Abstract
In phenomenology, theories of empathy are intimately connected with the question of how it is possible to have insight into the mind of the other person. In this article, the author wants to show why it is self-evident for us that the other person is having experiences. In order to do so, it is not enough to discuss the phenomenon of empathy with a starting point in the already constituted adult person; instead the article presents a genetic approach to human development. The author thus contrasts Edith Stein’s discussion of Einfühlung (empathy), which takes its starting point in the experience of the grown-up, with Max Scheler’s discussion of Einsfühlung (feeling of oneness), where the relation between mother and infant is taken as one example. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the world of the infant is read as one way of developing Scheler’s theory of intersubjectivity and of Einsfühlung. This genetic approach is developed further into a phenomenological analysis of the experience of the fetus and of birth. The author argues that the analysis of the fetus highlights the distinction between knowing that another person is having experiences, and knowing the specific content of the other person’s experiences. The fetus does not experience different persons, but has a pre-subjective experience of life that includes what is later experienced as belonging to “another.” Later in life, the experience of empathy, as an experience of a specific content, can be developed from this experience. In this way empathy and Einsfühlung can be understood as complementary rather than as competing phenomena.
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Notes
She does not argue against Scheler’s concept of Einsfühlung since this is developed in the second edition of The Nature of Sympathy from 1923. But as we will see she does explicitly argues against Scheler’s theory of comprehension of foreign consciousness later in her dissertation (§6, pp 30–39).
In her later writings Stein is more positively interested in the social “we”, especially in Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften. Ian Laesk discusses the tension in On Empathy between an egological (and methodological) starting point and what he calls her break with autarchy and argues that her philosophy ends up in a “we” rather than an “I”, Laesk (2002). But just as Stein’s discussion on hic et nunc this is only pointed at in the dissertation and developed further in her later philosophy, not least during her religious period. I discuss Stein’s different attitudes toward alterity in Bornemark (2007).
“[E]in indifferenter Strom der Erlebnisse fließt‘zunächst’ dahin, der Eigenes und Fremdes ungeschieden und ineinandergemischt enthält; und in diesem Strome bilden sich erst allmählich fester gestaltete Wirbel, die langsam immer neue Elemente des Stromes in ihre Kreise ziehen und in diesem Prozesse [sukzessive und sehr allmählich] verschiedenen Individuen zugeordnet werden” (My translation).
[T]rotz der persönlichen Substanzialität der individuellen Geister das Leben in allen personen […] metaphysisch ein und dasselbe Leben sei—wenn auch in seinen dynamischen Richtungen mannigfaltig gegliedert. (My translation).
In the following I will refer to the English translation from 1964.
Compare with Lacan (1977) [1936/1949].
The relation between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, (and between Merleau-Ponty and Stern) is discussed by Simms (1993).
In the case of the twins, they react differently when touched by oneself and by the other, but the other twin is also always there, and constantly felt in the second part of the pregnancy. In relation to the self, the twins help us think both difference and intertwinement. For research on the twin fetus, see Piontelli (2002).
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Bornemark, J. The genesis of empathy in human development: a phenomenological reconstruction. Med Health Care and Philos 17, 259–268 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-013-9508-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-013-9508-y