This post explores the parallel – the analogy – between empathy and taste. Such a parallel is justified by invoking the tradition in which empathy is made the basis of aesthetics. Instead of regarding this basis as a historical confusion, the grain of truth to which this tradition points is explicated in terms of an analogy between taste (in the Kantian sense) and empathy. A full, robust definition of empathy makes use of the four moments of the judgment of aesthetic taste – disinterestedness, universality, purposiveness without finality, and necessity. Empathy then also brings in the concept of the other. This conversation is possible because empathy recruits the same underlying aspects of the human mental apparatus as does taste – the sensus communis in both forms– though it is applied differently. Please see – KantianReviewTasteEmpathy2010Feb01
February 8, 2010
January 23, 2010
Empathy and Intersubjectivity – the Legacy
As noted on the first page of the attached article, “intersubjectivity” is understood in the article to mean our interrelated being together with one another in the interhuman world of regard for and sensitivity to the feelings of other individuals (persons). My contacts in the psychoanalytic community have told me that, since the mid-1980s when my article was first published, “intersujbectivity” has taken on a life of its own in the context of self psychology and relational theory, the latter reportedly alternatingly competing with and cooperating with self psychology is a (mostly) friedly rivalry. Without wishing to claim priority, I merely note that I was not familiar with this psychoanalytic literature on intersubjectivity at the time – though, of course, ‘object relations’ was a familiar literature – either because it [intersubjective approach] only existed in nascent form in scattered article or because I simply overlooked its significance. I would be please to be corrected on the dates and emergence of the literature (so please feel free to leave a comment below). However, with the publication of Robert Stolorow and G.E. Atwood’s (1994) Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations of Psychological Life, among other works, the intersubjective approach comes into its own. At this point, my intention is to note the distinction in the development of the term “intersubjectivity” without pretending to give an account of the points of convergence or divergence. That remains a future task to be engaged. By the way, as far as I know, the attached PDF is not otherwise available in electronic form, and you will have to use the rotate feature on your PDF reader to rotate the pages 90 degrees or, failing that, print a hard copy to read. After having received numerous requests for it, I felt it better to make it available in some form, even if only as an imperfectly captured electronic image. See EmpathyIntersubjectivitybyAgosta
January 21, 2010
The Recovery of Empathy in a Folktale
A wonderful example of empathy and its absence is documented in one of the fairy tales (Märchen) of the collection edited by the Grimm Brothers. “The Story of the Youth Who Set Out to Learn Fear” is about a youth – the classic simpleton of the folktale – who tries to learn what shuddering is (i.e., fear in the sense of “goose flesh”). The hero-simpleton tries so hard to feel fear that he is effectively defended against all feelings. He has no feelings, not even fear. He is insensitive to others’ feelings in the everyday sense. Thus, he lacks empathy and the corresponding aspects of his being human (humanness). He is also ontologically cut off from the community of fellow travelers who share feelings empathically and on the basis of which life matters to them (and him). This deficiency occasions a misunderstanding in the narrative with the sacristan at the local church, and the youth throws the latter down the stairs, resulting in the youth’s disgrace and banishment. As in all classic folktales, the hero goes forth on a journey of exploration of both the world and of himself. He becomes a traveler on the road of life, which is the beginning of his ontological adventures to recover his feelings and become a complete human being.
