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Table of Contents
Introduction An Example and a Working Definition The Anglo-American Tradition Humes Many Meanings of Sympathy Adam Smiths Philosophy of Sympathy Contractualism and Sympathy in Rawls Nagels Incomplete Version of Empathy Empathy as a Moral Criterion in Slotes Ethics of Caring The Continental Tradition Nietzsches Empathy of Smell Complements His Suspicion The Challenge to Empathy of the Event of the Holocaust Ethics Against Empathy in Levinas Empathy in the Context of Psychoanalysis and Ethics A Common Root of Empathy and Ethics References and Further Reading
1. Introduction
The words sympathy and empathy can be distinguished in several ways. Some of these distinctions are controversial, and work is needed to make them more precise. For example, sympathy is frequently used to mean one persons response to the negative affects (suffering) of another individual, leading to prosocial (helping) behavior towards the other. In contrast, empathy generally includes responding to positive affects as well as negative ones without, however, necessarily requiring doing anything about it (no pro-social behavior required). Sympathy is understood to include agreement or approbation whereas empathy is often, though by no means always, a relatively neutral form of data gathering about the experiences and affects of others. Sympathy means a specific affective response such as compassion or pity whereas empathy once again encompasses affects in general including negative ones such as anger, fear, or resentment. The words empathy and sympathy both point to the ancient Greek root pathos in the etymological context of modern English (Partridge 1966/1977). Pathos in turn means to suffer in the sense of to endure, to undergo, or to be at the effect of. A single mention in Aristotle in the original Greek of empathes
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occurs in Aristotles On Dreams in which the coward experiences intense fear upon imagining that he sees his enemy approaching. In the original Greek, the references to empathes are few and marginal, generally meaning in a state of intense emotion, passionate emotion, or much affected by, a distinctly different meaning than it has today. The short list of other occurrences in antiquity is filled out by a single reference each in Plutarchs Lives, in Flavius Jospheus Antiquitates Judaica, and Polybius Histories (entry on empathes in Liddell and Scott 1940). In contrast, the number of references to sympathy is hundreds of entries long and is diverse, extending from Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and frequently breaking though to the English in Shakespeare. The meanings include the constellation of ones that we would recognize including agreement, pity, compassion, transmission of affect, and suggestibility. In the English language empathy simply did not exist prior to Cornell University psychologist Edward Bradford Titchners neologism in translating the German word Einfhlung as empathy in his lectures based on his work in the laboratory of Wilhelm Wundt (E. B. Titchener (1909)). Arguably the German is best captured by a phrase such as feeling ones way into, but the advantages of a single word also have merit. Thus, it is technically an error, but one with an underlying kernel of truth, when one of the foremost researchers on empathy uses empathy as a substitute for sympathy as in the following from Hoffman: And the British version of utilitarianism represented by David Hume, Adam Smith, and others for whom empathy was a necessary social bond, finds expression in current research on empathy, compassion, and the morality of caring (2000: 2, 123). As noted, the word empathy did not exist in the English language when Hume (1739) and Smith (1759) write about engaging the foundations of morality in sympathy, the latter being the only word they used. Yet Hoffman captures an aspect of the truth as the word sympathy itself as used by Hume and Smith included the communicability of affect and emotional contagion, which today we would also count as inputs to empathy without, however, reducing empathy to emotional contagion and low level transmission of affect without remainder. Prior to the arrival of the word empathy into the English language, sympathy captured the distinction communicability of affect, onto which additional meanings were layered. Hume and Smith are the main witnesses to this development. With the arrival of the word empathy, the difference between a method of data gathering about the experiences (sensations, affects, emotions) of other individuals and the use of this experience for ethically relevant processing, decision making, and evaluations was able to moved into the foreground. Meanwhile, the Continental tradition reenacts in its own terms some of the same challenges in the German language that occurred around sympathy in the British tradition. Starting with Herder (1772/1792; see also Forster 2010: 19), and reaching to the 20th century in the writings of the phenomenologists such as Husserl, Scheler, and Stein a group of terms around fhlen [to feel] was occurring. Thus: mitfhlen, to feel with or sympathize and nachfhlen, to feel vicariously or even to feel after as in an after-image of a feeling. All these semantic distinctions emerged alongside einfhlen, to empathize or to feel ones way into (Scheler 1913/22; Forster 2010: 39). Wilhelm Dilthey dismissed Einfhlung in favor of nacherleben [reexperiencing, reliving], nachfhlen (and Verstehen [understanding]) (see Makkreel 1975: 6-7, 252, 290). However, the point where these two traditions intersect is precise. The German psychologist Theodor Lipps translated Humes Treatise of Human Nature into German (1739/1904 Hume/Lipps) even as Lipps was completing his own Aesthetik (1903). Lipps eventually published the translation of Hume in two volumes in 1904/1906. Without directly borrowing what Hume said about sympathy, Lipps made empathy (Einfhlung) into the foundation of his aesthetics and an account of other minds. While sympathy comes across into German as sympathie, the seed was planted for the close connection between sympathy and (aesthetic) taste that developed into an entire aesthetic (Lipps 1903) in which Einfhlung (empathy) plays the central role. An entire generation of thinkers, including Freud , Husserl, and Heidegger, was inhibited from using the precise term empathy [Einfhlung]. Further more, when they did use it in the context of overcoming otherness, they marginalized it. This was because they were reluctant to invoke echoes of Lipps psychology of beauty and art as well as Lippss solipsistic reveries that the individual psyche is what animates and enlivens nature and other individual through projective empathy. Scheler got it accurate dismissing Lipps projective empathy. One of the innovations in the use of empathy in the 1950s is by the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut (1959, 1971, 1977, 1984; Goldberg 1999). Kohuts use is based on his view of philosophy of science (see the Hartmann-Nagel debate (Hartmann, 1959; E. Nagel 1959)) rather than in any usage in Freud, who mostly neglected the word but not the underlying distinction (Trosman & Simmons 1972; Freud 1909 where Einfhlung is explicitly used). Kohuts use of empathy is a method of data gathering oriented towards a listening-based immersion in the affective, experiential, and mental life of the other person. However, even in a relatively value neutral inquiry such as psychoanalysis, the use of empathy as a method of data gathering has turned out to be relevant to ethics. Issues arise around the coherence and integrity of character and the self as a bulwark against unethical behavior such as rampant cheating, drug abuse, gambling, moral malaise and other individual, social, and communal ills.
