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Motivating Empathy: The Problem of Bodily Similarity in Husserl’s Theory of Empathy

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Abstract

Husserl’s theory of empathy plays a crucial role in his transcendental phenomenology and has ever since been critically examined. Among various critiques leveled at Husserl, the issue of bodily similarity between oneself and the other lies at the core, not only because Husserl conceives of it as the motivating factor of empathy but also because his account of it has been taken to be problematic. In this article, I review a main interpretation of the issue of bodily similarity in Husserl, which takes the bodily similarity in question to be a visual resemblance between oneself and the other. By contrast, I give a new interpretation of bodily similarity by taking into account Husserl’s emphasis on tactual experience with regard to the constitution of one’s own lived body and the foreign body. I argue that the bodily similarity in question amounts to a similar manner of twofold bodily manifestation in oneself and the other, and I also suggest that this interpretation further enables a new understanding of interpersonal relation in Husserl.

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Notes

  1. In the recent social cognition debate, some authors propose a different understanding of the similarity between oneself and the other, and they think that interpersonal similarity consists in the same type of emotional states between oneself and the other, e.g., both must experience the same type of anger or fear (Jacob 2011, p. 532; cf. de Vignemont and Jacob 2012). For a critique, see Zahavi and Øvergaard (2012).

  2. Natalie Depraz (1995, §11) offers a fairly complex reading of bodily similarity in Husserl. In contrast, Georg Römmp (1992, chapter IV.3) seems to downplay the significance of bodily similarity, probably because of the problematic implications it entails.

  3. In this way, as Schutz (1970, p. 64) emphasized, Husserl’s theory of empathy is primarily focused on human others and thus seems to rule out empathy with other forms of animate life, e.g., birds and fishes. As an anonymous referee rightly pointed out, Husserl does hold that empathy is possible in “abnormal” cases such as in relations with those who are bodily impaired, and also in relations with non-human animals (Hua I, p. 154; Hua XIV, p. 69). But Husserl also makes it clear that this task “belongs to a higher level of phenomenological analysis,” one that is necessarily founded upon, and is thus a modification of, normal empathic experience (Hua I, p. 154). In short, Husserl’s view is that empathy is first and foremost a peculiar intentionality directed at the other human ego (das fremde Ich) (Hua IX, p. 321).

  4. “Eine Grundvoraussetzung ist: Der fremde Leibkörper ist ähnlich meinem Körperleib. Wie erfasse ich diese Ähnlichkeit, bzw., wie kann diese Ähnlichkeit ohne vergleichende Betrachtung und Erfassung wirksam werden, bewusst werden?” (Hua XIII, p. 270).

  5. Kozlowski insists that two ways of arriving at the similarity thesis should be differentiated: the other’s body counts as being similar to mine according to the appearance of my own body; and my body counts as being similar to the other’s body according to the appearance of the other’s body. As he states, “zieht man in Betracht, daß im Wahrnehmungsfeld der andere menschliche Körper als ganzer erscheint, der eigene dagegen nur partiel, so stellt das Problem, welcher von beiden welchem ursprünglich ähnelt” (Kozlowski 1991, p. 114). He argues that Husserl holds the former because Husserl’s account is based upon a “primären Selbstbezug”, whereas the right way of accounting for the similarity thesis should be the second, because the other’s physical body can be fully given in all its facets, while one’s own body can only be partially given. Therefore, “im Bewußtsein werden nicht die anderen Körper auf den eigenen bezogen, sondern umgekehrt: Ich ‚vergleiche‘meine Körperteile mit dem primär wahrgenommenden Körper des Anderen” (Kozlowski 1991, p. 115). However, Husserl’s position already seems to be close to Kozlowski’s proposal, since the purpose of self-physicalization is to derive the similarity of one’s own bodily appearance from the other’s bodily appearance. Kozlowski’s accusation of Husserl’s “ego-centrism” thus seems to fall short of the target.

  6. In his paper “Intersubjectivity and Naturalism – Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation Revisited,” Peter Reynaert argues that self-physicalization or self-objectivation cannot meet the similarity requirement, precisely because the lived body, due to its nature, is always bound to its “absolute center” and therefore cannot acquire multiple (external) perspectives upon itself. Hence, the constitution of the lived body as a physical body necessarily presupposes the co-constitutive function of the other that, to be sure, has already been excluded from the primordial sphere. As a result, Husserl’s argument runs into circularity. As I show in Sect. 3, this circularity can be avoided if bodily self-constitution in the genuinely egoic sphere is correctly understood.

  7. “Inwiefern ist nun doch mein Leib, und in Notwendigkeit, Körper,,wie ein anderer“und ermöglicht so nicht nur überhaupt Ähnlichkeit mit andern Körpern innerhalb der Gattungsgemeinschaft Körper, sondern solche Ähnlichkeit, dass ich zu einer Appräsentation eines andern Leibes und Subjekts kommen kann, und wie ist diese neuartige Apperzeption geleitet von der Apperzeption „mein Leib“, wie ist die Apperzeption „anderer Leib“und „Mensch dort“möglich?”.

  8. Merleau-Ponty, especially with an inspiration from Cézanne, distances himself from the long metaphysical tradition that privileges sight in its coinciding with what is seen and holds that the sort of reversibility in touching-touched also takes place in the most robust visual experience (Cf. Dastur 2000, pp. 40ff; Dillon 1988, chapter 9). For Merleau-Ponty, it is the reversibility or chiasm of the flesh as such that reveals our original experience in the world. As he puts it in The Visible and the Invisible, “[w]hat is open to us, therefore, with the reversibility of the visible and the tangible, is […] a presumptive domain of the visible and the tangible, which extends further than the things I touch and see at present” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, pp. 142–143).

