as dogma, but as anchors, rooted in openness and reflection. Truths that are recognized as relational, embodied, vulnerable — and yet necessary to give direction and grounding to our human existence.
In this context, empathy takes on a fundamental role. Not as a sweet or sentimental emotion, but as a moral, epistemological, and existential force that reconnects us with the world, with one another, and with a truth that arises not merely from reason, but from encounter. From being touched and opening ourselves to the other.
A metamodern truth is not absolute, but neither is it arbitrary; it is the fruit of ongoing dialogue, of daring to feel, of daring to be present with the other, without abandoning oneself.
Empathy thus becomes the gateway to a new understanding of truth: a truth that unfolds in the tension between self and other, between individual and community, between inner life and universality.
It requires courage — because it confronts us with our vulnerability and our responsibility.
Perhaps this is the greatest revolution of our time: not a technological revolution, but an emotional, relational, and spiritual one. A shift from human-as-object to human-as-connected-being. A time in which truth is once again embodied in the space between us.
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Empathy as a key
In modernism, the idea long prevailed that truth could be determined objectively and universally — through science, logic, facts. But in our postmodern era, this has shifted: truth has increasingly become an individual construction, shaped by perspective, identity, and experience. Truth is what is true for me. This has liberating aspects — it recognizes multiplicity and perspectivism — but also carries dangers: the risk that truth loses its connective power and everyone ends up living in their own isolated bubble of truth.
Empathy may be a key to breaking through this impasse. Not by falling back into rigid objectivism, but by reimagining truth as something that arises between people — in the encounter, in the relational field. A truth that is neither absolute nor purely subjective, because it manifests in the space where self and other meet, where the inner and outer worlds touch.
Such a truth requires vulnerability: the willingness to be touched, the openness to something greater than one’s own perspective.
Philosopher Jürgen Habermas pointed to this relational dimension of truth in his theory of communicative rationality. Truth does not arise independently of people, but within the tension of dialogue, argumentation, and intersubjectivity.
Hannah Arendt spoke of truth as plurality — as something that can only exist in a space where people meet one another in their difference.
This is also what Buber meant: truth is not a possession, but something that reveals itself in the I-Thou relationship, in the living encounter.
In dialogue with Levinas, Buber and Fromm
The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas emphasized that ethics arises in the encounter with the face of the other. The face, in its vulnerability and elusiveness, places an infinite responsibility upon us. According to Levinas, this responsibility precedes any rational choice or moral rule. In this sense, empathy — as the capacity to open ourselves to the other — is not merely a psychological phenomenon, but the origin of ethics itself. It is the voice of the other that calls to us, making truth no longer just an objectively verifiable fact, but something that presents itself in the relational space between I and the other.
Martin Buber spoke of this space in his dialogical philosophy, referring to it as the I-Thou relationship. In true encounter, we approach the other not as an object (I-It), but as a living, free subject. In this space arises an immediate, authentic relationship in which empathy does not mean understanding or taking over the other, but being present in the encounter — in the not-knowing, in the openness. For Buber, this dialogical attitude is where truth and connection meet, because it recognizes the other in their unique existence.
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Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and humanist philosopher, linked empathy to love as an active force. In his book The Art of Loving, he argued that true love begins with respect, care, responsibility, and knowledge. In this light, empathy is not passive identification, but an active willingness to see the other as they truly are — not as we wish them to be. Fromm saw empathy as an antidote to the alienation and instrumentalization of modern society. It is a way back to connection, in which truth is not found in possession or control, but in the mutual recognition of each other’s humanity.
These philosophical voices help us remember that truth is found not only in having the right answer, but in how we are present — in conversation, in conflict, in encounter.
Following Levinas, Buber, and Fromm, we can understand empathy as a moral compass, rooted in the encounter with the other. It opens a space where truth and connection meet in a living relationship. This truth is not static or absolute, but fluid, vulnerable, and always relational.
In a world that risks sinking into objectification and isolation, empathy — in this deeper sense — is a revolutionary force that reconnects human existence to its ethical core.
Empathy as a moral force
Empathy is more than an emotional response; it is an existential movement of the self toward the other. In this movement, a deeper kind of knowing reveals itself — a knowing that is not based solely on logic or facts, but on the inner truth of our shared humanity. Truth cannot be understood only as something objective. There is also a relational truth, one that unfolds in the contact between self and other. Empathy is a form of openness, of being present with the experience of the other, without reducing that experience to an object or an instrument.