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idea of the other individual as its source; additionally, it encompasses the power of suggestion; and, finally, it comes to include an element of benevolence. How this series of transformations unfolds is the topic of this story as the meaning of sympathy evolves from a communicability of affect to the responsive sentiment of compassion which is one of the essential ways that we regard sympathy today. Always the astute phenomenologist, the philosopher, David Hume, witnesses the divergence of sympathy into components that will blend with the judgment of taste, taking on an irreversible dimension of evaluation, across both an ethical and aesthetic dimension. Other components identified by Hume develop into the form of human empathy known to us as the mere communicability of affect, subject to further cognitive processing. By the time Hume writes his 1741 essay Of the delicacy of taste and passion, he assimilates all the advantages for human interrelations of sympathy such as friendship, intimacy, interpersonal warmth to delicacy of taste (1741: 25-28; 1757: 3-24). Humes contribution to the transformations of sympathy has a significant subtlety and depth that deserves a substantial treatment of its own much longer than that engaged here. By sympathy Hume does not initially mean the particular sentiments of pity or compassion or benevolence but rather the function of communicating affect in general. Relying on his simple psychology of ideas and impression, sympathy reverses the operation of the understanding, which converts impressions of sensation into ideas. In the case of sympathy, the operation is in the other direction from idea to impression. Sympathy arouses ideas in the recipient that are transformed into impressions though this time impressions of reflection through the influence of the ideas. Thus, the operation of sympathy: Tis indeed evident, that when we sympathize with the passions and sentiments of others, these movements appear at first in our mind as mere ideas, and are conceivd to belong to another person, as we conceive any other matter of fact. Tis also evident, that the ideas of the affections of others are converted into the very impressions they represent, and that the passions arise in conformity to the images we form of them (T 2.1.11.8; SBN 319-20). Sympathy reverses the operation of the understanding, which transforms impressions of sensation into ideas. Sympathy arouses impressions through the influence of ideas. The functional basis of this sympathetic conversion will turn out to be the imagination. In this view, sympathy is not to be mistaken with some particular affect such as pity or compassion, but is rigorously defined by Hume as the conversion of an idea into an impression by the force of imagination (T 2.3.6.8; SBN 427). The others anger gets expressed and is apprehended sympathetically as an idea, which idea is communicated to me, and, in turn, through the sympathetic work of the imagination, arouses a corresponding impression of my own. This is an impression of reflection that is fainter and calmer than the initial idea (or impression) of anger. (An impression of reflection is an impression of an idea or (in some cases) of a vivid impression.) I thus experience what may be variously described as a trace affect, a counter-part feeling, or a vicarious experienceof anger. In short, the one individual now knows what the other is experiencing because she experiences it too, not as the numerically identical impression, but as one that is qualitatively similar. This operation of sympathy, at least in this example, is also crucially distinct from emotional contagion, as in the mass behavior of crowds, since the passion and sentiments are conceived to belong to another person. This is crucial. This introduces the other and the distinction between one individual and the other. Significantly, the concept of the other accompanies the impression that is aroused in the one individual as a result of the others expression. Hume distinguishes between sympathy and emotional contagion (T 2.1.11.2; SBN 316-7; T 3.3.2.2; SBN 592). Sympathy requires a double representation. What the other is feeling is represented in a vicarious feeling, which is what sympathy shares with emotional contagion. However, sympathy in the full sense also requires a representation of the other as the source of the first representation, conceived to belong to the other person (T 2.1.11.8; SBN 319-20). The distinction other is what is missing in the case of emotional contagion. Hume establishes sympathy as the glue that affectively binds others to oneself and, by implication, binds a community of ethical individuals together. One of the undisputed masters of the English language in his own day (and ours), Hume asserts that the minds of men are mirrors to one another, not only because they reflect each others emotions, but also because those rays of passions, sentiments and opinions may be often reverberated and decay away by insensible degrees (T 2.2.5.21; SBN 365). Here one does experience an immediate resonance (reverberation) with the other, perceiving pleasure in the smile, pain in the grimace, or anger in the clenched teeth. In this case, a counterpart feeling a vicarious feeling is aroused in oneself and, in turn, becomes the experiential basis for further cognitive activity about what is going on with the other person. However, Hume finds now that he is at risk of having undercut ethics by giving to sympathy such a central role in creating community. Experience shows that sympathy is diminished by distance of time and proximity and relatedness (acquaintance). We are much less affected by the pleasures and pains of those at a great distance than by those in our immediate physical vicinity or (say) close family relations. So an earthquake in China creates less sympathetic distress in me than an earthquake in Los Angeles (in my own country), even if I am perfectly safe in either case. According to Hume, my ethical approbation of (and obligations to) those at a great distance from me are no less strong than to those close at hand. The balance of impartiality needs to be restored by appealing to an unbiased ideal observer. In turn, this sets up a tension between the sympathetic observer of the moral agent and the ideal, unbiased one. Unbiased does not mean unsympathetic; yet it does not mean wholly sympathetic either. This is an issue. The ideal observer and the sympathetic one are complementary at best, and possibly even contrary. Being sympathetic reduces distance between individuals; being an ideal observer creates distance. Let us now look at two possible ways of resolving the tension between the ideal observer and sympathy as the basis for moral approbation and disapproval. (Slote will have a third approach considered in detail further below.) The first is due to Stephen Darwalls reading of Hume as going beyond moral sentiment (at least implicitly) to rule regulation in accounting for such artificial virtues as justice and related convention-based virtues like adhering to contracts. Hume says that the motivation to justice is produced through sympathy in observing the beneficial results of justice (Darwall 1995: 314-5). Indeed Hume expresses what would become a very Kantian approach, though whether he does so consistently is an issue: [W]e have no real or universal motive for observing the laws of equity but the very equity and merit of that observance (SBN: 483). And: Tis evident we have no motive leading us to the performance of promises, distinct from a sense of duty. If we thought, that promises had no moral obligation, we never shoud feel any inclination to observe them (SBN 518; quoted in Darwall 1995: 302). It is easy to agree with Darwalls general conclusion that Hume points towards the result that a virtue such as justice requires a rule-based obligation without explicitly embracing it, going beyond empirical naturalism, to account for justice. Through Darwalls argumentative force, subtlety, and mastery of the details, both sympathy and the ideal observer are undercut, resulting in a Hume that reads much like Kant. This is not Humes point of view, though he anticipates and inspired Kant. Hume is not a closet Kantian. Sympathy is a source of information about the experience of the other individual. But that is not all. Humes commitment is that, in addition to the latter, sympathy is also a source of morality. Thus, Hume is constrained to evolve sympathy in the direction of compassion and benevolence to maintain his program. Darwall does not follow him there, but, as we shall see, it is a matter of controversy whether the modern account of empathy should do so. The second approach is a reconstruction of the disinterested spectator as the sympathetic spectator. In other words, the key term disinterested means lacking a conflict of interest, not unsympathetic in the sense of inhumanly cold-hearted. The ideal spectator has to be sympathetic, not in the sense of benevolent (which sympathy has come to mean in part thanks to Humes usage), but in the sense of openness to the communicability of affect. Appreciating what the other is feeling is a useful, though not always decisive, data point in evaluating the ethical qualities of the agent being considered in the judgment of approbation. It makes a difference in contemplating the moral worth of someone making a charitable gift whether it is done with the feeling of pleasure in being better than the poor wretches who are its beneficiaries or with a trace feeling of the suffering of the other individual, which ones gift might relieve. What the other is experiencing is useful input to the process of ethical assessment of the quality of character of the individual in question. As sympathy is enlarged in Hume beyond the narrow scope of ones family and friends, it gives way to benevolence, an interest in the well-being of all mankind, as the basis of morality, while sympathy as a term used by Hume is trimmed back and reduced to emotional contagion. Historically, what Hume does next is to develop his understanding (and definition) of sympathy in the direction of benevolence. Sympathy converges with benevolence as the latter supplements it in the founding of morality in an Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). Without appreciating the consequences for his use of sympathy, Hume starts developing the idea in the direction of benevolence, the latter being specific benefits that interest us in the good of mankind: Tis true, when the cause is compleat, and a good disposition is attended with good fortune, which renders it really beneficial to society, it gives a stronger pleasure to the spectator, and is attended with a more lively sympathy (T 3.3.1.21; SBN 585).