For those interested, here is further detail on the story itself. Märchen von Einem der auzog das Fürchten zu lernen, translated as “The story of the youth who went forth to learn what fear was” in The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tale, (1814/17), ed. W. Grimm and J. Grimm, tr. M. Hunt and J. Stern. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972: 29f. “Grüseln” means literally “to shudder” or “get the creeps,” “goose bumps,” a classic physical expression of fear. In the Anthropology (1797: §16; 33; 154), Kant calls out “The thrill that comes over us at the mere idea of the sublime and the gooseflesh [grüseln] with which fairy tales put children to bed late at night are vital sensations; they permeate the body so far as there is life in it.” The point is, anyone lacking such an experience, as depicted in the Märchen, is hardly alive, is an emotional zombie. Bruno Bettelheim does not call out the link with empathy in his treatment of this folktale in his The Uses of Enchantment ((1975) New York: Alfred Knopf: 280-82); though, as I recall, Professor Bettelheim did make the connection in classroom discussion that I attended at the University of Chicago in the Spring of 1975. On the relevance of folktales to philosophy see, L. Agosta. (1978). “Kant’s treasure hard-to-attain,” Kant-Studien, Vol. 69, No. 4, 1978: 422-443; and also L. Agosta. (1980). “The recovery of feelings in a folktale,” Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter 1980: 287-97. Meanwhile….
The point is that empathy is not an obscure capability that requires elaborate technology to make it visible, as when researchers deploy a functional magnetic resonance imaging apparatus (fMRI) to correlate mirror neurons (though we can learn from the latter too). Rather empathy hides in plain view. This folktale, this Märchen, is in fact a ghost story, to be told on dark, windy autumn nights. The empathy of the audience is aroused by constellating fearful images of the living dead. This makes for a series of humorous encounters with ghouls and haunted castles as the youth sets about trying to learn shuddering – compulsively saying “I wish I could shudder,” having no idea what it means. The hero performs many brave deeds instead – as he is literally not sensible enough to grasp the distinction “fear” and recognize when he should be afraid. The ghost story provides a framework for images of the disintegration and fragmentation of the self, including literal ghoulish images of bowling with detached heads and a corpse that rises from the dead because the youth gets into bed with it to warm it up – a scenario quite creepy – against which the youth is firmly defended by his complete lack of feeling. None of these images and events matter to him in the way they would matter to an affectively, emotionally whole person. He is surrounded by ghouls and living corpses but, ontologically speaking, he is the one who is an affective zombie, emotionally dead. Without empathy, the individual is emotionally cut-off, i.e., dead.
The subtext of the story is that the individual cannot recover his humanity on his own. He requires the participation of another – and a relationship with the other – to restore the being human (humanness) of his feelings – and to teach him how to shudder. Having raised the curse on the haunted castle and won the hand of the fair princess, the hero finally stops trying to shudder. Only then is he overcome by shuddering at the first opportune occasion. On the morning after his wedding night – his new wife teaches him shuddering – no, this is not going where you think – she teaches him shuddering in a pun that cleverly masks the physical and sexual innuendo – she throws bowl of cold water filled with gold fish on him with the flipping gold fish included – he wakes up exclaiming that “Ach, yah, now finally I know shuddering!” Now he is finally a whole, enriched, and complete human being. Here is the original essay – caution the word “emapthy” does not occur in this essay. However, I suggest that empathy is what immediately underlies the capacity for feeling that forms the pivotal challenge faced by the protagonist in the folktale. For more details see -
JRHRecoveryFeelingFolktaleAgosta
January 18, 2010
Intersecting Conversations in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
The therapeutic dimension of philosophy attempts to give the ultimate philosophic question – those of freedom, God, and immortality – a proper place in thinking. They lie at the limits of conceptual intelligibility. Borrowing a phrase from Karl Jaspers – who, according to Hannah Arendt, was the only true Kantian since Kant – these are boundary (limit) questions, in turn, pointing to limit conditions and experiences of human existence (Existenz). These questions inevitably transcend the limits of any language whose field of reference is sense perception. They are undecidable through the use of our finite sense. They show human beings at their most anxious and vulnerable moments, facing death, life, and the finitude of time in the world of man. In the archeological metaphor of the ancient city, Freud’s language intersects directly with that of Wittgenstein. Quoting the latter: ‘Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses [1945: p. 8; paragraph 18]. Of course, Freud’s use of the ancient analogy is different than Wittgenstein’s. Freud wants to suggest that in mental life nothing which has once been formed can perish (1930, p. 69): ‘We ask ourselves how much a visitor, whom we will suppose to be equipped with the most complete historical and topographical knowledge, may still find left of these early stages in the Rome of today. Except for a few gaps, he will see the wall of Aurelian almost unchanged. In some places he will be able to find sections of the Servian wall where they have been excavated and brought to light. If he knows enough – more than present day archaeology does – he may perhaps be able to trace out in the plan of the city the whole course of that wall….’ [1930: p. 69]. Although primitive psychic structures and defenses have been replace by modern ones, still the foundations remain. Further details are attached.