In this openness, empathy functions as a moral compass. Not as an imposed commandment, but as an inner awareness that our actions have consequences for the fabric of relationships in which we live. Anyone who truly listens with empathy will sense that actions harming the other also harm something within themselves — because they deny the fundamental connection between us. Ethics thus ceases to be an abstract rule and becomes a sensitivity to the vulnerability and dignity of the other.
Empathy creates connection because it breaks through walls of separation. It reminds us that the other can never be fully grasped, but always remains a mystery demanding respect and recognition. In this realization, a truth emerges that cannot be forced but unfolds in the encounter itself: truth as relationship, as a shared space where we can truly meet both ourselves and the other.
Empathy is, in essence, a bridge between truth and connection. It allows us to see the other as they are, beyond our projections, bringing us closer to a deeper kind of truth — not only relational, but existential. At the same time, empathy functions as a moral compass because it attunes us to the suffering, joy, needs, and boundaries of others. In this way, our actions naturally align with connection rather than with power, control, or isolation.
In this way, empathy stands at the crossroads of ethics, truth, and connection. It is not weakness or sentimentality, but a strength that touches the core of what it means to be human in a world increasingly at risk of fragmentation.
In an age where power, performance, and efficiency often dominate, empathy is perhaps the most subversive form of truth — because it reminds us of what truly makes us human: the capacity to be touched by others.
The Destructive Absence of Empathy
For those who have lived in relationships where empathy was structurally absent, this vision carries a painful charge. The relationship with my mother, marked by emotional unavailability and the inability to truly be present with my feelings, left deep scars. In her eyes, I rarely found recognition. There was little space for my inner world. What remained was a sense of detachment — of not being seen in my being.
Later, in a romantic relationship with a woman with covert narcissism, this pattern repeated itself in an even more painful way. The outward appearance was charming, involved — but the inner world was closed off, manipulative, and cold. Again, there was no real encounter, no vulnerability, no connection, no empathy. Only an echo of emptiness; a game of lies, power, and illusion.
The absence of empathy is not neutral. It is actively destructive. It strips the other of their right to exist as a subject. The absence of empathy denies our humanity.
Instead of connection: confusion.
Instead of truth: gaslighting and lies.
Instead of love: conditioning and control.
Only much later, when I began to find myself again — through therapy, through art, through philosophy, and through connection — did I realize: what was missing was not only love, but empathic recognition. The right to feel, to be, without first having to comply.
Empathy: not a skill, but a way of being
Empathy is not a technique, not a skill, not a socially desirable attitude. At its deepest core, empathy is the purest expression of love: being present with the other, without agenda, without judgment, without the need to control, explain, or fix. Empathy is enduring the other in their fullness, their complexity, and sometimes their unbearable pain. It is the full recognition of the other’s existence — as other.
In this sense, empathy is not a soft, non-committal quality, but a radical act. It is the willingness to stretch beyond your own boundaries, to allow your certainties to waver, to let your identity be challenged — without losing yourself. It is, in Buber’s words, the courage to enter the I-Thou field.
In this way, empathy is the unifying principle par excellence. It is the movement through which love embodies itself in the everyday, in the vulnerable, in the relational self.
Love as presence.
Not merely as a feeling, but as an attitude, a choice, a way of being-in-the-world.
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This perspective is not only philosophical — it is lived, shaped by experience, not merely thought. The greatest lesson I draw from my experiences is this: the destruction I have known came from the absence of empathy and truth — from the inability or unwillingness to be truly present. And the healing I have found arises precisely where I or others dare to be present: in nearness, in the small, the uncomfortable, the real.
In a world that has forgotten the relational, empathy is nothing less than a reminder of who we truly are:
Beings of connection.
Beings of love.
Beings of presence.
Epilogue
I. The memory of connection
In a world that seems to speak ever louder but listen ever less, empathy may well be the most revolutionary gesture. Not as sentiment, but as action. Not as sympathy, but as moral compass.
In an age where truth has become fragmented and relationships have often turned instrumental, empathy offers a way back — or perhaps forward — to a form of connection that is at once tender, powerful, and existential.
Empathy is not weakness, not sentimentality, not the posture of gentle souls.
Empathy is an act of love.
An encounter in vulnerability.
An acknowledgment: you are, and that touches me.