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Virtue in rags is still virtue, as Hume famously notes, and sympathy interests us in the good of all mankind (society) (T 3.3.1.19; SBN 584), including communities distant from us in location or time. In answering the objection that good intentions are not good enough for morality, Hume argues back in so many words that good intentions are indeed good enough, granted that good intentions plus good consequences (results) are even better. However, sympathy has now taken on the content of benevolence, that is, an interest in furthering the well being of mankind, not just being open to mans experiences, including suffering. By the time Humes Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is published in 1751, sympathy has been downgraded to the power of suggestion, nothing more; and the basis of morality is shifted to such sentiments as benevolence, displaying qualities useful and agreeable to oneself and others. In the following passage in Treatise, we witness Humes development of the meaning of sympathy. Sympathy migrates from a communicability of affect, which includes a concept of the other that aligns with the modern concept of empathy, towards a narrower, but not exclusive, sense of emotional contagion. Within the context of the Treatise, Hume builds a complete sense of sympathy out of the contagiousness of the passions by adding the idea of the other to the communicability of affect. In the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals the contagiousness of the passions is all that will remain of sympathy: Tis remarkable, that nothing touches a man of humanity more than any instance of extraordinary delicacy in love or friendship, where a person is attentive to the smallest concerns of his friend. . . The passions are so contagious, that they pass with the greatest facility from one person to another, and produce correspondent movements in all human breast. Where friendship appears in very signal instances, my heart catches the same passion, and is warmed by those warm sentiments, that display themselves me (T 3.3.3.5; SBN 604-5). When put in context, this points to a remarkable development in Humes thinking. Hume moves sympathy from the center to the periphery of his account of human judgments (approbation and disapproval). This is complimented by the contrary movement of taste from the periphery to the center. The social advantages of sympathy in forming human relationships friendship, enjoyment of the characters of men, fellow feeling, and sensitivity to how ones actions have an impact on others are shifted elsewhere, amazingly enough in the direction of the aesthetic sense of taste. Hume explicitly writes: Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood; the latter give the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue (1751: 173f., 269; emphasis added). Thus, Hume is engaging in what we might describe a journey back from morality to its foundation and infrastructure in taste. By 1751, sympathy has been reduced in Humes work to natural sympathy, which overlaps substantially with what we would today call the power of suggestion. The merit of benevolence and its utility in promoting the good of mankind through attributes useful and agreeable to oneself and others looms large in founding morality (for example, Hume 1751: 241). By the time of the Enquiry (1751), the push down of sympathy behind compassion and taste is complete. The reactive aspects of sympathy get split off and migrate in the direction of compassion. Compassion takes on the content of qualities useful to mankind as benevolence. Taste dominates the field of fine-grained distinctions in the communicability of feelings between persons (friends) as well as in the appreciation of beauty. This former point is essential. Taste gives us an enjoyment of the qualities of the characters of persons in conversation, humor, and friendship that are a super-set of what empathy does today in our current usage with its fine-grained distinctions in accessing the experiences of other persons. The prospect of delicacy of sympathy in the social realm of human interrelations is left without further development by Hume. The true heir to Humes undeveloped delicacy of sympathy, without, however, explicitly having any idea of it, is the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut whose transformations of empathy include humor, appreciation of art, and wisdom (Kohut 1966). The other main witness to the vicissitudes of sympathy is Adam Smith, to whom we now turn.
Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others, sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever (1759: 49). Here sympathy is not some separate reactive affect that occurs in witnessing the pain and suffering of another individual. Rather sympathy operates as the communicability of affect (the passions) regardless of the particular passion. Fellow feeling is used as a high level category that enables Smith stylistically to suggest nuances and fine-grained distinctions in his phenomenological descriptions. An argument might be made that, when all is said and done, sympathy and fellow feeling are used synonymously by Smith. For example, in defining sympathy, Smith cannot use the same term without succumbing to the logical fallacy of petitio principi: As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation [. . . . ] [I]t is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations [. . . .] By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensation, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. [. . . .] That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations . . . (1759: 47-8) In addition to using fellow feeling to define sympathy, the mechanism by which sympathy operates is the imagination. Specifically, it is the taking of the perspective of the other in the others situation. This points to three results. (1) If sympathy is not synonymous with fellow feeling, then what is the difference? Sympathy is not responsive in the sense of pity or compassion, the latter being reactions to the suffering of another. Yet sympathy has its responsive dimension. Sympathy requires a responsive approbation or disapprobation of the beneficial or mischievous conduct of the other individual. In Smith, sympathy is fellow feeling plus (dis)approbation: That where there is no approbation of the conduct of the person who confers the benefit, there is little sympathy with the gratitude of him who receives it: and that, on the contrary, where there is no disapprobation of the motives of the person who does the mischief, there is no sort of sympathy with the resentment of him who suffers it (1759: 143; chapter abstract). This is a definitive textual answer. Of course, little sympathy is perhaps distinct from absolutely and positively no sympathy. But this is just understatement for effect. Sympathy is simply missing in the case of an unmerited boon conferred by a would-be benefactor. The bounds of (dis)approbation align closely with those of sympathy. Ultimately, sympathy is the basis of the moral sentiments for Smith because to sympathize with means to align with the estimation of right or wrong based on fellow feeling. The nuances that arise are many and varied; but Smith is more consistent than he is generally credited in standardly using sympathy as the source of intuitions about the merit (or demerit) of other individuals. This extends not only to their conduct but in the heartfelt attitude they bring to the conduct and its consequences. When we sympathize with the other approving or disapproving based on the others perspective (not ones own) then we are aligned with the values of the shared community, especially the community of well-bred English gentlemen. When sympathy breaks down, when we have no fellow feeling with the other, then it is a strong indication that the other has put himself outside the community and is blameworthy, lacking merit. The result is an ethics of the well-bred English gentleman, including his attachments to reputation, prudence, temperance, and so on. In addition, Smiths spectator-like perspective aligns with that of the second person in contrast with Humes which has a closer resemblance to that of the third person. Stephen Darwall is keenly aware of this and makes the point: It is not far wrong, indeed, to think of Smith as one of the first philosophers of the second person, if not the very first (Darwall 2006: 46). In many contexts, especially those is which (dis)approbation is not the main issue, Smiths use of