Caution – the attached file is large (21MB) – so if it does not load for you, please leave me a comment and i will break it up into parts, okay? For further details see – IJPPPsychoanalysisandPhilosophyAgosta and part two – IJPPPsychoanalysisandPhilosophyAgostaPart2
January 7, 2010
Engaging Heidegger’s Special Hermeneutic of Empathy for Self Psychology – the presentation
This is a presentation engaging Heidegger’s Special Hermeneutic of Empathy from the perspective of Heinz Kohut’s Self Pscyhology. A shortened version of this is scheduled to be delivered at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis on Wednesday Feb 24th at 1:30 PM (13th floor 122 S. Michigan Ave). Open to the public – though it is always advisable to call ahead to verify the logistics and if you want to get the service lerning unit – right now, the snow is coming down in big globs here in Chicago. This is a draft. If you have any questions/inquiries that you would like me to address in the talk, please post a comment and I will address the matter in the talk (or if the answer is too long or complex, I will communicate the details separately via an email (so provide one)). Makes sense?
• This work takes its start from
– One idea in Kohut: the loss of the selfobject’s empathy leaves one apathetic, lethargic, depressed, a sense of not being human (e.g., p. 200 (How Does Analysis Cure)) and from …
- One line in Heidegger’s Being and Time where he calls for “a special hermeneutic of empathy [Einfühlung]” but does not give one – this talk is NOT psycho-biography, but (if it were) one might say that empathy was what was missing from the biography (and the psyche)…Please see attached for the PDF of the ppt… LFCAgostaEmpathy20090212
January 6, 2010
Cover Art for Empathy in the Context of Philosophy, the book
Here is the cover art for Empathy in the Context of Philosopy. The picture is the top third of a weaving by Alex Zonis, my wife. The complete weaving, consisting of 250,000 teeny-tiny glass beads can be seen at www.mostlyglass.com under her name (Zonis). Check it out. My ‘friends’ are telling me ‘Well, at least there is some talent in the family!’ In order to get at the text on the back cover, you may need to see the separate post entitled Advanced Praise for Empathy in the Context of Philosophy. I am humbled by the comments of my colleagues and friends.
November 29, 2009
Empathy and the Emotions: Unexpressed Emotions are Incomplete…
Join me today for a conversation that engages the issue of how unexpressed emotions are incomplete. The emotions constitute information processing that operates in parallel with cognition (intelligence). Translation between these two differing systems occurs frequently, but emotions are not reducible to propositional (cognitive) attitudes. On background, the overall approach to the emotions of the position in this post is that emotions are not a natural kind: There is nothing necessarily in common between basic emotions, social pretenses, and irruptive motivational reactions (“moral sentiments”). Of course, the reader will recognize tha Paul Griffiths has explored this approach, which is hereby acknowledged. With this background in place, the argument of this post is that unexpressed emotions are incomplete across all the different kinds. Empathy, as form of receptivity to the expression of emotion, implies an invitation to unexpressed emotions to attain completeness. This position is recommended to escape from the paradox that an unexpressed emotion does not exist. The occurrent but unexpressed emotion with its inchoate, emerging affective (felt) component – not a mere disposition – exists in interesting and important ways that are engaged. This position also escapes from the paradox that emotions, expressed or unexpressed, must have an affective (felt) component. Many emotions have a readily identifiable affective (felt) component, but by no means all. Three paradigm cases (and subcases) are explored in detail in the attached unpublished paper [actually an unpublished book chapter not included in Empathy in the Context of Philosophy (Palgrave, 2010) ] and used to drive the argument. The lack of expression is just as significant, though less obvious, than that of expression and arouses an empathic receptivity. The point is that the observation of small details, including empathic receptivity to micro expressions, informs the interpretive activity of empathic understanding providing as it were the means of a raid on the inarticulate. Additional consequences and the resulting dynamics of this discovery—unexpressed emotions are incomplete – for empathy are explored in this attachment: CH04EmpathyandEmotionsUnbound20090112 Please give the benefit of your feedback.
