Any moderately attentive observer of contemporary philosophy is bound to notice the
significant number of publications dedicated to what has come to be called "empathy." The
relevance of this topic has also found its place in non-philosophical forums, for example
Barack Obama’s much-cited statement during his first presidential campaign that "the empathy
deficit is a more pressing political problem for America than the federal deficit" or one of
the central claims in Jeremy Rifkin's acclaimed book, The Empathic
Civilization. In general and as has been pointed out recently, there are two reasons
for this renewed interest in empathy—on the one hand, moral philosophers have presented
research on whether empathy plays an important role in motivating pro-social or altruistic
behavior and, on the other hand, social knowledge researchers have hypothesized that empathy
could be the key to understanding important issues regarding interpersonal understanding,
particularly with respect to understanding other people's emotions. In addition, a diversity
of perspectives has addressed this topic, including phenomenology, cognitive sciences,
social sciences, psychiatry, etc. This mix has led to the unexaggerated estimate that there
are as many definitions of empathy as there are authors who have attempted to define it. In
any case, and in spite of the great diversity of theories on empathy, most authors usually
cite Theodor Lipps (1851-1914) as one of the “fathers” of empathy. In turn, the British
psychologist Edward Titchener (1867-1927) translated the term Einfühlung (which Lipps used) into English as empathy, a
translation that is not without its problems, as I will later demonstrate.
One of the many merits of the volume that brings together Lipps’ texts on the problem of
Einfühlung, which Faustino Fabbianelli edited and introduced, is
its success in showing the need to dually expand the perspective of analysis when it comes
to this German thinker. Certainly, Lipps used the term Einfühlung to
refer to knowledge of other selves versus the knowledge of the self (internal perception)
and the knowledge of external objects (sensible perception). However, to expand this
analysis, we must not forget that Einfühlung is one way, among
others, of explaining the other’s experience (Fremderfahrung). In
other words, in light of current comparisons between what is usually called empathy and the
experience of the other tout court, we must show that this version is
a peculiar way of interpreting the other’s experience.
The question of the other’s experience (Fremderfahrung), that is, of
the experience we have of other selves and their lived experiences, was the object of
special attention at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two groups of
theories emerged in this respect: on the one hand, one group maintains that that which is
given to us in the proper sense is our own self and, therefore, access to the other’s
conscience is always mediated and, on the other hand, those who reject that our access to
the other’s conscience is always mediated. The first group of theories argues that the
experience of the other is always experience of him in his corporeal appearance. I
experience my own lived experiences in a unique, immediate, and original way, while I do not
experience the lived experiences of others in this way. What is given to me from another
human being in the proper sense, originaliter, corresponds
exclusively to the phenomenon of the physical body. Based solely on this form of giving
oneself, the other is considered somehow animated; an other self exists. One of the ways to
access this other self corresponds to so-called "reasoning by analogy theories" (Analogieschlusstheorien), which maintain that I "judge" the expressions
of others in analogy with my own expressions, that is, I know that these expressions (Lebensäusserungen) (for example, certain face gestures) contain certain
experiences that imitate my own experience when I so gesture.
These theories received significant criticism, especially from Theodor Lipps, who worked in
Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As one of the texts in
Fabbianelli’s volume (Eine Vorfrage: Die Vielheit der Iche und die
Einfühlung, p. 351) argues, Lipps considers these theories inadequate for two
fundamental reasons. On the one hand, I am aware of, for example, certain eye or mouth
gestures not because I observe my own expressions, but because I am able to observe others’
expressions; this observation occurs in the exact opposite order with regard to the Analogieschlusstheorien. In fact, Lipps believes that certain processes
in other people's bodies express lived experiences, which are then accompanied by gestures
that express these lived experiences. On the other hand, he considers reasoning by analogy a
fiction. Such reasoning, Lipps argues, takes place when, for example, I see smoke and
conclude that there is fire. At some point, I saw smoke and fire together and now I add to
the perceived smoke that which I have repeatedly perceived as associated with it. But such
reasoning does not apply here. Rather, I have to deduce from myself an object that, although
it is the same type, is completely different from me. In addition, theories of reasoning by
analogy assume that I know that the meaning of my own facial gestures denote certain
experiences. If this were the case, I would need to constantly observe my face in a mirror.