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sympathy is indistinguishable from communicability of affect. This has led some commentators to equate Smiths use of sympathy with empathy pure-andsimple. Thus Darwall, keenly aware of his own second person inquiry: I prefer to use sympathy for feelings of concern for others that are felt, not entirely as from their own point of view, but as from a third-person perspective of one who cares for them, and to use empathy for feelings that either imaginatively enter into the others standpoint or result from his feelings by contagion (Darwall 2006: 45). Of course, Darwalls previous point is that Smiths usage (unlike Humes) is precisely to take the second person perspective. Therefore, for Darwall, Smiths usage of sympathy requires revision to equate sympathy with the third-person perspective, leaving room to rewrite the text using empathy. However, Darwall arguably overlooks the point indicated in the above-cited quote that, for Smith, sympathy is fellow-feeling plus (dis)approbation, not fellow feeling pureand-simple. (2) Do we merely conceive what we ourselves should feel in the like situation or are we allowed (or even required) to take on the characteristics of the other in so far as we are able to do so? This is similar to the question How complete is the identification with the other? While the above-cited text suggests that the one individual carries his or her characteristics into the situation of the other, the analysis does not stop there. To be sure, a person never completely stops being himself; yet the meta-rule is to put oneself in the others situation with the others character and circumstance: But though sympathy is very properly said to arise from an imaginary change of situations with the person principally concerned, yet this imaginary change is not supposed to happen to me in my own person and character, but in that of the person with whom I sympathize. When I condole with you for the loss of your only son, in order to enter into your grief, I do not consider what I, a person of such a character and profession, should suffer, if I had a son, and if that son was unfortunately to die; but I consider what I should suffer if I was really you; and I not only change circumstances, but I change persons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account, and not in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore, in the least selfish (1759: 501-2). We imagine what it would be like to be the other person with the others character. The ideal spectator runs a cognitive simulation in which one may indeed begin with ones own characteristics as input, but quarantines ones own peculiarities in favor of those of the other. To be sure, such an exercise is bound to be imperfect and incomplete. There is a strong identification, yet it remains transient, temporary, and incomplete. At that point, sentiments of approbation or disapprobation emerge, which inform the individuals moral assessment of the situation and the other person in it. (3) What is involved in feeling what the other feels, yet not approving of it? Smith allows an extensive continuum of degrees of fellow feeling, reaching from a slight hint of what the other is feeling to full blown identification. Sympathy mostly falls in the middle of this spectrum, a transient and trial identification with the other, soon interrupted. The one individual feels what the other feels, yet not quite as intensely. It seems as though there ought to be a logical space for the possibility of fellow feeling without sympathetic (dis)approbation, given that these are not completely synonymous. Yet it does not seem to occur to Smith to allow it. Consider the situation of the condemned criminal about to be hanged. When an inhuman murder is brought to the scaffold, though we have some compassion for his misery, we can have no sort of fellow-feeling with his resentment, if he should be so absurd as to express any against either his prosecutor or his judgment (1759: 145). Indeed we adopt the sentiments of the prosecutor and judgment. Taking a hint from Smiths language here, we can say that the criminal has placed himself outside the limits of the human community with his murderous deeds, a human community from which he is about to be ejected by being hanged. The lesson learned here is that we may have compassion for lower forms of life, but sympathy is arguably co-extensive with the human and defines the foundation of our participation in the community. For Smith, sympathize with is synonymous with align with the others feeling in such a way as to approve or disapprove along with the other (not a quote from Smith, but Smiths bottom line).
magisterial A Theory of Justice (1971) contains sections on features of the moral sentiments and moral psychology, including a discussion of sympathy and the impartial sympathetic spectator. After the parties in a would-be society have adopted the principles of justice as fairness in the original position, the result is Kantian. Natural abilities such as strength, intelligence, inherited gifts, are unevenly distributed to individuals but are a collective asset so that the more fortunate are to benefit in ways that help those who are least well endowed. Inequalities are arranged for reciprocal advantage. By abstaining from the exploitation of the accidents of nature and social contingencies with the framework of equal liberty and the difference principle, persons express their respect for one another in the constitution of society itself (Rawls 1971: 179). Can this capture the utilitarian approach of the impartial, sympathetic spectator? At first it seems that it can: Now while it is possible to supplement the impartial spectator definition with the contract point of view, there are other ways of giving it a deductive basis. Thus suppose that the ideal observer is thought of as a perfectly sympathetic being. Then there is a natural derivation of the classical principle of utility along the following lines. An institution is right, let us say, if an ideally sympathetic and impartial spectator would approve of it more strongly than any other institution feasible in the circumstances. For simplicity we may assume, as Hume sometimes does, that approval is a special kind of pleasure [. . . ] This special pleasure is the result of sympathy. In Humes account it is quire literally a reproduction in our experience of the satisfactions and pleasures which we recognize to be felt by others [. . . .] Mens natural capacity for sympathy suitably generalized provides the perspective from which they can reach an understanding on a common conception of justice. (1971: 185-6) In either case, contractual or utilitarian, the argument moves in the direction of fairness and equilibrium; yet the original (contractual) position more accurately captures the human condition namely, that individuals have distinct abilities and gifts. In Rawls original position, the parties are behind the veil of ignorance, disinterested and lacking knowledge of their natural abilities or social situation. Inequalities are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone. In contrast, the classical utilitarians have perfect knowledge and sympathetic identification. Both result in a correct estimate of the net sum of satisfaction. But classical utilitarianism fails to distinguish between persons, in effect collapsing distinct persons with distinct abilities into a one dimensional, impartial sympathetic spectator. The parties in the original position would not agree to the approvals of the impartial sympathetic spectator as the standard of justice, according to Rawls. Why not? Such a spectator does not have access to the concept of risk the risk that one might be born poor and marginalized rather than (say) rich and in the main stream. It simply is not captured. The veil of ignorance is designed to yield principles of justice as fairness whereby, even if your antipathetic enemy is choosing what role you will play in society (presumably you will end up poor and with limited natural abilities), the advantages that the other party has will be distributed in such a way as to contribute to everyones advantage. In contrast, for the impartial sympathetic spectator to yield justice as fairness, the parties are conceived as perfect altruists, whose desires conform to the approvals of such a spectator. The greater net balance of happiness with which to sympathize, the more a perfect altruist achieves his desire (1971: 189). In fact, the world is filled with individuals with competing interests, who, moreover, are antipathetic (hostile) to one another, and the utilitarian aligns everyones interests in a most counter-intuitive way. Justice is not necessary unless individuals are antipathetic and the interests of individuals come into conflict, the actual situation of the real world. In a world of conflicting interests, sympathy still has a role to play in transmitting affects, but it is not foundational. Is there then a logical space between self-interest and duty to account for the relationship between empathy and altruism?