November 25, 2009
The Philosophical Significance of Neurology for Empathy – The Light Goes on!!!
Join me in a conversation about empathy and neurology. The short version is that the individual experiences empathy and the light goes on! Today’s inquiry explores the philosophical significance for empathy of the research on the mirror neurons, the related shared manifold hypothesis, micro expressions and the investigations that have grown up around them. Three of the consequences will be explicitly addressed. Evidence that such a capacity as empathy exists at all will be provided, but in the ironic spirit of proofs of common sense. In turn, the inquiry into existence will lead to the rehabilitation of introspection as a method of investigation proper to empathy, albeit with certain conditions and qualifications. Finally, the scope and limits of the shared manifold hypothesis, which conceptually implements the functional and causative role of mirror neurons, will be engaged. The result will be that the shared manifold is less transparent the more that it is shared. A bigger magnet will not make a difference. [Please see chphilsignifempathyneurology20081118 ]
November 16, 2009
The Development of Sympathy in Hume’s Thinking: From a ‘Delicacy of Sympathy’ [i.e., Empathy] to a Taste
Draft article: DraftHumeSympathy20091116Agosta
There is a long history in British empiricist philosophy that engages “sympathy.” There are at least four meanings of “sympathy” in the writings of David Hume, dating to his a Treatise on Human Nature (1739). In today’s post I want to qualify the statement that “sympathy” in Hume means what today we call “empathy.” In selected quotations where Hume conjoins the sympathetic communications of sentiments with the idea of an other individual, “sympathy” means “empathy.” In particular, “delicate sympathy” would capture those features of fine-grained distinction that are characteristic of empathy, but the possibility remains undeveloped by Hume. In the development of Hume’s philosophical activity, “delicacy of sympathy” is swallowed up conceptually by “delicacy of taste.” In subsequent passages (and here is the qualification), “sympathy” means “the power of suggestion” or “emotional contagion” (see above “contagious”; T 3.3.3.5; SBN 604-5). These different, over-lapping, not entirely consistent uses of “sympathy” exist side-by-side in the Treatise (1739) as demonstrated by the textual evidence cited in the attachment. Furthermore, “sympathy” is not a static concept in Hume; but undergoes a dynamic development. By the time of the Enquiry (1751), the push down of “sympathy” behind compassion and taste is complete. “Sympathy” migrates in the direction of compassion as it takes on the content of qualities useful to mankind as benevolence, leaving taste to dominate 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 is a super-set of what empathy does 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. Instead, Hume presents taste as the capacity to discriminate “particular feelings,” which are produced by beauty and deformity. [1] This special capacity to feel is dependent on the ability of our sensory organs to perceive the fine details of a composition. A detailed engagement with these distinctions is attached above. Please give me the benefit of your comments, feedback, criticisms, impertinent remarks – you get the idea. All signed, authenticated contributions given full credit in the footnotes if this rough draft is ever formally published.
