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Phenomenological Distinctions Between Empathy De Vivo and Empathy in Fiction: From Contemporary Direct Perception Theory Back to Edith Stein’s Eidetics of Empathy

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Abstract

This paper deals with phenomenological distinctions concerning empathy with real persons and empathy with fictional characters. We will introduce both contemporary accounts of our perception of others and Edith Stein’s account of empathy. These theories will turn out to be fruitful in defending our main thesis, i.e. that the differences between empathy with real people and empathy with fictional characters are not structural but just qualitative. We will argue that in both cases empathy is a direct act of perceiving others and their lived experience. However, stemming from Stein’s work, we will underline that empathy with real persons is in principio more vivid and intense than empathy with fictional characters. In order to identify similarities and differences between empathy de vivo and empathy in fiction, we will focus on the following issues: the quality of perception; the motivational context and the “life-world context”; the ontological status of persons vs. characters.

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Notes

  1. The theories we will consider under the name of Direct Perception Account present some differences from one another and do not completely overlap in their theoretical stances. However, as we will see, because of the aspects they have in common and the ways they all differ from TT and ST, the proposed common label appears appropriate.

  2. Concerning our use of “experience”, it is needed to make some terminological and conceptual clarifications. In the contemporary debate on social cognition, the expression “mental states” is more common than the one of “experiences”. However, since the phenomenological theory of intentionality differentiates between “acts” and “states” because they are marked by different levels of positionality, we will prefer to use the more comprehensive and apt term “experiences” for both acts and states, and the whole class of mental phenomena. On the issue of the different positionality of intentional acts and states, which we cannot deal with here, see Husserl (1901: V LI), De Monticelli (forthcoming), De Vecchi (forthcoming).

  3. Both Stein (1917) and Scheler (1913/1923) recognize that the phenomenon that one calls “empathy” [Einfühlung] is the same that the other calls “vicarious feeling” [Nachfühlung].

  4. To be sure, Gallagher and other defenders of DP do not exclude that other processes, such as theoretical inference or simulation, may be used in our practices of understanding others. Rather, they just maintain that they are neither the ordinary nor the primary methods we employ. On this point, see Gallagher and Zahavi (2008, Ch. 9 How we know others), Gallagher (2008), Zahavi (2010).

  5. It is worth noticing that the psychological theory of Gestalt had already highlighted that in perception we do see structured wholes and not just their juxtaposed parts – as also Husserl underlined and applied in his theory of Parts and Wholes (Husserl 1890, Ch. XI § 11 The Figural Moments, pp. 215–222, 1901, III LI). For a re-evaluation of Gestalt’s contribution in phenomenology and philosophy of perception, see Smith and Mulligan (1982), De Monticelli (2018).

  6. See also Gallagher’s arguments about infants’ and children’s smart perception of others (Gallagher 2005, 2008).

  7. For a similar argument, see Zahavi (2010).

  8. For Zahavi’s conception of empathy as a direct perceiving of others, see Zahavi (2001, 2007, 2010, 2014).

  9. See Zahavi’s skeptical position on the actual possibility of empathy with fictional characters in Zahavi (2014: 151–152).

  10. By the expression “essence and forms of acts of empathy”, we are of course paraphrasing the title of Scheler’s book Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (1913/23), translated in English as The Nature of Sympathy (1973). Moreover, Stein herself titles the second section of her book on empathy The essence of acts of empathy [Das Wesen der Einfühlungsakte].

  11. Eidetics of empathy is an application to the phenomenon of empathy of Edmund Husserl’s eidetics. It is worth noticing that Stein provides eidetic accounts also of other phenomena of the social reality, such as the state and law-making acts (Stein 1925); on this point see De Vecchi (2015) and De Vecchi (2017). On the husserlian concept of “eidetics” and the topic of constraints on possible co-variations of parts that define any whole as such, see Husserl (1901, III LI; 1913), and De Monticelli (2013).

  12. On the issue of qualitative ontology and, more specifically, in the social field, see De Vecchi (2016).

  13. On other acts, which are similar to empathy but are not empathy, see Stein 1917: 21–30; En. Tr. 1964: 12–18. More in general on the different types of acts that are protagonists of the social reality, see De Vecchi (2014).

  14. According to phenomenology, persons are entities characterized by a layered structure, that is by a psychophysical layer marked by causal connections (such as in neurobiological functions, sensations, moods) and the layer of personhood marked by motivational connections (e.g. such as in volitional acts, affective acts, position-takings).

  15. On this point, see Stein’s arguments against both analogy and imitation theories of empathy (Stein 1917: 32–42). Stein mainly goes back here to the arguments presented by Scheler (1913/23: 43–66) on these issues. For a contemporary review and discussion of these topics and their connections to contemporary debate on intersubjective understanding, see Gallagher and Zahavi (2008, Ch. 9 How we know others,) Krueger (2012), Overgaard 2012. See also supra § 2.

  16. This point is grounded on the phenomenological topic concerning the distinction between «intuitive content» of acts of experiencing (the given datum), on the one hand, and conceptual-propositional content of signitive acts. The distinction goes back in primis to Husserl’s Logical Investigations (Husserl 1901). Stein deals with the difference between «perceiving the other» and «knowing about the other» in Stein (1917, § 4. Der Streit zwischen Vorstellungs- und Aktualitätansicht, pp. 30–33; En. Tr. 1964: 18–20).

  17. In saying that in the second and highest degree of empathy achievement we fully perceive the experience of the other, we do not claim, of course, that we have an exhaustive and complete experience of him/her. Indeed, the empathized subject, as perceptual object, always has a transcendence, an excess of being, with respect to what we can experience of him/her.

  18. See Husserl (1936).

  19. On this point, see De Monticelli (2008).

  20. Stein tackles the issue of dissimulation and empathy in Stein (1917, pp. 68–72).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milano, Italy

    Francesca De Vecchi & Francesca Forlè

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  1. Francesca De Vecchi
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  2. Francesca Forlè
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Contributions

FDV, FF: Wrote Introduction and Empathy de vivo and empathy in fiction. FDV: Wrote Edith Stein’s Eidetics of Empathy. FF: Wrote Contemporary Accounts of Direct Perception of Others (nevertheless these paragraphs are the product of a joint revision).

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Correspondence to Francesca Forlè.

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Francesca De Vecchi declares that she has no conflict of interest. Francesca Forlè declares that she has no conflict of interest.

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De Vecchi, F., Forlè, F. Phenomenological Distinctions Between Empathy De Vivo and Empathy in Fiction: From Contemporary Direct Perception Theory Back to Edith Stein’s Eidetics of Empathy. Topoi 39, 761–770 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09637-6

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