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compassion, and so on). These are powerful motivators of moral behavior, and as such deserve cultivation, but are logically dubious founders of it. This argument enables Thomas Nagel (1970) in effect to say Act so as to reduce the pain (of persons) in the world. Depending on ones perspective, this is a special case by way of generalization of the self-interested maxim to act so as to reduce my own pain along with I am in the world with others and we are all others (persons). For example, in being altruistic, both my own pain and that of the other are regarded impersonally. Actions that reduce my pain remain self-interested in an obvious way I am no longer in pain. Acts that reduce the pain of the other are just an impersonal version of my acting to reduce the pain experienced personally. The next step was not taken by Nagel who elsewhere disparages a version of empathy based on an incomplete and misleading definition. Nagel calls for an objective phenomenology not dependent on empathy or the imagination (1974: 402); but this phenomenology may turn out to be inconsistent with his commitment to finite human understanding. Without empathy and the imagination, the bats experience becomes the inaccessible thing in itself (ding an sich). The bat is the one who does not know what it is like to be a bat, since the bat lacks my concept of battiness (not to mention such distinctions as echo-location, flying mouse, and mammal). In Nagel 1970 he writes: Any justification ends finally with the rationally gratuitous presence of the emotion of sympathy; if that condition were not met, one would simply have no reason to be moral (1970: 11). Here sympathy means pity or compassion or benevolence, rather than the possibility of communicating any possible affect or sensation, which was Humes initial and primary meaning of sympathy (see Hume 1739: 319). Yes, I should so act to reduce the pain in the world, including the others and my own too. But how do I know the other is in pain? The answer is empathy. In any particular situation and with apologies to Kant, altruism without empathy (sympathy) is like a concept without intuition. The vicarious experience of the others pain and the processing of it in empathic receptivity and interpretation is an essential part of how the would-be altruist comes to know of the others distress. This does not mean I cannot be wrong. It means that I can advance from the possibility of altruism to its implementation in actual situations through marshalling, capturing, and organizing the evidence of interrelational receptivity through empathy. Having established then that empathy provides an essential input to ethical altruism, is it perhaps capable of being elaborated into a foundation for an ethics of caring?
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Slote proposes that empathy more precisely, empathic caring is a moral criterion. Are we then obligated to strive to develop our empathy (empathic caring) so that we are equal to the criterion? Slote does not explicitly assert that we are obligated to develop our empathy; yet without empathy we do not flourish as humans. Slote asserts that he does not advocate implementing an obligation to be empathic. However, this risks getting stranded on the horns of a dilemma. First of all, such an obligation (Slote asserts) would set a bar too high for most people, given that we do not get training in empathy, and so risk violating the ought implies can injunction. That is, we cannot create an obligation, which we know in advance that we cannot live up to. Yet if we are to advance to fully developed empathic concern do we not have an obligation to develop empathy even if it is not required in any particular situation? At the very least, empathy would be an imperfect duty to self and others similar to developing ones talents and gifts empathy, humor, charity, wisdom and using them to create community and a flourishing society. Fully developed empathic concern is doing a lot of the work for Slote here. It will contain all the conditions and qualifications required to restrict empathic concern from requiring supererogatory deeds. Empathic concern does not. Empathic concern includes those geographically remote, and excluding them would unfairly subject them to violations of obligations. Empathic concern allows for the development of empathy in those whose initial (natural) endowments of it may be less generous than the average individual (practice improves talent). The argument is instructive and useful as well as ad hoc. In order to preserve empathy as a moral criterion, even against these issues, Slote argues against describing empathy as partialist (favoring those near and dear). Slote argues against the common sense intuition that people initially seem to have less empathy towards those who are different different race (skin color), different religion, different gender, different diet than those to whom one is partial such as ones family (2007: 35). Unfortunately, distrust seems to be the default attitude towards strangers, and often with good reason. Therefore, in a reaction formation meant to manage mistrust, many traditional cultures make it obligatory to shelter and protect guests. What better way than carefully to keep watch over them than to declare they are guests? It is a further question of how the example of the Good Samaritan affects our own empathic receptivity as potential (ideal) observers of the would-be moral agent. In observing the suffering of the victim of the robbers as well as observing the Samaritans empathic suffering with the victim, we (as observers) have several empathic experiences. Like the Samaritan, we empathize directly with the distress of the victim. We also experience the suffering of the Samaritan who experiences a double pain. The Samaritan experiences first the vicarious experience (pain) of the suffering of the victim. In addition, the Samaritan experiences the pain experienced in sacrificing his own time, effort, and money in interrupting his (the Samaritans) trip, binding up the victims wounds, and leaving him with the Inn Keeper, promising to pay for any additional expenses upon his return. If the Samaritan gives himself credit for his good deed, in effect saying to himself I acknowledge myself as an agent for doing the right thing in a tough spot, then we (as observers) can arguably also have an empathic experience of the warm feeling of that self acknowledgement. Slote finds in this experience a second order empathy (Slote 2010: 39) that contains a warm feeling of approval. Slote then finds in this experience an important contribution to the moral basis of an ethics of caring. Some critics find this second order empathy to be a misdescription of the phenomenon, mistaking a response of what Hoffman calls sympathetic distress towards the suffering of the other for empathy (Hoffman 2000: 87-8). Indeed Hoffman, who is consistently cited by Slote with agreement, clearly distinguishes empathic distress from sympathetic distress, granted that Slote does not use such a distinction. For empathy to become an input to morality, it is first transformed from empathic distress into sympathetic distress, at which point the latter can become the motive for pro-social (altruistic) behavior such as the Samaritans (Hoffman 2000: 87-88). It is a matter of controversy that empathy includes a warm feeling of approval (as asserted by Slote 2010: 36-41). Slote implicitly lines up with Rawls where approval provides a special kind of pleasure, granted that Rawls (like Hume) restricts the argument to sympathy (Rawls 1971: 185-6). Approval or disapproval is not the only ethical response possible. Empathy is distinct from (ethical) approval in that it gives rise to a whole host of downstream responses (reactions). As distinct from empathy, certain forms of antipathy can also be marshaled as when a (hostile) enemy of the traveler experiences Schadenfreude (delight at someones misfortune) upon witnessing the latters misfortune. Indeed what makes the parable so powerful and dramatic is that the Samaritan (Palestinian) is actually the enemy of the victim, but through empathy recognizes suffering humanity and then in a separate decision acts ethically and humanely like a neighbor, not an enemy. Thus, the altruistic person must frequently deal with overcoming empathic distress that is, a too intensely felt experience of the others pain that goes beyond a vicarious experience of pain and becomes the individuals own pain pure-and-simple (Hoffman 2000: 87-8). Empathic distress can become so intense that one tries to flee from the situation rather than engaging other alternatives such as helping. Under this interpretation, instead of just being hard-hearted (which remains a possibility in principle), empathic distress is what happened to the first two would-be helpers who passed by the victim/traveler, crossing the road due to this empathic distress in order to put distance between themselves and the source of suffering. However, one may object, does this not raise the bar too high on altruism? Altruism occasions a triple pain. It now produces three episodes of pain first the initial distress (for example) of traveler waylaid and beaten by robbers; second, the vicarious experience of the victims pain as experienced by the would-be Good Samaritan; and finally the sacrifice (pain) incurred by the Samaritan in aiding the victim. Of course, if successful, altruism eliminates the initial suffering of the victim and by implication the vicarious pain in which the Good Samaritan is empathically connected to the target of altruism. This leaves altruism only with whatever pain is caused by the cost and effort incurred in aiding the victim. In contrast, empathy is left with the initial suffering, the vicarious experience of pain, and the question of what, if anything, to do about the suffering disclosed by ones empathy. Of course, one possible answer is to act altruistically. Alternatively, one could also simply cross over cross the road and pass by. Thus, in answer to the objection that this analysis through empathy sets the bar too high for altruism, the answer is direct. Altruism is indeed a high bar; but one which we are challenged by and, with ethical effort, able to surmount. Empathy tells us what the other is experiencing; altruism what to do about it.
