Abstract
In the history of philosophy as well as in most recent discussions, empathy is held to be a key concept that enables a basic understanding of the other while at the same time acting as the foundation of our moral emotionality. In this paper I want to show why empathy is the wrong candidate for both of these tasks. If we understand empathy as projection, i.e. a process of imaginary self-transposition, we are bound to presuppose a fully established interpersonal sphere. If we consider empathy as synonymous with compassion it is highly questionable if we ever reach the other person in his or her otherness. Max Scheler and other early phenomenologists offer very fruitful approaches to both problems without resorting to empathy. I will present some of their thoughts and focus especially on Scheler’s claim about the connection between the experience of the real other and the intentionality of compassion.
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Notes
At this point it seems important to mention, that neither Smith nor Schopenhauer actually use the term empathy, simply because it did not yet exist back then. However, anyone familiar with literature on the topic at the end of the 19th and beginning of the twentieth century will agree that they describe what we now call empathy. It has been pointed out that the concept as well as the theory of empathy have their origin in the romantic era. That may be true for the term, but probably not for the identification-theory. Already the Native Americans allegedly used to say that one must walk in the other’s moccasins in order to understand them. For a more detailed history of the term empathy, cf. Stueber (2006) and Debes (2015).
For a concise overview and critique of the current discussion, cf. Zahavi and Overgaard (2012).
Already amongst early phenomenologists, there was a discussion whether empathy was merely a delusion. Herbert Leyendecker writes in 1913: “Not so long ago empathy was turned out to be a source of deception by phenomenological analysis [...] and deprived of the dignity of being a source of knowledge for other minds” (Leyendecker 1913, p. 115, transl. MS). Husserl in 1914/1915 also seems to have shared this criticism: “So I would say: There is actually no empathy, as I say again: And there’s neither analogy nor transmission by analogy” (Husserl 1973, p. 338.) It seems that the expression has only returned to phenomenology with Edith Stein’s famous doctoral thesis in 1916 (cf. Stein 1970).
I’m aware that the German unvermittelt is very often translated as direct. However, I would prefer to speak of an unmediated experience and use the term direct perception exclusively for the givenness of phenomena such as sensory feelings like physical pain.
The phenomenon of immersion has its limits: The conscious or unconscious refusal to identify with a fictitious character (for example the villain of a movie) has recently been discussed as imaginative resistance (cf. Stock 2017). The phenomenon, however, is not limited to fiction: We simply can’t identify with everyone.
Woody Allen describes in his mockumentary Zelig (1983) the life of such a human Chameleon who identifies completely with his respective surroundings.
The rejection of the claim that social cognition requires any kind of reproduction of the other’s feelings does not deny the importance of emotional reproduction when it comes to other social phenomena. For example, in early childhood an unconscious appropriation of foreign feelings is unavoidable and developmentally necessary. As Babies and toddlers, we are extremely permeable to the moods and emotions of our surroundings. Another example would be the first encounter with a foreign culture: before any real understanding of the other culture can be established, there has to happen some kind of emotional alignment. However, it is very important to underline that these phenomena—although we can speak of emotional reproduction—do not entail any conscious imaginative or projective effort (Cf. Scheler about shared emotions: Schloßberger 2016).
Scheler refers to a story of W. Holmes: The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.
In older definitions of the term empathy this is still very evident, today it sometimes tends to be obscured; see for example the definition in the Dictionary of Ideas of 1973: “Empathy is the idea that the vital properties which we experience in or attribute to any person or object outside ourselves are the projections of our own feelings and thoughts” (Gauss 1973, p. 85).
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Schloßberger, M. Beyond Empathy: Compassion and the Reality of Others. Topoi 39, 771–778 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09636-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09636-7