Authors who have focused on the limitations and biases of empathy are reviewed. A critique of the critique of empathy as limited and biased is provided from the perspective of a rigorous and critical empathy. Thinkers engaged include Bloom, Breithaupt, Gaines, Graham, Carpio, Serpall, and Zunshine. The classical philosophical problem of other minds has been replaced with the cognitive task of mindreading—simulating other minds or inventing an account of theory of mind (ToM). ToM is basic to cognitive literary criticism. The relation between cognitive literary criticism and empathy is debated. Cognitive (science) literary criticism is derivative on the folk definition of empathy, taking a walk in the Other’s shoes. Empathy intersects with mimesis, and by engaging mimesis in relation to other minds, a fourth aspect of Ricœur’s threefold mimesis emerges, call it “mimesis4.” “Mimesis of other minds” means “simulating other minds.” In the process, the empathic response to the literary text is completed. In every case, the answer of a rigorous and critical empathy to its critics is to refuse the choice between empathy and compassion, empathy and defeating empire, empathy and enlarged thinking from the perspective of the Other. The world needs expanded empathy as well as more compassion, enlarged thinking, and less empire.