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    journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 30 , no. 1, 2016 Copyright © 2016 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

    Pluralistic Conceptualizations of Empathy

    Mark Fagianoemory university

    abstract: This paper addresses recent philosophical debates concerning the moral

    significance of empathy as well as the problems we face in defining empathy. Noting

    the practical inefficiencies of narrow conceptualizations of empathy, I argue that we

    ought to adopt broad notions of empathy that are informed by multiple and pluralistic

    conceptualizations of this phenomenon as they have been articulated throughout

    history and within different academic disciplines. Broad definitions of empathy,

    furthermore, offer us a sufficient amount of generality for observing and analyzing the

    multidimensionality of empathic experiences within a fundamentally relational world.

    keywords: empathy, relational, pluralism, Einfühlung , morality

    Imagine you are driving up a long and winding road in the mountains. It isnighttime; there are no streetlights or traffic lights, no moon illuminating

    the sky, and barely shining through a few clouds, the faint, flickering stars

    above grant you only a fraction of light to see the path ahead. The quiet,

    serene scene of this moonless, cool night coupled with the sweet scent of

    pine reminds you of the wonders and beauty of nature.

    Then, unexpectedly, as you begin to steer around a sharp turn in the

    lane, flashing red and blue lights of emergency vehicles and police cars

    temporarily blind you. Once your eyes adjust to this onslaught of light, yousee that rescue workers are quickly descending into the ravine below. You

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    pull your car over and run to the edge of the road. You look down. It is too

    dark to see anyone, but you hear faint sounds of people moaning in pain.

    You hear another sound, a grunt, and then another, a scream of pain, andfinally, you hear someone whisper with a small puff of breath, “Help us . . .

    please.”

    Suddenly, flashlights illumine the scene below, and you see some

    people struggling near a mangled car. You become mesmerized with the

    situation, and everything comes into focus. The rescue workers are trying

    to save a man and his daughter, who are unable to make it up to the road

    alone. To make matters worse, you see that the force of gravity is taking

    these two helpless victims toward another cliff edge, a very steep cliff edge,and if the emergency responders do not get to them fast, they will fall to

    their deaths.

    Then, in an instant, your body becomes tense, your heart rate increases,

    and you unconsciously mimic the man’s expression of fear upon his face.

    You can easily read the man and his daughter’s desperate thoughts as you

    imagine what it would be like to be these people in this harrowing situation.

    You watch the events unfold as the rescue workers act quickly and ably to

    save them. One of the paramedics reaches out for the man’s outstretchedhand as she carefully positions herself upon the slope of the mountainside.

    The situation is looking terribly hopeless though, as the man is finding

    it difficult to hold onto his daughter and to reach for help at the same time.

    But then, after the child screams, “Daddy, help,” he musters everything

    within him, and with a grunt and a burst of energy he manages to gain

    ground in order to grab the rescuer’s hand. The paramedic, tapping into

    her inner strengths and will, drags the victims up to safety. When they

    finally make it to the road, everyone rejoices and celebrates, and the littlegirl, tears running down her face, leaps into her father’s arms.

    In which part of this story did you experience empathy? According to

    many definitions of empathy, throughout the history of being playful with

    this word, you experienced empathy within multiple parts of the story. For

    instance, when you were appreciating nature while driving your car, you

    empathized with the poetic dimensions of nature—an activity that Novalis

    believed was a remedy for the effects overly scientific interpretations of

    nature have upon us.1 And while you did this, you “felt into” the objects ofyour surroundings, and you experienced the type of empathy (Einfühlung )

    that Robert Vischer described as a projection of “the body and soul . . .

    into the form of any object” ([1873] 1994, 92). When your body tensed,

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    your heart rate increased, and you mimicked the father’s facial expression,

    you experienced empathic emotional contagion, empathic distress, and

    empathic mimicry (Batson 1991; de Waal 2009, 65–69; Lipps 1903; Wispé1987). You also experienced empathic accuracy and empathy as a type of

    “mind reading” when you had a clear picture of the thought processes of the

    victims (Ickes 1993, 1997, 2003, 65–70; Rogers 1957; Stueber 2006, 5–19,

    202); and when you imagined what it would be like to be in their situation,

    you experienced empathy as perspective taking (Nussbaum 2001, 302;

    Ruby and Decety 2001). Last, you experienced empathic concern (Batson

    1991; Hoffman 1981) in the story as well, even though you did nothing to

    help the victims.Leaving the first few types of empathy aside for a moment, is this

    last type of empathy, that is, empathic concern, itself a moral good?