According to Lipps, the following is what really occurs: I see another’s features change,
which I interpret as the body of another human individual. An internal tendency to tune in
arises in me and suggests that I should act and feel in sync with the other. I feel his
sadness not as conditioned by my own thoughts, but as brought on by a perceived gesture. I
feel my own sadness by perceiving the other's gesture (Egoismus und
Altruismus, p. 211).
As mentioned, Fabbianelli’s selected texts from Lipps—which do not include the important
article entitled, "Das Wissen von fremden Ichen" (which was already
published by the same editor in the fourth volume of Schriften zur
Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie and recently translated into English),The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and
Phenomenological Philosophy, XVI, Phenomenology of Emotions,
Systematical and Historical Perspectives. Edited by R. Parker and I. Quepons,
Routledge, Oxon, 2018 p. 261-282.Der Begriff der
Einfühlung–show the need to broaden the usual analysis of Lipps’
Einfühlung notion. That is, it is unjustifiably reductionist to consider Einfühlung the only way of explaining the Fremderfahrung (although, certainly, it is the right way, according to Lipps), as
well as to think that Einfühlung’s scope is limited to knowledge of
other selves. In this sense, Fabbianelli's introduction highlights the importance of Einfühlung in Lipps's thought insofar as it constitutes the ultimate
explanatory foundation of the relationship between individual subject and individual
object—not necessarily another I—before understanding grasps both moments. In this sense, we
can speak of an "alogical" relationship (prior to actual knowledge) between the subject and
the object. This alogical or irrational character of Einfühlung is
due to the object’s uniqueness to which, and thanks to it, the self unites. Insofar as the
conception of reality underlined here is radically different from a logical-rational
explanation of reality, Fabbianelli believes that the "irrationality" of Einfühlung comes into play.
Yet, by putting his concept of Einfühlung at the center of Lipps's
philosophical reflection, Fabbianelli’s introduction insists on the need to consider it in a
broader context, namely, with a new Kantian conception of the problem related to the
conditions of possibility for knowing the world. Faced with other more or less established
interpretations that reproach Lipps for having offered a psychological interpretation of
this problem, Fabbianelli joins authors such as Glockner, who maintain that Lipps must be
considered a thinker who follows in the classical German philosophical tradition insofar as
he discovers the condition of possibility for the synthesis of subject and object in the
alogical relation of empathy.Logos. Internationale Zeitschrift für
Philosophie der Kultur, XIV, 1925, p. 297-342.Logical Investigations. He based his rejection of this
psychologism reproach on a clear separation between what constitutes the laws of thoughtful
reason and what pertains to the mere empeiria self. According to
Fabbianelli, Lipps always establishes a connection with transcendental philosophy through
Fichte, insofar as there is a parallel between projecting oneself on the other (sich hineinversetzen, sich hineinverlegen), which according to Lipps
happens with Einfühlung, and the constitution of the world that,
according to Fichte, the self carries out. Without entering into detailed discussion here,
Fabbianelli's argument defending the plausibility of considering the relationship between
man and reality as transcendental does not seem to me entirely convincing. The
transcendental nature of this relationship is such in so far as it does not deal with
objects, "but [with] the form and way in which objects can be known."