As noted, Hume has at least four distinct meanings of “sympathy” that he uses opportunistically. First, “sympathy” functions in the communicability of affect; next it encompasses what is often described as “emotional contagion,” the communicability of affect without the inclusion of the idea of the other individual as its source; thirdly, it encompasses the power of suggestion; and, finally, it comes to include an element of benevolence, approaching the meaning of “compassion” that we hear in it today. 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 (re)active sentiment of compassion with which we regard it today. The crucial difference between sympathy in the strict sense and emotional contagion is delimited in terms of a double representation. The opportunity for Hume was to develop the parallel between a “delicacy of taste” and a “delicacy of sympathy,” the latter capturing what we moderns mean by “empathy.” This opportunity is lost, however, and the “delicate” aspects of sympathy end up being gathered together with “delicacy of taste” and buried over in the discussion of aesthetics rather than as a free standing topic in (moral) psychology.
[1] David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste” (1757), in Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965): 11.
Advance Praise for Empathy in the Context of Philosophy
Tags: blurbs, Empathy, nice comments
I am humbled by the comments of my colleagues, friends, and associates.
“An insightful and provocative exploration of a topic that has only recently begun to receive the attention it deserves and the conceptual clarity needed for a proper understanding. Agosta’s study is rich in historical context and thorough in covering the intersections of philosophy and psychology on the question of empathy. It is also accessible and stimulating for a host of applications to current concerns. Agosta rightly, in my view, finds in Heidegger a primary vehicle for advancing the discussion, yet he has his own voice and sense of how to think it through. An impressive achievement.”
Lawrence J. Hatab
Louis I. Jaffe Professor of Philosophy
Old Dominion University
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That much used and routinely abused word, empathy, has enjoyed an uncomfortable popularity in fields as disparate as politics and psychoanalysis. At last a philosopher has arrived to bring clarity to the confusion. Lou Agosta has brought together the salient points about empathy as seen in neurology, psychoanalysis and literature into a happy home under Heidegger. Heidegger calls for ‘a special hermeneutic of empathy’ but does not give one. Agosta delivers it. The book is a must-read for anyone who chooses to use the word again.
Arnold Goldberg, M.D.
Author, Misunderstanding Freud
Professor of Psychiatry
Rush University Medical College
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Lou Agosta’s Empathy in the Context of Philosophy is a vivid, sweeping, thought-provoking and attitude changing treatment of one of the central, if often neglected, ideas of our culture, namely Empathy. It collects and scrutinizes ideas from a remarkable array of sources — from neuroscience to hermeneutics, from analytic philosophy to Freudian psychoanalysis, from Grimm Brothers stories to speech acts — all the while demonstrating Empathy’s seminal role in our understanding of mind, ethics, and ourselves. If morality stands apart from empathy, Dr. Agosta also shows how it is a pre-condition of it. He does this, and quite a bit more, through a lively tour of much of Twentieth Century thought, all the way correcting some of that thought’s myopia and self-righteousness, and allows us to regain a fine understanding, perhaps lost in the travails of modern life, of what it is that both makes us human and provides the possibility of joy with others.
Joel Levin
Author of Tort Wars and of Marrano Justice
Joel Levin, Esq.
Levin & Associates Co., L.P.A.
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Empathy in the Context of Philosophy is a masterpiece of philosophical-historical scholarship, presenting a rich and comprehensive account of the explicit and implicit conceptions of empathy that have appeared in the course of Western thinking from Hume through contemporary phenomenologists, both philosophical and psychoanalytic. Agosta’s Heideggerian interpretation of empathy is truly a tour de force. In Being and Time Heidegger criticized traditional Cartesian conceptions of empathy and called for a “special hermeneutic of empathy,” presumably grounded in his analysis of existence, but he failed to offer such a hermeneutic himself. It is this missing hermeneutic of empathy that Agosta supplies, masterfully applying Heidegger’s modes of Dasein’s disclosedness to elucidate the design structure of empathic engagement, which Agosta rightfully claims constitutes the foundation of authentic relationality. This book will be an invaluable resource not only for scholars in philosophy and the human sciences, but for practitioners of psychoanalytic and humanistic psychotherapy as well.
–Robert D. Stolorow, Ph.D. [Psychology], Ph.D. [Philosophy]
Author, Trauma and Human Existence (Routledge, 2007)
http://robertdstolorow.googlepages.com
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