    Some scholars believe that this type of empathy is necessary for moral

    development (Eisenberg et al. 1994; Hoffman 2000), but are mere feelings

    of care and concern morally good? One could feel empathic concern and

    care for the thousands of unarmed black men who have been shot dead by

    police officers or self-appointed neighborhood watch captains, and one can

    also be concerned about the fact that a majority of these armed authoritiesdo not stand trial for their actions, but are our inner empathic reflections

    and sentiments about these events morally good? Is empathy, however

    defined, necessary for morality?2 And what ought we to do, if anything,

    about all of these different conceptualizations and definitions of empathy?

    Are all of these different experiences I have described really empathy? Is

    it not the case that a process such as imaginatively simulating another

    person’s psychological states is quite different from our experiences

    of emotional contagion when, for example, we have an immediate andinvoluntary emotional sensation from seeing a spider crawl up another

    person’s arm? Yet these two phenomena and many others are sometimes

    called “empathy,” and this seems to breed confusion.

    Recent philosophical works have addressed questions about the moral

    status of empathy as well as the apparent confusion that arises from the

    multiple definitions of empathy I have described above. Regarding the

    former, the philosopher Michael Slote has argued that empathy, as a type

    of emotional contagion, is the “cement of the moral universe,” whichhelps us to constitute moral approval and disapproval as well as to make

    sense of moral claims, utterances, and judgments. Another philosopher,

    Amy Coplan, addresses what she senses is a great deal of confusion

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    within academic discourses and suggests that we need to adopt a narrow

    conceptualization of empathy, what she calls “real empathy.” Although the

    arguments that support both of these philosophers’ claims are rich withsound empirical research in neuroscience and psychology, the definitions

    of empathy that undergird their arguments contribute to and reinforce

    closed systems of understanding empathy as a phenomenon and do not

    take into account a number of important practical, relational, and moral

    considerations, considerations that arise by taking the contexts of our

    experiences seriously and by paying close attention to historically thick and

    pluralistic conceptualizations of the term empathy.

    Michael Slote: Empathy as the Cement of the Moral Universe

    Taking his cue from the moral sentimentalist tradition, Michael Slote

    defines empathy by contrasting it with sympathy. For Slote, “empathy

    involves having the feelings of another (involuntarily) aroused in ourselves,

    as when we see another person in pain” (2010, 15).3 Sympathy, for Slote,

    is the  feeling for   someone, for example, when we feel for someone whois experiencing pain. A conclusion one can draw from this distinction is

    that we can experience empathy without sympathy and we can experience

    sympathy without empathy. For example, you could feel my pain if I were

    to step upon a four-inch nail without shoes by  feeling into my experience,

    but if I were attempting to rob you as the nail entered the bottom of my

    foot, you probably would not feel for   (sympathize with) me. Similarly, one

    could sympathize with me, caring deeply for my well-being, without feeling

    (empathizing with) my pain. For example, you could feel for or sympathizewith a friend who is depressed or humiliated without having the feeling of

    depression or humiliation involuntarily aroused within you.

    Empathy, says Slote, is the “cement of the moral universe” for it helps

    to create something like moral approval and disapproval, and this is cru-

    cial for understanding what moral claims, utterances, and judgments

    mean. Specifically, empathy as a moral cement helps us “to account for

    the meaning of terms like right  and wrong  by making use of a new kind of

    reference-fixing, one that involves empathy and that is based on the phe-nomena of approval and disapproval” (Slote 2010, 27). Such a new kind of

    reference-fixing, which Slote bases partially but not wholly upon Kripke’s

    work Naming and Necessity  (1980), allows us to explain moral terms and

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    judgments by comparing and contrasting them with our understanding of

    terms like red  and water . And following Hume’s general account but mov-

    ing beyond it, Slote sees empathy as a mechanism   that allows our moralapproval and disapproval “to focus on moral agents rather than on the con-

    sequences of their actions” (2010, 33; emphasis added). When the actions of

    agents “reflect concern for . . . the well-being . . . of . . . others, empathic

    beings will feel warmly or tenderly toward them, and such warmth and

    tenderness empathically reflect the empathic warmth or tenderness of the

    agents” (Slote 2010, 34–35). Contrarily, according to Slote, “If a person’s

    actions toward others exhibit a basic lack of empathy, then empathic people

    will tend to be chilled (or at least ‘left cold’) by those actions, and . . . those(reflective) feelings toward the agent constitute moral disapproval” (2010,

    35). Slote suggests that this account of moral approval and disapproval does not

     presuppose moral judgment , though it contributes to our understanding of

    what moral utterances and judgments mean and helps us to locate the role

    empathy plays in the formation of the moral universe.

