In the course of the research, the main stages of the study of the problem of empathy and related concepts in the history of ethics and neuroethics were studied. It is established that the first attempts to study the phenome non of empathy without using this concept were undertaken in the ethical concepts of the Scottish Enlightenment. In the 19th century, a sense of com passion, close to empathy, was actively studied, including in the emerging evolutionary ethics. Experimental psychology, which was born in this his torical period, also had a significant impact on the study of moral feelings, including feelings of empathy. In the late XX — early XXI century, the con cept of empathy becomes one of the central in neuroethics, largely due to the discovery of “mirror neurons”. The essential theoretical and practical debatable problems of explaining prosocial and moral behavior on the basis of empathy are analyzed.