In any case, to the extent that Lipps gives Einfühlung a
transcendental meaning as the productive emergence of the other (human and nonhuman), Einfühlung cannot be understood as an accurate synonym of empathy. The English concept that Titchener introduced belongs to a
different semantic realm since it characterizes feeling the other’s psychic state as a
foreign state in oneself, while Einfühlen, for Lipps, is, rather, a
fühlen by which I feel myself in the other (human or not). When I
experience Einfühlung a kind of sich hineinverlegen
or sich hineinversetzen occurs such that I project part of
myself in the external other. Thus, when I consider that a landscape is melancholic or that
a friend’s voice is cheerful, it is not that the landscape itself denotes melancholy or that
my friend’s voice is actually happy. Melancholy and happiness are, rather, subjective
moments, properties of my self—Ichbestimmtheiten in Lipps’ terms—
that, in some way, are felt in that landscape and in that voice. I feel, therefore,
melancholy in the landscape object and happiness in my friend’s voice object. It is not that
I feel melancholic or happy and then "put" (hineinverlege) melancholy
or joy into the landscape or into my friend’s voice, but rather that I live or feel these
things in the landscape and in my friend’s voice. This does not merely involve
representation. When I hear my friend's voice, I do not represent the happiness that it
contains, but rather I experience it (Cf. Einfühlung, Mensch und
Naturdinge, p.60). It is precisely this co-rejoicing (sich
Mitfreuen) that Lipps calls Einfühlung. Thus, for Einfühlung, what we could call "subjective" is perceived as residing in
the object that is before me, that is, not in the object as it is in itself, but in the
object as it is presented to me (Cf. Zur Einfühlung, page 375). As
Zahavi pointed out to Lipps, " To feel empathy is to experience a part of one’s own
psychological life as belonging to or in an external object; it is to penetrate and suffuse
that object with one’s own life."Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and
Shame. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, p. 104.Einfühlung,
insofar as I live in it in the object, is, as Fabbianelli points out, Einsfühlung or the fusion of the self with the object (Cf. Zur
Einfühlung, page 419).
The aesthetic origin of Einfühlung reveals that it is not limited to
knowledge of other selves alone. For the aesthetic object, the sensible realm “symbolizes”
that is has content at the level of the soul (selfish). This object
is thus "animated" and, as a result, it becomes an aesthetic object and a carrier of
aesthetic value (Cf. Einfühlung, Mensch und Naturdinge, p 53). The
important thing here is that the sensible appearance of a beautiful object is not the
foundation of aesthetic taste, which rather corresponds to the self feeling happy, moved,
etc. before the object (Cf. Einfühlung, innere Nachahmung und
Organempfindungen, p.35). In short, when considering the beautiful object the self
feels free, active, vigorous, etc. in the object.
Now, how, according to Lipps, does this living in another object take place, be it in a
physical object or another self? Lipps believes it happens in a way that, ultimately, is not
explicable and that he calls instinct or impulse (see, for example, Einfühlung, Mensch und Naturdinge, p. 67ff, and Einfühlung als
Erkenntnisquelle, p. 362). By virtue of this instinct, my apprehension of certain
sensibly perceived processes instinctively inspires a feeling in me, a desire that, with the
act of apprehension, constitutes a single experience of consciousness. In relation to this
point, Fabbianelli endeavors to show in his introduction that the instinctive element that
Einfühlung contains in Lipps’ thought has to be understood in the
broader context of his conception of the knowledge of reality as ultimately based on
instinct (Cf. Egoismus und Altruismus, p. 213) In this way, Lipps’
concept of instinct could be related to that of Fichte (Trieb). For
his part, Lipps refers to what he calls "instinct of empathy," arguing that they involve two
components: an impulse directed toward imitation and another aimed at expression. In the
past, I have been happy and then experience an instinctive tendency toward expressing
happiness. This expression is not experienced as supplementary to happiness, but rather as
an integral part of that feeling. When I see the same expression in another place, I have an
instinctive tendency to imitate or reproduce it, and this tendency evokes the same feeling
that, in the past, was intimately connected with it. When I experience this feeling again,
it will be linked to the expression I perceive and projected onto it. In short, when I see a
happy face, I reproduce an expression of happiness, which will then evoke a feeling of
happiness in me and I will attribute this felt happiness, which is co-given with perceived
facial expressions, to the other.
Lipps research on empathy concludes with a series of interesting analyses that deserve more
space and time than the present contribution permits. I refer, for example, to the
relationships between Einfühlung and the feeling of value, its
so-called "sociological" repercussions, etc. Here I will only refer to two of them, namely,
the different types of Einfühlung and the distinction between
positive Einfühlung and negative Einfühlung.
