Trials of empathy
An emphasis on complexity in Williams’ Tanner Lectures
Late yesterday, in a packed Paine Hall, Rowan Williams, the 104th
archbishop of Canterbury, gave the first of his Tanner Lectures on Human
Values — part of a traditional series delivered at nine or more
universities across the world since 1979.
With a complex critique of empathy, he quickly got into the spirit of
what philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner intended for the series he
founded: “a search,” Harvard President Drew Faust reminded the audience,
“for a better understanding of human behavior and human values.”
“I Have No Idea How You Feel”
“I FEEL YOUR PAIN,” then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton famously
declared in 1992, and empathy—coined from the German “Einfühlung,”
meaning “feeling into”—is a popular concept. Empathy entails compassion
and understanding, the taking of another’s problems as one’s own. Evil
itself, argued autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen, is a matter of
“empathy erosion,” the unwillingness or inability to understand the
plight of others. “Empathy is like a universal solvent,” he wrote inThe
Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty. “Any problem
immersed in empathy becomes soluble.”
1:45:00 Q:
With your definition of empathy, Why is there a benefit to the
empathee of being heard?
a process of
empathic relationship
I see
someone is in distress
I engage in
that distress
Other
understands
something
binds us
creating a
shared language
I feel your
pain - no you don't. don't pretend you know me.
roles block
the connection
12 years a
slave - structure keeps empathy from happening
a
reciprocity happens.
Q: A block
to empathy is a projection of the ego?
set aside
projection of both egos
then
empathy flows in both ways
an
effective at of compassion -
Q: (Africa)
Empathy and systems of power? Acceptance of gay people.
people have
fear of gays
need empathy
all around
1:55:00 Q: I
may not know how you feel but I'll try to know.
2:06:00 Q:
You've explained the common definition of empathy as a privatized
and sentimentalized understanding. What is the subject of empathy?
What is the self?
Here is the video of Dr Rowan Williams' lecture entitled 'Ethics,
empathy and Imagination' that was delivered at the Global Network for
Public Theology Conference at Stellenbosch University on 24 October
2016. It is such a wonderful contribution to the current interest in
empathy in the scholarly discourse.
Can we truly enter into the experience and world of another person?
Why is empathy sometimes 'used' as a tool to achieve certain aims
(such as reconciliation, or social cohesion?
Are there not more theologically responsible ways to think about the
mystery and complexity of one's self and another?
What of deep solidarity, even when there isn't complete understanding
of the experience of another?
* self
sacrifice - can be a form of violence - [maybe like Karen Armstrong,
need to dethrone your ego]
accept that
we will never know the other? - but can work towards it.
29:00
paradox at the heart of empathy that I am sketching is that the
empathy stance, puts into questionunderstanding
my own interiority.
Baron-Cohen argues extreme cruelty is lack
of empathy
Baron-Cohen says empathy is the ability to read the emotional
state of another. If you don't do this, it leads to cruelty.
people
with low empathy are low in self awareness.
we can say
empathy is associated with irony and standing back from primary
emotion
34:00
paradox - an empathic response challenges emotional intensity rather
than just reinforcing it. Empathic understanding is grasping
something of my location in the center of others experiences, the
worlds of others. To learn a new level of scrutiny of myself and
environment. Learning to live in the world as an intelligent body,
Merlo Ponte.
example of anger which is in the body
babies can
read emotions from an early age. they don't' work it out mentally.
Empathic
intelligence is not a leap of intuition from one soul to another. As
the skill of perspective. Bodies needing other bodies to interact
with it in order to know anything.
See it as
Empathic understanding - as perspective taking rather than
penetrating the others interior state of the others feelings.
39:00
Baron-Cohensays empathy is an under utilized
resource.
this view is
banal - if only people could see each others point of view. This is
not a panacea for human ills.
A fuller
account of empathy will show how it mandates silence as well as
communication. Hesitation as well as engagement.
our culture
is impoverished with a focus on reason
study of
empathy brings a lot.
......
can't see ourselves.
we need to
keep rereading one another.
Respondent:Regina Schwartz- Professor of English, Northwestern University
52:00
competing understandings of empathy
empathy is
inadequate - how do we work toward justice?
danger of a
certain kind of empathy that leads to a merging and dissolution
of boundaries
we collapse
into sameness
call for a
sense of distance from each other
A story -
Northern Ireland
The power of
telling stories
empathy won
out over murder
Topics
Phenomenology of empathy
Theology of
empathy
Edith Stein -
and Husserl (Aristotle)
touch is a
part of empathy - leads to merging
and taste
merging but
difference
in empathy
we find touch
Husserl -
(Phenomenology) the quality of empathy touch
> Schaller
and Merlo Ponte
> Levi..,
Dertier?...
The empathic
god
a constant
moving around each other without end
Empathy as a
proper balance of connecting with each other.
being like them but also maintaining how I am unlike them.
Sometimes empathy needs to go more towards touch and taste.
Away from the distance. Maybe we have lost touch with each other.
What is
empathy, what observable states quality as properly empathic?
How do we come to see to be what we claim it is?
What we say we feel is what we feel?
The science
method
always being
in the huermics frame
what we know
of the human mind depends on the human mind - communications will
always fail
The security
of the other has to do with the security of myself. [if others know
they will be empathized with then I know I will be empathized with]
security is
build with tactics like; excluding scapegoating, blame, etc. debase
the other
reclaim
security as empathy for all. A guaranteed voice
translating
empathy into public policy
Question if
law is enough to protect against injustice or pain. law as violence
law as
creating security
Role of
psychoanalysis
Authority
as common
ground
the empathic
god? passionless of god
Q and A
Alterity,
intimacy, empathy?
Narrative and
statistical compassion? Near and far empathy?
The others
far away are not in our touch range.
the bridge
between them
compassion
fatigue
we have
the idea that the way to deal with others suffering is we should
intensely suffer for that person. we fail when we don't produce
that. Or I can't bear any more pain.
how about
looking at my inter involvement with the security of others
[really
about a culture of empathy. With compassion fatigue the way to
address that is upstream empathy for the life of the sufferer, the
sufferer empathizing with others, and the community surrounding
the sufferer to empathize with them and the intention of
increasing empathy into the future. downstream empathy which will
help with possible downstream suffering. ]
get away
of the sentimentality or distance.
if feeling
the other is my business and I have to feel terrible about it,
suffer along, - eventually I'll get tired of that and back
away. detached. want to remain connection.
what about
empathy and institutions
bridging
hands on compassion and distance compassion - narrative empathy
bridges that
??
common
ground
sacrifice
giving ground to ?
Empathy -
thinking in the theoretical realm versus in practice?
started with
emotional identification - didn't work.
hungrier for
intimacy
you are the
...
[imaginatively empathize - role play - with yourself, in the past,
the present and the future]]
Everything that
is sayable should be hearable.
[we have the free speech movement, we need a free empathy movement.
People shouldn't just be free to speck, but we need to hear others
as well.]
[empathy as a
conversation with ourself. parts of myself are in dialog with
other parts which are in conversation with other parts (other bodies).
Parts can dominate each other, suppress, repress, or they can
interrogate. Part of ourself is in conflict with other parts of ourself.
]