  9. „Mein Leib ist der einzige, an dem ich […] in absolut unmittelbarer Weise erfahre, derart daß ich in eins nicht nur das Ding Leib und sein dingliches Gehaben wahrnehme, sondern zugleich mein psychisches Leben, und endlich beides eben in eins: das Sich-verleiblichen des letzteren im ersteren, das Sich-ausdrücken des einen im anderen.“

  10. Rudolf Bernet recently pointed out that, however intimately the experience of touching and that of being-touched are intermingled, the difference between what a hand feels from the inside and what a hand feels from the outside is never abolished. And he further suggests that the non-coincidence of the touching and the touched hand points to a sort of distance in proximity, of separation of the inseparable, which is “the most original experience of a bodily spatiality” (Bernet 2013, p. 51).

  11. In a footnote in Ideas II, Husserl briefly suggests another solution, i.e., that the self-produced voice serves as the first bridge of empathy before the child has developed other forms of sensory similarity, be it visual or tactual (Hua IV, p. 96/101; cf. de Preester 2008, p. 134). However, given the priority of tactility over other sense modalities such as vision and hearing in Husserl’s discussions of bodily constitution, it is reasonable to think that the observation concerning vocalization is simply an example of the experimental character of Husserl’s philosophic work.

  12. “Ist nun das Wesentliche dies, eben dass nicht eine blosse starre ruhende Dingähnlichkeit da ist, auch nicht eine blosse Ähnlichkeit des Gehabens von Dingen, denen ich bloss zusehe, also nach ihres Sich-veränderns und der Kausalität ihrer Veränderungen. Sondern eine Ähnlichkeit eines ,Gehabens’ mit meinem leiblichen Gehaben als leiblichem.”

  13. “Endlich ist noch folgendes hervorzuheben: Indem aller Seinssinn von Aussendingen zurückbezogen ist hinsichtlich aller ontischen Gegebenheitsweisen, der orientierten, auf die Nahsphäre der Berührbarkeit und Greifbarkeit, der praktischen, unmittelbaren Vermöglichkeit des Schiebens, Stossens etc., sind alle Aussendinge -- immer in der Primordialität, im Rahmen meiner eigenen originalen Erfahrung -- eo ipso zurückbezogen auf meinen berührenden Leib.”

  14. “Die Reduktion meiner Erfahrungswelt auf meine original erfahrbare führt zwar zur original von mir erfahrenen Natur, aber Natur in einem subjektiven Modus und nicht als homogene Natur, in der der eigene Leib und die ‚Aussendinge‘gleichstehen. Die notwendigen Besonderheiten, in denen mein Leib in der originalen Erfahrung von anderen für mich erfahrbaren Dingen unterschieden ist, bedingen es, dass mein Leib keine Bewegung im Raum in demselben Sinn zulässt, der zu jedem anderen als offene Möglichkeit gehört” (Hua XIV, p. 413).

  15. “Wir eine Welt von Körpern haben mit Wesenseigenheiten, die alle Körper haben können, und Menschen (Tiere) haben, die durch ,Seelen’ausgezeichnet sind, fast als ob es nur eine besondere Dingklasse, ein besonderer Typus wäre mit besonderen Klasseneigenschaften, wie etwa Holz und Eisen.”

  16. “Er [Leib] wirklich jeden äusseren Körper gleichsteht, und korrelativ jeder äussere Körper ihm – wenn also der ursprüngliche Gegensatz von Nullkörper und Aussenkörper in einem homogenen Körperbegriff zur Aufhebung kommt, ebenso wie der Begriff des Nullraumes und des äußeren Raumes.”

  17. A related issue in this connection is, as an anonymous referee suggested, whether the full-fledged constitution of one’s own body presupposes the function of empathy, or whether it is rather a prerequisite for empathy. As Held points out in his classic 1972 paper, it is Husserl’s view that the twofold manifestation of the lived body can be “solipsistically” constituted, i.e., constituted without referring to the other. But to perceive one’s own body as a physical body in the fullest sense is an accomplishment together with the co-constitution of another subject—i.e., it is mediated by empathy (Held 1972, footnote 42). Correlatively, the constitution of homogeneous space is a further accomplishment of empathy, for it is in essence a space for everyone.

  18. “Wir haben nun in Bereich der Nähe, was eine Möglichkeit ist, eine Ding, das unseren Leib […] äusserlich gleich oder ähnlich ist. Offenbar wird eine solche Ähnlichkeit direkt wirksam, vor allem tastmässig, hinsichtlich einzelner Organe auch visuell.”

  19. De Warren (2009, pp. 235ff) and Dillon (1988, p. 166) employ this phenomenon in different ways. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas takes “caresss” to be a similar yet even more intimate representative of tactual contact between oneself and the other, for he believes that the phenomenon of sensual caress exemplifies a non-objectifying sort of interpersonal relation (Levinas 1969, pp. 256ff).

  20. “Unmittelbare Mitteilungen, oder besser, Berührung, ursprünglichen Konnex zwischen Ich and Du herstellende, in der ursprünglich erfahrenden Einfühlung: Wir haben das ursprüngliche Erlebnis des Einander-gegenüberstehens.”

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Acknowledgments

This paper is developed out of my Ph.D. research at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, and I want to express my gratitude to Dan Zahavi and Søren Øvergaard for their supervision and constant help. I also want to thank an anonymous reviewer for Husserl Studies whose comments have enhanced clarity and fluency in various formulations of this article. This paper is supported by the Chinese National Foundation for Social Science (No. 14ZDB018).

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Luo, Z. Motivating Empathy: The Problem of Bodily Similarity in Husserl’s Theory of Empathy. Husserl Stud 33, 45–61 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-016-9192-x

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