    Slote’s argument is much more detailed than this, but his conten-

    tion that having the feelings of others aroused involuntarily within us (i.e.,

    empathy) is the “cement of the moral universe” seems to be a nonrelationalaccount of empathy torn from the complexities of experience. One could

    imagine quite easily certain contexts and circumstances in which “empathic

    persons” would morally disapprove of the actions of agents—who show

    concern for the well-being for others—whenever such an empathic per-

    son’s judgment  finds the intentions, aims, and purposes of such agents to

    be devious, deceitful, or manipulative. If I, as an empathic person, were to

    witness an agent empathizing with you and showing concern for you, but

    I knew that such a person aimed to manipulate you for his or her own ben-efit, it would be odd for me to say that I morally approve of or feel warmth

    toward the agent’s actions. Or within another context, an empathic person

    could be left cold after witnessing someone showing concern and warmth

    toward another if such an empathic person were to judge such showers of

    warmth to be undeserved and nepotistic.

    It is clear from these examples that empathy defined as “having the

    feelings of another (involuntarily) aroused in ourselves” is a morally neu-

    tral phenomenon, which can be used for various purposes. Dependingupon the context within a given experience and the consequences of our

    actions, then, empathy is both the cement of certain moral universes and

    the solvent for others. Think of a torturer who needs to have the feelings of

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    the tortured aroused within him or her in order to get an adequate sense

    of the amount of pain experienced as well as the efficacy of the torturing.

    Even when empathy operates as the cement, our acts of empathizing arebiased and partial (Slote notes this but does not elaborate upon it), and we

    often have more empathy for the suffering and pain of those similar to us

    (Gutsell and Inzlicht 2010; Xu et al. 2009). Empathy-induced acts of altru-

    ism, furthermore, within certain contexts are unfair , immoral , and unjust  

    (Batson et al. 1995). In short, context matters. But Slote’s argument for

    empathy as moral cement does not take context seriously enough, for by

    focusing on “agential empathy” alone, and excluding the possible signifi-

    cance of the consequences of the agent’s actions, the full breadth and scopeof our contextualized experiences are not considered.

    Taking both context and consequences seriously, is any particular

    mode of empathizing itself morally relevant apart from the concrete and

    recognizable social actions it either produces or inspires? One could say

    that our empathic thoughts and feelings are themselves moral, but what

    follows from such a claim? If thoughts and feelings are good, pleasurable,

    or “evil,” what moral status do they have apart from the relations or

    effect(s) they have in social space and whether or not they produce somesort of recognizable consequences between persons? In the story with

    which I began this work, you did nothing to help the victims, but you still

    experienced the feelings of others (involuntarily) aroused within you. Could

    you say, later, when you retold your version of the events to your friends and

    family, that your observation of this event was morally significant?

    Amy Coplan: A Narrow Conceptualization of Empathy

    Slote’s definition of empathy resembles, if not precisely mirrors, what Amy

    Coplan calls emotional contagion—a phenomenon that she argues must be

    excluded from the category of empathy. Such an exclusion is based on her

    belief that broad and all-encompassing views of empathy (e.g., Preston and

    de Waal 2002) take us in the wrong direction and that we need to adopt

    a narrow conceptualization of empathy in order to understand it better

    (Coplan 2014, 5). According to Coplan, empathy (or what she calls “realempathy”) is “a complex imaginative process through which an observer

    simulates another person’s situated psychological states while maintaining

    clear self-other differentiation” (2011, 44). Under her conceptualization,

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    empathy has three key features: affective matching, other-oriented

    perspective taking, and clear self-other differentiation. And though she

    admits that other processes that are called empathy are important, she con-tends that we ought to think of empathy only according to this notion of

    empathy, that is, “real empathy.” Coplan draws distinctions between this

    real empathy and two other processes that are often conceived as empathy,

    namely, what she calls “pseudo-empathy” and emotional contagion.