Lipps distinguishes five different types of Einfühlung. First, he
refers to what he calls general apperceptive Einfühlung (allgemeine apperzeptive Einfühlung), which occurs when, for example, I
think I perceive that a straight line widens, narrows, etc. when, in reality, it ultimately
involves activities carried out personally and that, in a way, we apprehend in the line in
question. Secondly, as analyzed in an example above, we sometimes talk about the peace a
landscape projects, the passion of a given work of art, etc. Certainly, peace, passion, etc.
are not visible in the same way that qualities of a color, its hue, its degree of
saturation, etc. are. In reality, I feel peaceful or impassioned. However, I "see," in a
certain sense, peace and passion as residing in the landscape or work of art, which
communicate peace and passion to me. This is called Stimmungseinfühlung. A third type of Einfühlung is the
so-called "empirical" or "empirically conditioned apperceptive" type. This happens when, for
me, a force or a motor activity "resides" in a natural event, as when I observe a stone’s
gravitational tendency towards the earth or its resistance to the action another body
inflicts on it, etc. Fourth, it is possible to identify Einfühlung in
human beings’ sensible appearance (Einfühlung in die sinnliche Erscheinung
des Menschen). This is also known as Selbstojektivation
because, in it, Eingefühlte is the "I" with feelings, along with all
its modes of activity. In fifth and last place, Lipps identifies a type of Einfühlung in certain data related to sensible perception, which, after Einfühlung itself, we can identify as expressions of a conscious
individual. An example of this is when a gesture that I see and that I later identify as a
human face contains an affect such as, for example, worry or joy.
As reflected in the various texts included in this volume, among which the unpublished
article mentioned above is especially relevant, the term Einfühlung
expresses a curious fact, namely, a way of experiencing myself, of experiencing a property
of my self in a sensibly perceived or perceivable object as residing in such an object. This
involves the fact that the subject or a property of his is "objectified" by my conscience or
"projected" into an object. Now, as Lipps believes, it would be a mistake to understand this
objectification or projection in the sense of a process that takes place in consciousness as
if I had an idea of one of its properties objectified or projected onto an object and
then, so to speak, this idea passes from me to the object or becomes a property of the
object in question. In Einfühlung, rather, what I in principle know
as a property of the self appears to me in a given case as residing in an object that is
nothing like the self. This is precisely why Lipps speaks of a property of the self
"projecting" onto an object.
A second particularly noteworthy aspect to take up here is the distinction between positive
Einfühlung (also called sympathetic Einfühlung) and negative Einfühlung (Cf. Einfühlung, Mensch und Naturdinge, pp. 83ff, and In Sachen der
Einfühlung, p. 260ff). Starting with the latter, let us consider the case of
offensive behavior on the part of another subject. A sort of Einfühlung would emerge even in this case. We tend to experience said behavior in
ourselves, although we may be, at the same time, inwardly opposed to that tendency. This for
Lipps is negative Einfühlung. The same thing happens when someone
asserts a judgment that contradicts my knowledge. Upon hearing it, my knowledge activates
and directs itself against said judgment. I deny it. This supposes that judgment co-exists
with other judgment, i.e., that I have a tendency to judge in the same way. My rejection of
judgment then forces me to accept judgment. It is a negative intellectual shared experience,
a negative intellectual Einfühlung. On the contrary, for positive Einfühlung, the life of consciousness that seems to come from outside
coincides with my activation tendencies. Thus, my consciousness accepts the life of
another's consciousness. I experience this with harmony rather than contradiction, as a
confirmation of myself. These distinctions deserve better explanation regarding the
difficult problem of the influence of non-intellectual, affective conditions in Einfühlung.
As mentioned, there are many aspects that this 700-page collection of Lipps’s writings on
Einfühlung highlights. The richness of Lipps' analysis deserves
special attention and involves analyses oriented toward a faithful description of the
different phenomena that give rise in consciousness. Brief summaries do not suffice in this
case; rather, it requires a clear effort to be faithful to what is given and as it is given.
This is what, as Lipps notes, philosophy should be made of. Thus, it would make sense to
defend a positivist philosophy in the sense of a philosophy built on experience, a
philosophy whose main task is, on the one hand, to separate what is proper to consciousness
from what corresponds to the object of sensible perception and, on the other hand, to
inquire into the extent to which certain data in my conscience are apprehended as residing
in objects.
In short, with the publication of these texts, Faustino Fabbianelli not only made an
important contribution to research on the phenomenological conception of Einfühlung, but also to a systematic and ordered study of a genuine philosophical
problem. Lipps’ texts on Einfühlung gathered in this volume show,
therefore, the unfairness of Husserl’s qualification of some of them as a "refuge of
phenomenological ignorance.”