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Essay, Section 11). Behind the Christian love of the meek that inherit the earth Nietzsches empathy discovers a trace affect of ressentiment ; behind the antiSemitism of the Church of Rome lies the vengefulness and hatred of slave morality. What passes for virtue is lack of opportunity for badness. Undertaking an inquiry into the formation of ideals such as the Christian Last Judgment, the Kingdom of Heaven, and [Christian] faith, hope, and love, using his empathy, Nietzsche discovers an empathic trace affect of the intoxication of sweet revenge. His suspicion then uses these traces to unmask pretensions. All the while, rhetorically exclaiming, Ill open my ears again (Oh! Oh! Oh! And close my nose) (1887: First Essay, Section 14). Nietzsches empathic debunking continues. He quotes from Dante and the Church Father Tertullian that the pleasures of the blessed in heaven will be enhanced by watching from above the tortures of those who are damned in Hell. Not empathy but rather what has come to be called, even in English, Schadenfreude an enjoyment (Freude) at the damages (Schaden) being done to another. Yet even Schadenfreude implies an empathic communication of affect, since the observers enjoyment is enhanced by a deep grasp of the suffering of the damned, an appreciation enhanced by a trace affect of the suffering. However, the relationship of Schadenfreude to empathy is one of reactive antipathy. Schaenfreude like sympathy is reactive. In addition to the communication of affect, it includes a response to what is transmitted. Instead of approval or disapproval as in the case of sympathy, the response in Schadenfreud is one of enjoyment at the suffering of the other. Bad conscience (guilt) seems like a mark of advancing civilization. However, suspicion fulfilled by empathy discloses otherwise. Bad conscience is an illness. The more advanced the civilization, the more advanced the guilt. This illness (bad conscience) is hostility, cruelty, destructiveness turned against oneself. This causes the gravest and uncanniest illness, from which humanity has not yet recovered, mans suffering of man (1887: Essay Two, Section 16). Individuals who escape bad conscience are rare. We can at least envision the possibility in figures in literature such as Achilles, Faust, or Nietzsches own cipher Zarathustra, the latter in his better moments of recovery from the great contempt. Nietzsche drives forward his empathic inquiry into the suffering of modern persons and their ideals by a debunking of ascetic ideals. Following his nose and his empathy Nietzsche calls again, And therefore let us have fresh air! fresh air! And keep clear of the madhouse and hospitals of culture! (1887: Third Essay, Section 14). The result? The priest does not discharge the ressentiment of the modern mass of men, leading their lives of silent desperation and suffering; rather the priest alters the direction of the ressentiment and turns it against the individual: This is brazen and false enough: but one thing at least is achieved by it, the direction of ressentiment is altered (1887: Third Essay, Section 16). In conclusion, using a suspicion informed by empathy, Nietzsche famously asserts the position: man would rather will nothing than not will, setting the stage for nihilism. Nietzsches empathy points to hidden (and not so hidden) suffering in unexpected places art, science, religion, philosophy, and, above all, morals. However, in every case, a pattern emerges. Empathy complemented by suspicion shows that it is not so much suffering that man dreads as sufferings meaninglessness. Thus, ascetic ideals give meaning to mans suffering by holding out asceticism as a path to something higher. However, some events defy both suffering and meaning and leave us numb, like a deer in the headlights. We now turn to one such event.
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Such examples as psychopaths and Nazis allegedly using empathy point in the direction of multiple empathic phenomena such as emotional contagion, gut reactions, and primal pity, that are not empathy pure-and-simple but rely on the same somatic and semantic functions. The distinction between the psychopath or Nazi getting inside ones head and being empathic is a fine one. Like other diseases of empathy such as autism, the behavior and motivations lie along a continuum between extremes. At one extreme, empathy is conspicuous by its absence. At the other extreme, low level empathic functioning is in evidence as emotional contagion along with and aspects of pathological (or criminal) behavior in a high functioning, educated individual, who also enjoys aspects of normal empathy. The anti-foundationalist argument asserts that empathy whether fully developed or not does not supply its own ethical application. Empathy does not supply its own ethical justification. Empathy does indeed supply the otherness of the other simply stated, the other. It is a separate step to care for the other, say, altruistically, or not care for the other. The empathy provides me access to the suffering of the other. It is a further step to take action to reduce that suffering in line with ones conscience and other ethical conditions and qualifications. Thus, the supposedly empathic Nazi spends the day shooting the helpless enemies of the Aryan race and feels a full measure of suffering (of the victims), because his mirror neurons are working normally; but instead of saying Look how they suffer says Look how hard my work is look how much I suffer. The fall back position for the Anglo-American philosopher such as Slote is to argue that full, adult human empathy requires an education (along the lines of Hoffmans inductive discipline) that leads one to experience strongly with the distress of others. Such an induction of the others distress with ones own results in an inhibition of deliberate harm to the other. But wait. We already have that. Its not induction of empathy that is needed. This hypothetical Nazis is already suffering, but continues to shoot due to a defective, misguided sense of duty to the Fuhrer. He needs instruction in ethics: Killing is wrong, regardless of what the Fuhrer says. As noted above, this example is discussed by Hannah Arendt in the context of Himmlers animal pity for his men under one interpretation (not necessarily Arendts) how he provided leadership as an empathic Nazi (Arendt 1971a: 105-6). The counter-counter-argument is direct. It is not empathy that inhibits ones performing harm but rather an ethical prohibition against doing so, regardless of whether one enjoys inflicting pain or not, that stops the hurtful action. In that sense, empathy doesnt care it tells you how the other feels whereas ethics tells one what one ought to do about it. In the final analysis the Nazis or psychopath exemplifies a pathological, distorted, immoral use of empathy. It is a part of the possibility of empathy to be so used and abused, though human beings with integrity and character will undertake the positive development of empathy so that the misuse does not occur or is made less likely. Of course, this has the distressing implication that we are perhaps not as different from the average, everyday Nazi in regard to our empathic capacities as we might want to imagine.
