Empathy. A Schelerian Perspective in the Contemporary Debate

The aim of this dissertation is to reassess empathy from a Schelerian perspective, taking into consideration and keeping abreast with contemporary debates on the matter. Although Scheler’s best-known books (GW II, GW VII) are being widely examined in the current phenomenological discussions on empathy and we-intentionality, the complex view that emerges from his texts of different periods is still largely overlooked by current phenomenological discussions. My studies show that a clarification of the problematic concept of empathy can be better achieved by adopting adequate Schelerian instruments, so they have been applied when investigating the relations of empathy with the phenomena of body schema, expressivity and we-intentionality. Firstly, as Scheler grounds other-perception on the expressive possibilities of the lived body, I delve into the concept of body schema, which has been scarcely studied in Schelerian terms so far. After examining the interdisciplinary literature on the topic, I highlight the viewpoint which stems from Die Idole der Selbsterkenntnis and Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, since it lets us understand the body schema both as a pre-reflective dynamic structure allowing fluid interactions with the world, and as the first level of individuation. Moreover, I study two examples from the Formalismus – the “jail example” and the “example of the new-born” – and, to indicate an early distinction between the body schema and the body image, I compare the first case with the experience of solitary confinement and the second with up-to-date evidence from infant research. Through this inquiry, I draw attention to the body schema as the minimal form of self-individuation necessary for ordinary experience, and as a space between self and others which both allows empathy and is shaped by it. Secondly, by shedding light on the interrelational aspect of the body schema, I argue that others highly contribute to its development, and interactions themselves depend on bodily expressivity and affective exchange. Infant research shows the newborn’s early – if not innate – acquaintance with the implicit grasping of the affective meaning of some expressions, which can be compared with Scheler’s thesis of a universal grammar of expressivity. To ascertain how universal this grammar is to be conceived, I carry out an analysis of Darwin’s and Ekman’s accounts, and of the counterarguments to the universality of any expression. I dismiss such objections, state that a difference exists between universal spontaneous expressions and gestures, and claim that the universality of certain emotions extends beyond the visibility and expression of them (e.g. jealousy). This is followed by the claim that what is called the “direct perception” in the contemporary debate implies an axiological dimension for Scheler, a theory of values which gives a further nuance to the non-neutrality of perception. If we did not access expressivity and values directly, but through explicit attention and reasoning, our perception would become solipsistic and similar to schizophrenic autism. Thirdly, the inquiry into the roots of empathy (the lived body and expressivity), is followed by the study of the very concept of empathy. In order to reassess how Scheler can help define the difference between similar phenomena, his theory is compared to what is being discussed in current interdisciplinary debates. Although Scheler locates unipathy at the foundational level for empathy, I counter the view that sees the acquisition of an affective state as a requirement for empathy, for Scheler’s Nachfühlen presupposes detachment and awareness of the feeling pertaining to the other agent. Moreover, such a thesis does not fall into the solipsistic problems of the theory theory and the simulation theory; in particular, a focus on the latter points out that it causes egocentrism on the ethical level, and that even the embodied simulation – which states that empathy is bodily grounded – leads to multiple theoretical impasses. The final section deals with the question whether empathy or “sharing” is primary, and the attempt to understand the connections between the two. I take sharing to have a broader meaning than we-intentionality, and to start already from what Scheler calls “sharing without awareness” in unipathy and affective contagion. In this regard, the comparison with the theory of extended emotions can help understand that affects are not actually locked in the bodily dimension. Scheler’s hotly-debated example of the grieving parents and the four group-forms that he lists are taken into account to prove that empathy can have a genetic role for we-intentionality, but not always a constitutive one. The highest degree of interconnection (solidarity and absolute responsibility) also corresponds to the highest individuation (the person). Lastly, I argue that the “co-execution” (Mitvollzug) of personal acts (GW II; Cusinato 2015b, 50; 2017, 48) represents a unique kind of sharing, and read it as the ethical direction that is essentially absent in empathy, although sharing becomes possible thanks to the non-solipsistic roots examined at the beginning of the dissertation.