Philosophical Perspectives on Empathy: Theoretical Approaches and Emerging Challenges

199 Pages·2018·1.221 MB·English

by  Derek Matravers, Anik Waldow

Philosophical Perspectives
on Empathy
Empathy—our capacity to cognitively or affectively connect with other
people’s thoughts and feelings—is a concept whose defi nition and meaning
varies widely within philosophy and other disciplines. Philosophical
Perspectives on Empathy aims to advance research on the nature and
function of empathy by exploring and challenging different theoretical
approaches to this phenomenon.
The fi rst section of the book explores empathy as a historiographical
method, presenting a number of rich and interesting arguments that have
infl uenced the debate from the Nineteenth Century to the present day. The
next group of essays broadly accepts the centrality of perspective taking in
empathy. Here the authors attempt to refi ne and improve this particular
conception of empathy by clarifying the intentionality of the perspective
taker’s emotion, the perspective taker’s meta-cognitive capacities, and the
nature of central imagining itself. Finally, the concluding section argues
for the re-evaluation, or even rejection, of empathy. These essays advance
alternative theories that are relevant to current debates, such as narrative
engagement and competence, attunement or the sharing of mental states,
and the ‘second-person’ model of empathy.
This book features a wide range of perspectives on empathy written by
experts across several different areas of philosophy. It will be of interest
to researchers and upper-level students working on the philosophy of
emotions across ethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology,
and the history of philosophy.
Derek Matravers is Professor of Philosophy at The Open University. His recent
work includes I ntroducing Philosophy of Art: Eight Case Studies (Routledge,
2013); F iction and Narrative (OUP, 2014); and Empathy (2017). He directs,
along with Helen Frowe, the AHRC-funded project Heritage in War.
Anik Waldow is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Sydney. She has published articles on sympathy, the role of affect in the
formation of the self and associationist theories of thought and language.
She is the author of Hume and the Problem of Other Minds (2009). She has
an Australian Research Council Discovery Project on the ‘Experimental
Self’ and the role of embodiment in cognition.
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Philosophical Perspectives on Empathy
Theoretical Approaches and Emerging Challenges
Edited by Derek Matravers and Anik Waldow
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com
Philosophical Perspectives
on Empathy
Theoretical Approaches and
Emerging Challenges
Edited by Derek Matravers and
Anik Waldow
First published 2019
by Routledge
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction 1
DEREK MATRAVERS AND ANIK WALDOW
PART I
Empathy as a Method 11
2 Empathy: Affect, Language and Cognition in the
Discovery of the Past 13
ANIK WALDOW
3 Emotional Engagement in Scientifi c Biographies 28
NICK JARDINE
PART II
Empathy and Perspective Taking 43
4 Empathy, Mentalization and Meta-Refl ective Capacities 45
ELISA GALGUT
5 The Object of an Empathetic Emotion 60
DEREK MATRAVERS
6 What Can We Learn From Taking Another’s Perspective? 74
HEIDI L. MAIBOM
vi Contents
7 Sympathy and Projection, and Why We Should Be Wary
of Empathy 91
LOUISE BRADDOCK
PART III
Challenges to Empathy 109
8 Exploring Enactive Empathy: Actively Responding to
and Understanding Others 111
DANIEL D. HUTTO AND ALAN JURGENS
9 Understanding Individual Agency: How Empathy and
Narrative Competence Cooperate 129
KARSTEN R. STUEBER
10 Empathy Without Sharing: Empathetic Responsiveness
in Psychoanalysis and Politics 144
KATE ABRAMSON AND ADAM LEITE
11 An Imaginative-Associative Account of Affective Empathy 167
TALIA MORAG
List of Contributors 185
Index 188
Acknowledgements
The research that led to the publication of this volume was supported
through the British Academy Leverhulme Small Grant Scheme and the
research support schemes of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and
the School for Philosophical and Historical Inquiry of the University of
Sydney. Many of the chapters in this volume were developed in com-
munication with the group members of the Interdisciplinary Network
on Sympathy, Empathy and the Imagination and we would especially
like to thank Louise Gyler, Maarten Steenhagen, Holly High, Katherine
Harloe and Riana Betzler for their inspiring inputs and discussions as
well as our invited guest speakers and audiences in Cambridge, Oxford,
Sydney and Bloomington. We are also grateful for the fi nancial sup-
port of the Intellectual History Network of the University of Sydney and
the Institute for Advanced Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington,
through which two of the group meetings could be fi nanced. St. John’s
College generously supported our workshop meetings at Oxford, and
the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science supported our
workshop meeting in Cambridge.

1 Introduction
Derek Matravers and Anik Waldow
1. Empathy
Within philosophy, discussions of empathy can be found in (at least) the
philosophy of mind (the ‘mindreading’ debate); the philosophy of the emo-
tions; moral theory; and the philosophy of psychoanalysis. Despite the
intensity of debates over recent years, we do not seem to be converging on
an agreed view on either the nature of, or the importance of, the concept.
Indeed, not much seems to have changed since Dominic Lopes wrote that
‘experts characterize what they call “empathy” in several incompatible
ways, and perhaps the defi nitions glom onto distinct phenomena, none of
which has the sole claim to the title of “empathy”’ (L opes 2011) . There
are, however, certain features that are commonly held to be part of the
mix such as imagining oneself in another’s situation (or imagining being
another in the other’s situation) and replicating another’s mental state.
The essays in the collection reveal a growing concern, among some from
a variety of backgrounds, to shift the balance away from this towards
some broader conception. However, as is also clear, there are those that
resist this shift of focus.
The history of the concept is well known to those who work in the
area, at least in outline. As the standard narrative goes, the term came
to prominence in discussions in German aesthetics in the late nineteenth
century (as E infühlung ).1 However, what is less well known is that the
transition from the British context, where Hume and Smith argued for the
aesthetic and moral importance of sympathy in the eighteenth century, to
the German interest in E infühlung as an aesthetic category, was crucially
infl uenced by Herder’s engagement with key aspects of Scottish sentimen-
talism. Following Hume and Smith, Herder used the term Einfühlung
to denote a process through which we can understand other persons’
thoughts and feelings, and made this capacity central to his moral theory;
but he also considerably widened the focus of the debate when consider-
ing how sympathy fi gures in the more general endeavour of rendering the
world and other people intelligible to us (see Waldow’s contribution to
this volume). Thus, he argued that, in addition to its moral and aesthetic