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insufficient, misdirected, or distorted empathy, the growing, developing person (child) is incomplete. In severe cases of lack of empathy the result is hospitalism (Spitz 1946), profound emotional detachment and lack of connectivity similar to infantile autism. In cases of less severe but still traumatic failures of empathy in parent-child relatedness, the results are defects of the self, similar to but not reducible to character disorders, displaying features of narcissistic grandiosity or the seemingly compulsive pursuit of materialistic ideals of status, stuff, and the conventional success of the inauthentic mass man. The social malaise spreads, displaying ethical failings from road rage to children demanding the latest stuff to school yard bullying, precipitating suicide. Getting something for nothing, inner emptiness, immature grandiosity, and fragile self-esteem are characteristic of disorders of the self, resulting from defective and incomplete empathy (Riker 2010: 15-18). Lack of self-regulation is expressed as the numbers of people who are overweight reaches epidemic proportions, psychiatric sedatives and mood stabilizers (that is, drugs) are a growth industry in avoiding ethical responsibility and the (imperfect) duties of developing ones talents. Addictions and chronic over-indulgence in alcohol, gambling, sex, recreational (illegal) drugs, and rampant cheating on everything from school testing to income tax to faithlessness to ones spouse express an unhealthy sense of entitlement. Individuals strive to bandage over the pervasive feelings of inner emptiness and feelings of being a fake in spite of the external trappings of material success. The resulting image is a Nietzschian one everywhere fragments of persons and no where a complete, whole human being, capable of engaging life with integrity (wholeness). The antidote is empathy. Empathy functions as an on-going process of distinguishing, sustaining, and strengthening the structure of the self. Paradoxically, the structure of the self is distinguished, sustained, and maintained through failures of empathy, but failures in a phase appropriate, non-traumatic context that enable growth and development going forward. In itself, empathy provides symptom relief to emotional upset and behavioral acting out with drugs or sex, which, as symptom relief, does not last over the long run. Empathy comes into its own when, in an on-going empathic relationship, empathy breaks down and fails in a phase-appropriate, non-traumatic way. These non-traumatic failures of empathy occur within a context of successful empathy that lays down and builds psychic structure in the self. This structure enables the individual to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as setbacks, breakdowns, defeats as well as accomplishments inevitably arise in the course of life. Empathy becomes the foundation of an ethics of excellence through its contribution to the development of the self. Empathy heals the self, and a well-integrated self is one able to sustain the commitments required to keep ones word, avoid cheating and self medication with alcohol and recreational drugs, productively engage in satisfying activities and relatedness to others, and contribute to the community. Empathy is a form of receptivity to the other; it is also a form of understanding. In the latter case, one puts oneself in the place of the other conceptually. In the former, one is open experientially to the affects, sensations, emotions that the other experiences. Undertaking an ethical inquiry without empathy sensitivity to what is happening to and with the other would be like engaging in an epistemological inquiry without drawing on the resources of perception. Thus, empathy is a method of access as well as a foundational structure as such.
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J. Decety & C. Lamm. (2006). Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience, The ScientificWorld Journal 6 (2006), 1146-1163. Just as the title says. M. A. Diego and N. A. Jones. (2007). Neonatal antecedents for empathy, Empathy in Mental Illness, T. Farrow and P. Woodruff, eds. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Without empathy, the infant is damaged emotionally and behaviorally, resulting in autistic- and psychotic-like symptoms. M. A. Diego and N. A. Jones. (2003). Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life. New York: Henry Holt. Same as Ekman below. Paul Ekman. (1985). Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage. New York, W.W. Norton. Develops the idea of micro-expressions betraying otherwise hidden affects, which are relevant inputs to further empathic processing (the latter not discussed by Ekman). Should be read along with Hume. T. Farrow and P. Woodruff, eds. (2007). Empathy in Mental Illness. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Diseases of (absent) empathy such as autism, psycho-pathy, hospitalism; the neurological infrastructure in mirror neurons, extending to philosophy. S. Freud. (date unknown). The Standard Edition of Freuds Works, tr. under the supervision of James Strachey, 24 volumes. London: Hogard Press, 1955-64. S. Freud. (1909). Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, tr. J. Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton, 1960. Most of the occurrences of Einfhlung [empathy] in Freud occur in this work, which explicitly references Lipps, who Freud owned and marked. Michael N. Forster. (2010). After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Herder applies Einfhlung [empathy] to understanding difficult texts and interpretations, obtaining clear priority in publication over Lipps and other users of the concept. Vittorio Gallese. (2007). The shared manifold hypothesis: Embodied simulation and its role in empathy and social cognition, Empathy in Mental Illness, eds. Tom Farrow and Peter Woodruff, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Argues for a shared (empathic) manifold based on mirror neurons. Arnold Goldberg. (1999). Being of two Minds: The Vertical Split in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press. Examples of empathy based on immersion in listening to the other. Pat Greenspan. (1980). A case of mixed feelings: ambivalence and the logic of emotion, Explaining Emotions, ed., A. O. Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ambivalent feelings happen, requiring revising our understanding of consistency and rationality. Ralph R. Greenson. (1960). Empathy and its vicissitudes, International Journal of Psychoanalysis 41 (1960): 418-24. Empathy as building a model of the other and using it to capture the other. H. Hartmann. (1959). Psychoanalysis as a scientific theory. Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method, and Philosophy: A Symposium, ed. S. Hook. New York: New York University Press, 1964: 3-37. This is the philosophy of science being debated at the time that Heinz Kohut was writing his first empathy article (Kohut 1959). Lawrence J. Hatab. (2000). Ethics and Finitude: Heideggerian Contributions to Moral Philosophy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Contains a chapter on empathy and engages empathy on the critical path of the existential foundation of ethics. Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo, Richard L. Rapson . (1994). Emotional Contagion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Emotional contagion is input to affective processing by empathy (the latter not otherwise engaged). Martin Heidegger. (1927). Sein und Zeit . Tbingen: Max Niemeyer, 1972. See below. Martin Heidegger. (1927). Being and Time, tr. J. Stambaugh. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996. Martin Heidegger. (1927). Being and Time, trs. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Two references to a special hermeneutic of empathy [Einfhlung] as part of engagement (and dismissal) of Scheler and Stein; a significant indirect contribution to empathy. Johann Gottfried von Herder. (1772/1792). Philosophical Writings, tr. and ed. M. N. Forster. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Applies Einfhlung [empathy] to understanding difficult texts and interpretations, obtaining clear priority in publication over Lipps. Martin L. Hoffman. (2000). Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Rich engagement with moral issues, distinguishing empathic distress and sympathetic distress. David Hume. (1739). A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). Above SBN refers to the Selby-Bigge edition and T refers to the Chapter, section, and paragraph in the Clarendon edition text. Many meanings of sympathy as engaged herein. David Hume. (1739/1904). Ein Traktat ber die menschliche Natur in 2 Bnden, tr. Theodor Lipps. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1904/06. The point where Lipps (1903) was enlightened about the relevance of empathy to taste and beauty. David Hume, Of the delicacy of taste and passion (1741) in Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill: 1965. Leaves a logical space for a delicacy of sympathy open and undeveloped. David Hume, Of the standard of taste (1757) in Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill: 1965. The standard of taste perceives a micro impression that the ordinary person does not perceive, leaving a logical space open for an undeveloped delicacy of sympathy (that is, delicacy of empathy). Edmund Husserl. (1929/35). Zur Phnomenologie der Intersubjectivitt: Texte aus dem Nachlass: Dritter Teil: 1929-1935, ed. I. Kern. