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… Read More ›
talk therapy
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 –… Read More ›
Kant’s Treasure Hard-to-Attain: Why Kant Scholars are Engaged by Folktales
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… Read More ›
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… Read More ›
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 http://www.mostlyglass.com… Read More ›
Empathy in the Context of Philosophy, the book and comments on it
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…. Read More ›
Debunking Metzinger on the Self
Nothwithstanding the critical result of this review (essay), Thomas Metzinger’s contribution to the rehabilitation of introspection and the phenomenology of experiential consciousness is substantial. The rehabilitation of introspection is critical path for my own work on empathy, since one approach to… Read More ›
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… Read More ›
Empathy and Altruism: From Possibility to Implementation
The argument of today’s conversation is that empathy is required in order to get from the possibility of altruism to its implementation. A logical space is available to establish a link between empathy and the austere ethics of duty (“deontology”)…. Read More ›
Empathy Lessons 