In empathy, we open ourselves to the existence of the other — without having to understand or solve them. We are present, in loving resonance. In this way, we remember something that has been forgotten amid the noise of the world: that connection is not optional, but the very keynote of life.
Connection is life.
Not as an abstract ideal, but as an existential necessity.
Where empathy disappears, emptiness, untruth, alienation, and spiritual hunger emerge. We see it everywhere: in the rise of burnout, in the growing number of psychological complaints, in the search for meaning in a world that increasingly revolves around more, instead of around what is essential.
This crisis of empathy is inseparable from larger systems. A capitalist model that measures everything in terms of profit and productivity struggles to accommodate the slow power of loving connection. We live in a society that systematically undermines empathy — that economizes relationships and medicalizes emotions. But a shift is underway. An emotional revolution. People are tired of being treated as objects — in systems, in work, in love. They long for a way of being that is relational, meaningful, lived, and rooted in truth.
Against the alienation of our time, another movement emerges from metamodernism: the remembering of connection. A spiritual awakening that is not about dogma or belief, but about finding our essence again. About the courage to feel again, to connect, to slow down. About recognizing love — not as mere emotion, but as a way of being.
II. Empathy and metamodernism: between irony and sincerity, between I and we
Metamodernism is not a strictly defined philosophy, but rather an emotional, cultural, and intellectual attitude that oscillates between polarities such as modernism and postmodernism, reason and feeling, irony and sincerity. In this sense, it closely aligns with thinking in relational spaces — precisely the space where empathy and truth belong.
Where postmodernism often relativized the other and modernism reduced them to an object of knowledge or intervention, metamodernism seeks an ethics of proximity. It acknowledges the distance — and yet longs for connection. That is precisely the tension in which empathy takes place, as Buber and Levinas described.
Metamodernism responds to the cynical dissolution of values in postmodernism by making space again for sincere ethics, spirituality, and connectedness — without lapsing into naivety. Empathy as a moral force fits perfectly within this context: it is not a romantic projection of feelings, but a courageous ethic of presence. It acknowledges complexity, but continues to hope and act from connection.
The time we live in calls for a new understanding of truth. Not a return to absolutism, nor a retreat into postmodern detachment. But a truth that acknowledges we can never grasp the whole — and yet refuses to drown in cynicism or relativism. A truth rooted in relational honesty, in dialogical openness, and in empathic presence. Metamodernism reflects this movement: a search for a truth that is not fixed but arises in connectedness. A truth that does not close, but opens.
Finally, empathy in this light is also a form of knowing: a relational knowing, beyond reason, that experiences truth as existential, intersubjective, and emotional. Empathy, then, is not an endpoint, but a metamodern attitude — a gateway to the memory of connection, and thus to who we are at our deepest level.
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III. Truth as presence
When we detach truth from its hard, abstract connotations and re-anchor it in relational presence, a different view unfolds:
Truth is no longer an endpoint, but an act of love.
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It is the choice to be present with what presents itself — with yourself, with the other, with discomfort, with not-knowing.
Truth, in this light, is not a cold observation, but a warm, tender attitude. The willingness to stay, to listen, to feel — without fixing or controlling. Empathy then becomes the embodiment of truth in action. Because where empathy is lacking, mendacity arises — in relationships, in education, in society. And where empathy is present, truth comes alive — not as a possession, but as a movement.
This requires courage. The courage to let go of your certainties. The courage to be touched. The courage to remain in the emptiness and meet the other there. That is what makes truth an act of love. Because love is nothing other than being present. And truth is nothing other than daring to embody that presence.
The future of our humanity does not depend on technology, speed, or power. It depends on our willingness to be touched again.
To listen.
To feel.
To connect.
Because whoever remembers that everything is connected will never forget who they truly are.
IV. The silent compass
Empathy should play a central role in upbringing, care, and society. In upbringing, as a space where the child can be themselves in relation to the other. In care, as a presence with the other in their vulnerability — without the immediate urge to fix it. And in society, as the foundation for a culture in which difference is not threatening, but fruitful. Empathy restores what has been lost. Not by returning to old truths, but by embodying new forms of truth and connectedness.
For a long time, I believed that my sensitivity was a weakness. But I am beginning to see: it is my strength. In a world that grows ever harsher, gentleness is an act of resistance. In a world of distance, proximity is revolutionary. And in a time where truth has become noise, empathy is the silent compass that can bring us back to one another.
Perhaps, in the end, this is what it’s all about: remembering that we are human —
and that being human always begins with the other.