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Husserliana XV. Dozens of references to Einfhlung [empathy] as it migrates from the periphery and superstructure of intersubjectivity to the foundation of community. M. Iacoboni. (2005). Understanding others: Imitation, language, and empathy, Perspectives on Imitation: From Neuroscience to Social Science, S. Hurly and N. Chater, eds. Vol. 1 (76-100). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Seeking a philosophical description of how mirror neurons bind us together in empathy M. Iacoboni. (2007). Existential empathy: the intimacy of self and other, Empathy in Mental Illness, eds. Tom Farrow and Peter Woodruff, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Philip L. Jackson, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Jean Decety. (2005). How do we perceive the pain of others? A window into the neural processes involved in empathy, Neuroimage 24 (2005). Hans H. Kgler and Karsten R. Stueber, eds. (2000). Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Emphasizes Verstehen. Hans H. Kgler. (2000). Empathy, dialogical self, and reflexive interpretation: The symbolic source of simulation, Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences, Hans H. Kgler and Karsten R. Stueber, eds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. As the title says. Heinz Kohut. (1959). Introspection, empathy, and psychoanalysis, The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 7: 459-83. Empathy (vicarious introspection) as a data gathering method, defining psychoanalysis. Heinz Kohut. (1966). Forms and transformations of narcissism. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 14: 243-272. Empathy is related to humor, appreciation of art, and wisdom, enhanced in working through the self (narcissism). Heinz Kohut. (1971). The Analysis of the Self . New York: International Universities Press. Identifies two new forms of transference and empathy in each in the context of the self. Heinz Kohut. (1977). The Restoration of the Self . New York: International Universities Press. Arguably the book that Kohut was trying to write in 1971, exploring the role of empathy as the oxygen in which the well-being of the self flourishes. Heinz Kohut. (1984). How Does Analysis Cure? eds. A. Goldberg and P. E. Stepansky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The short answer is empathy; the longer answer is phase appropriate (non traumatic) failures of empathy that get worked through in therapy. Emmanuel Levinas. (1961). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, tr. A. Lingis. Pittsburgh, PA: Dusquesne University Press, 2007. Provides empathy against ethics with so much to say about The Other; so little, about empathy, which latter falls on the side of totality, not infinity. H. G. Liddell and R. Scott. (1940). A Greek-English Lexicon.
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Revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940. T. Lipps. (1903). Aesthetik . Hamburg: Leopold Voss, 1903. Einfhlung [empathy] is engaged as the basis of the experience of beauty. T. Lipps . (1909). Leitfaden der Psychologie. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann Verlag, 1909. Einfhlung [empathy] is engaged as the basis of our experience of other minds [fremden Seelen Lebens]. Bonnie E. Litowitz. (2007). The second person, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 57: 1129. Distinguishes between the dialogical and dyadic contexts in which empathy flourishes. Rudolf Makkreel. (1975). Dilthey: Philosopher of the Human Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Embraces re-experiencing (nacherleben) and Verstehen rather than empathy. E. Nagel. (1959). Methodological issues in psychoanalytic theory. Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method, and Philosophy: A Symposium, ed. S. Hook. New York: New York University Press, 1964: 38-56. The philosophy of science being debated at the time that Heinz Kohut was writing his first empathy article (Kohut 1959). Thomas Nagel. (1970). The Possibility of Altruism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Paperbacks, 1978. Arguably, empathy implements altruism, which is (still) possible. Thomas Nagel. (1974). On What Its Like to Be a bat, The Minds I, eds. D. R. Hofstadter & D. C. Dennett. New York: Bantam Books, 1981. Empathy pushed into a footnote. Friedrich Nietzsche. (1887). On the Genealogy of Morals, tr. W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage/Random House, 1969. Uses empathy (but not the word) to inform his sense of smell and suspicion. Frederick A. Olafson. (1998). Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics: A Study of Mitsein, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Christine Olden. (1956). On empathy with children, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 8 (1956: 111-26). Eric Partridge. (1966). Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1977. Adriaan Peperzak. (1997). Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. An introduction with so much to say about The Other and so little about empathy. The latter falls on the side of totality, not infinity; it is empathy against ethics. John Rawls. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Engages sympathy as part of his analysis of altruism. John Riker. (2010). Why Its Good to be Good. New York: Jason Aronson Press. Self psychology (Kohut 1977, 1984), with its focus on empathy and restoring integrity to the self, addresses ethical issues such as rampant cheating, addiction, selfishness, and (unethical) narcissism. Max Scheler. (1913). Zur Phnomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefhle in Schelers Spte Schriften in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Maria Scheler and Manfred Frings. Vol. 9, Bern: Francke Verlag 1976. Max Scheler. (1913/22). The Nature of Sympathy, tr. Peter Heath. Hamden: CN: Archon Books, 1970. An insightful analysis of the distinction between vicarious feeling, shared feeling, and projective empathy. Michael Slote. (2007). The Ethics of Care and Empathy. London: Routledge. Empathic caring as a moral criterion and the moral aspects of the ethics of care. Michael Slote. (2010). Moral Sentimentalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A rich engagement in which empathy provides an intelligible mechanism for moral approval and disapproval, lending philosophic rigor to the mere metaphor of moral sense (and sentimentalism). Adam Smith. (1759). The Theory of the Moral Sentiments. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics 1969. Sympathy recruits the imagination and fellow feeling to align with a sense of (dis)approbation, defining the limits of the human (ethical) community. R. A. Spitz. (1946). Hospitalism: a follow up report. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 2: 113-117. First researcher to document that without empathy (affectionate care taking), institutionalized (hospitalized) infants sustain serious emotional, behavioral damage, simulating autism and psychosis; provided significant input to B. Bettelheim. Edith Stein. (1917). On the Problem of Empathy, tr. Waltraut Stein. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970. Thoroughly debunks Lipps and (arguably) taught Husserl everything he knew about empathy in Ideas II; yet fails to surface a deep analysis of the underlying intentionality of the other in relation to the act of empathy. Karsten R. Stueber. (2006). Rediscovering Empathy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Stueber endorses the approach of the philosopher Donald Davidson, and, if the latter had engaged empathy, he might have developed an argument similar to this one. Edward B. Titchner. (1909). Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes. New York: Macmillan. First translation into English of Einfhlung as empathy. H. Trosman and R. Simmons. (1972). The Freud Library, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 21 (1973): 646-87. Tracks the two dozen or so references to Einfhlung in Freud. J.D. Trout.(2009). The Empathy Gap. New York: Viking Press. Empathy falls short of reason; and reason falls short of empathy. Desmond Tutu. (1999). No Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday. Lauren Wisp. (1987). History of the concept of empathy, Empathy and its Development , N. Eisenberg & J. Strayer, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A collection of quotations. Lauren Wisp. (1991). The Psychology of Sympathy. New York: Plenum Press. A collection of quotations; we now know who said what and when they said it. Dan Zahavi. (2005). Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Bradfordbook/MIT Press. Lively engagement with empathy, narrative, Heidegger, Husserl, Ricoeur, and Sartre.
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Lou Agosta Email: LAgosta@acm.org U. S. A.
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