    Accordingly, pseudo-empathy, as a self-oriented mode of perspective

    taking, ought to be clearly distinguished from real empathy (i.e., other-

    oriented perspective taking) because the former, as an attempt to imagine

    what “we” would think, feel, and desire if we could experience the position ofanother, is often a projection of our own biases rather than an understanding

    of the experiences of another.4 Emotional contagion, as the “tendency to

    automatically mimic and synchronize expression, vocalizations, postures,

    and movements with those of another person, and, consequently, to

    converge emotionally” (Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson 1994, 153–54),

    involves what is referred to as a “low-level” psychological and bodily

    process that is an automatic, involuntary “bottom-up” process occurring

    subcortically whenever we perceive the emotions of others. But, accordingto Coplan, this low-level process is both conceptually and empirically

    distinct from the high-level processes of other-oriented perspective

    taking, that is, real and genuine empathy.5 These two processes—that is, a

    low-level, bottom-up process and a high-level, top-down process—are often

    referred to as “emotional empathy” (“affective empathy”) and “cognitive

    empathy,” respectively, though as Coplan notes, these distinctions are

    often conflated.6

    It is true that empathy-based terms are used for a wide array of purposesand that such terms are often conflated with one another. But what practical

    difference would it make if everyone used the term empathy only to refer

    to what Coplan calls real empathy? I think that one practical difference

    for Coplan lies in her assessment of recent neuroscientific studies that,

    she believes, suggest that “real empathy” is the only process that provides

    “experiential understanding of another person” (2011, 58). But how would

    demand for and acceptance of a narrow conceptualization of the term

    empathy help us to understand the experiences of others more readily thanan adoption of multiple historical conceptualizations of empathy that give

    us greater access to experience itself? Moreover, although she (2011, 59)

    mentions them in a footnote, Coplan does not give much credence to other

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    studies that challenge the distinctions she makes (Gazzola, Aziz-Zadeh,

    and Keyser 2006; Pfeifer et al. 2008). Another practical difference for

    the distinctions Coplan (2014, 5) makes is based on the fact that certainempirical studies in cognitive neuroscience show that what she calls

    pseudo-empathy, emotional contagion, and real empathy are distinct as

    observable bodily and psychological processes and that by following her

    analytic distinctions future scientific studies can shed the haze of ambiguity

    that often surrounds the study of empathy.

    But it does not seem likely that Coplan’s distinctions between these

    processes will be adopted uniformly (I do not think that scientists are

    waiting with bated breath for philosophers to provide them with analyticdistinctions). Moreover, by defining real empathy as other-oriented

    perspective taking and affective matching, coupled with a clear self-other

    differentiation, Coplan seems to favor cognitive, affective, reflective, and

    reasoning processes without considering the context of a given form of

    experience and the conceivable consequences of our actions in experience.

    And though her categorical distinctions are certainly heuristic for labeling

    what are observed as distinct neuroanatomical processes, it does not follow

     from this that our experiences of these processes are distinct —nor do suchanalytic distinctions get us any closer to uncovering a “real” mode of

    empathy. Stated another way, though Coplan’s conceptualized divisions

    of empathy are helpful for understanding brain activity, the noting and

    analysis of such processes involves what William James (1996, 253) called

    a supposition of arrest  drawn from the flow, stream, and process of both

    consciousness and experience. Thus, Coplan’s distinctions, as distinctions

    of thought, are not only a narrowing of the empathy concept but also a

    narrowing of empathic experiences.

