Listen to introductory talk on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/20VoYqwnAz3Y9ZSHdITUTm The Secret Underground Story of Empathy Course on Empathy (University of Chicago Graham School): Tuesday September 27, 2016 6 – 8:30 pm 450 Cityfront Chicago 60611 (and seven sessions thereafter – no class… Read More ›
When one experiences the lack of empathy as a boundary issue or even a boundary violation, including a dignity violation, then the response is narcissistic rage in an attempt to get back one’s own and re-establish the boundary. I suggest this is a primitive, primary process response that is rarely well thought out or even all that adaptive – except perhaps in a context of self-defense against an immediate danger – but it is a common response. This does not jive with the average everyday understanding of empathy but it is the heart of the matter: wherever there is empathy – can narcissistic rage be far behind?
Surveys show that most people think that empathy is compassion. The world certainly needs more compassion, but it is not synonymous with empathy. Empathy tells you what the other person is experiencing as a vicarious experience, and not an identification; compassion (and ethics) tells you what to do about it. Empathy is oxygen for the soul. If one is feeling short of breath at the end of the school year or business cycle, it is possible that they are in need of expanded empathy.
By the end of George Makari’s engaging – indeed monumental – Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind (W.W. Norton 2016: 652 pp.) one comes to understand that the modern mind is more ancient than most people believe and the… Read More ›
Kant famously asserted he was awakened from his “dogmatic slumbers” by studying Hume. This occurred not only in Kant’s theory of knowledge, but [arguably] also in taste, aesthetics, and the communicability of feelings. The “communicability of feelings” (1790/93a: 174; §40… Read More ›
This work is now available thanks to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Empathy and Sympathy in Ethics. URL: http://www.iep.utm.edu/emp-symp/ This work is in effect an unpublished chapter (now published) from my book Empathy in the Context of Philosophy (Palgrave… Read More ›
Empathy Lessons 