Phenomenological Empathy Perspective

The concept of empathy (Einfuhlung) can be traced in the end of 19th century to the beginning of 20th century. At first, it was used in the field of German Aesthetics. Then it was treated as a very important concept and was widely used in Aesthetics, psychology and phenomenology, sometimes the intersecting fields of them. Although empathy was given different senses in different fields, topics especially contexts, the core meaning of it never changed. Empathy always means someone (self or ego) feels himself in or projects himself into other objects which he perceived. These objects altogether can be called 'others' and they could be both the non-social things and the social things. My dissertation would focus on introducing the discussion of empathy by some brilliant phenomenologist including Theodor Lipps, Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Max Sheler, and Martin Heidegger. What I want to show through the introduction is their intensely disputation about self, others, the world, and the relationship of three of them.The reason why empathy had great influence and became very popular in academia at that time is that it was in accordance with romanticism. Philosophers who believed in romanticism thought they had completely different views which were opposed to Classicalism especially Cognition since 17th. For example, philosophers who influenced by romanticism don't agree the idea of regarding reason as resources of human nature and emphasizing the activity of cognition. On the contrary, they emphasized the power of emotion and volition even libido. All in all, this kind of ideas companied with romanticism gave birth and energy to empathy. It was used by many estheticians, psychologists, and phenomelogoists as a way to understand others from myself or ego.With the emergence of phenomenology in the early 20^th century, many phenomenology philosophers such as E. Husserl, Edith Stein, M. Heiddeger and M. Scheler had profound comments on Lipps' empathy in the background of their critiques on romanticism and psychologism. But their inclinations and purposes are very different. Although at the beginning, Husserl described empathy always accompanied with his critiques to Lipps, the methods they used and the questions they thought are very similar. After all, on the one hand, Husserl accepted the main senses of empathy (Einfuhlung) founded by Lipps. On the other hand, the question Husserl dealt with and even some details Husserl endowed with empathy are similar to Lipps. Husserl tried his best to avoid the negative influence of empathy, but the solipsism had already deeply been implanted in it since Lipps clarified it.Following her own master, Edith Stein also claims that empathy which someone understands others from my self could construct the real others. However, her account about empathy itself disconstructs her master's standpoint. Because according to her account empathy is not only the way my self constructs others but others construct my self. Furthermore, only by the repeated empathy I could construct my own body completely, because in that case I could aware that my body is one of many bodies.Different from Lipps, Husserl, and Stein, Scheler and Heiddeger criticize the concept of empathy although in different ways. I think their projects are very similar, because they both reveal and emphasize the primacy of others. In fact, the difficult problem behind empathy is the question how my self understands others. By introducing different kind of empathy theories, what I want to clarify is that we don't need empathy to understand others because we have already understood others generally. Likewise, we don't need empathy to construct intersubjectivity, because intersubjectivity is the truth which needn't construct but to reveal.