    Pluralistic Conceptualizations of Empathy

    Despite the well-conceived arguments of these philosophers, who aim to

    make the idea of empathy clearer by narrowing its definition, I suggest

    that we ought to conceptualize empathy  as a pluralistic phenomenon

    and term and to adopt a broad definition for practical purposes.7  Sucha conceptualization of empathy requires that we take under serious

    consideration what has been termed “empathy” throughout history and

    within different academic disciplines in order to locate the instrumental

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    value of different types of empathy within experience.8 Slote, Coplan, and

    others who stipulate what they mean by empathy do so for certain purposes

    and to reach different ends, but by implicitly excluding how others haveunderstood empathy, they unavoidably select particular experiential

    relations connected with their conceptualizations/definitions of empathy

    and exclude other experiential relations. However, if we were to adopt a

    broad conceptualization of empathy and accentuate the plural voices of

    history, which have described different modes of empathy in relation to a

    variety of experiential circumstances, we would be invited to take seriously

    the context of such circumstances. And since different contexts within

    experience call for different conceptualizations and acts of empathy thathelp us to achieve a variety of ends, to say that a singular definition or

    phenomenon of “empathy” is real, helpful, detrimental, ideal, good, evil,

    moral, or even cement-like apart from a context within experience is to

    ignore a variety of aims, purposes, interests, and consequences we find

    within experience itself.9

    Thinking of empathy as a pluralistic phenomenon and term also invites

    us to consider some questionable trends in the study of empathy within dif-

    ferent disciplines. One such trend, the separation of empathy into affectiveand cognitive types, is rather disturbing in that it divides our feelings and

    judgments into—fundamentally—emotional or cognitive experiences. But

    by conceiving of empathy as a pluralistic phenomenon and a historically

    rich term, one is able to reject this dizzying distinction, which is parasitic

    upon the dying, but apparently not yet dead, dualism between emotion and

    reason. Furthermore, we are able to note that before it became fashionable

    among psychologists, some theorists of empathy refused to divide empathy

    in this way. Take, for example, Herder ([1774] 1964), who used the verb sicheinfühlen  (to empathize) to describe our ability to understand sympatheti-

    cally the similar—or radically different—experiences of others through the

    process of imaginatively feeling into (sich hineinfühlen) the time, place, and

    history of a people. According to Herder, then, understanding and affect

    operate together in our experiences.

    Welcoming multiple historical conceptualizations of empathy also

    helps us to recognize how various modes of empathic sense are useful within

    various contexts of experience and the process of time itself. Acceptance ofthe affective and cognitive distinction, on the contrary, restricts the bound-

    aries of such usefulness by forcing us to think about empathy as either

    emotional/affective or   cognitive/reflective. This distinction also commits

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    scholars to thinking of empathy apart from the flow, process, and context

    of experience and, quite often, only according to different neuroanatomi-

    cal processes within the body. These commitments disregard not onlyempathic acts and their unique manifestations in the external world but

    also the complex and relational dynamics within the body, complicated

    dynamics that Jean Decety has explained quite succinctly: “In reality, empa-

    thy, like other social cognitive processes, draws on a large array of brain

    structures and systems that are not limited to the cortex but also include

    subcortical pathways, the brainstem, the regulation of the autonomic ner-

    vous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis . . . , as well as endo-

    crine systems that regulate bodily states, emotion, and reactivity” (Decetyand Michalska 2012, 169).10

    Another disconcerting trend in scholarly discourses is how the notion

    empathy is quite commonly described as a relation between a concerned

    agent and the pain, distress, and/or psychological “disorders” of others. 11 

    This dominant trend, as an exercise of discursive power , shapes moral

    discourse according to downward psychological movements of empathic

    sensing, which (defined as projections of moral concern or care bestowed

    upon “weaker” persons by empowered persons) are also forms of social power   that structure moral discourse. Specifically, these two dynamics of

    power form and limit the parameters of moral discourse by clothing positive

    interactions between persons, such as prosociality or helping behavior, in

    the terms of such dynamics of power (i.e., the pain, distress, or disorders

    of others) as well as the relation between a stronger helping agent and a

    person in need. Why is it that the study of empathy among psychologists

    has focused, to a large degree, on these dynamics of our experiences

    rather than on more extraordinary, beautiful, and radiant qualities of ourrelationships with others? What would happen in the world if such notions

    as allophilia and symhedonia shaped the study of empathy rather, or more

    commonly, than the notions of pain, distress, and disorder?

    Now, these dynamics of power, which I am referring to as a second

    trend in the study of empathy, are linked to the first trend of dividing empa-

    thy into affective and cognitive types in that each of these trends is a conse-

    quence of the historical rise of the discipline of psychology in the twentieth

    century.12 There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these trends outsideof a given context; but by looking for and adopting historically rich con-

    ceptualizations of empathy, we may begin to paint a picture of empathy as

    a moral sense apart from the therapeutic and pastoral-minded models of

    psychology.

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    By moral sense here I am not claiming that such a sense is necessarily

    reliant upon a system of morals or preconceived aims; rather, this term refers

    to the emerging process of sensing within the immediacy of experienceand the making of moral judgments. To understand how this moral sense

    (as a component of different types of empathy) functions within different

    experiences requires that we include other contexts in which such a sense

    is used, and this further demands of us that we extend our understanding of

    empathy beyond interpersonal relations and consider how we have “empathy

    for objects” and empathy for the relations between things.13

    To have empathy for objects might sound strange to the contemporary

    ear, but with a turn to the traditions of German romanticism, aestheticism,and philosophy, we find that thinking about empathy (Einfühlung ) in this

    way was quite common within these traditions. Though the meaning of

    empathy varied, thinkers such as Herder, Lotze, Novalis, Robert Vischer,

    and Frederick Robert Vischer often described this act of empathy as a “feel-

    ing into” some object(s), what many today would call a type of  projective

    empathy. For Herder, to feel and understand the experiences of others

    accurately (if this is possible), we must “feel into” the objects related to

    the experiences of others. “Feel yourself into everything,” he advises; foronly then “will you be on your way to understanding the world” ([1774]

    1891, 503). The philosopher and logician Rudolph Lotze (1856, 584) also

    described empathy as our ability to feel ourselves into things (e.g., a mus-

    sel fish, a tree, or a building) by projecting the life of our imaginations into

    their forms. Robert Vischer ([1873] 1994, 92) coined the term Einfühlung  

    (empathy), which he defined as the unconscious projection of one’s body

    and soul into the form of an object. And Frederick Robert Vischer ([1887]

    1922), following the interests of his son Robert, used the term Einfühlung  to signify a mode of symbolism that involved the introduction of “a human

    soul into what is nonpersonal,” which he believed was a necessary process

    for understanding artworks, for example, paintings and sculptures.

    These plural conceptualizations of empathy broaden the parameters

    and scope of different acts of empathizing with others and thus provide

    room for considering a variety of moral sensibilities. An additional benefit

    of accepting this object-focused type of empathy is that it invites us to

    consider the highly relational nature of our experiences as well as ourcontextualized interactions with objects, persons, and their relations.

    Think of your own interpretations of and interactions with objects

    of art. Feeling into a work of art is a highly complex rational, emotive,

    contemplative, and relational  process that is colored by both the breadth

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    and the context of your experience. For instance, the projection of your

    sensibilities into van Gogh’s Starry Night  involves a complex intermingling

    of emotion and reason shaped by the context of the act (among otherthings) and your knowledge of art. And you could imagine how both the

    context and the complexity of such an act would be further intensified if

    you were to “feel into” this work alongside a friend who, say, has written a

    book on van Gogh. For in such a case, a dyadic relationship between you

    and the artwork has turned into a triadic one among you, the object, and

    your friend, which involves both object-oriented and interpersonal modes

    of empathic sensing.

    Think of another example. If I am observing a performance of Mozart’sDon Giovanni, I might experience an array of different types of empathy

    directed at persons, objects, and their relations. For instance, if I involun-

    tarily “catch” the emotions of a soprano who was unable to hit a high note,

    at the same time I could be experiencing empathy as perspective taking by

    imagining the conductor’s frame of mind when he chose to interpret the

    score in one way rather than another. But I might also experience empathy

    for objects by “feeling into” the sounds of the music or the timbre of a per-

    former’s voice or the relations between the sounds and the voices. I mightalso experience a combination of other modes of empathy, simultaneously

    or in succession, as they are directed toward objects, persons, and their

    relations. For example, I could be experiencing the following empathic

    thoughts, sensations, and interpretations either simultaneously or in suc-

    cession: What did Mozart intend to convey musically while he was writing

    the score for a given scene (perspective taking)? How did the first violinist

    interpret Mozart’s intention for this scene as she began to play (empathy

    for the relation between Mozart’s intentions and the creation of sound)?When the audience felt into the sound of the violin (projective empathy)

    and its relation to other instruments (empathy for the relations between

    sounds), did they sense that the first violinist captured Mozart’s intentions

    (an imaginative simulating of the relation between Mozart’s intentions, the

    relations of sounds, and the performance of the first violinist)? This thick

    description of objects, persons, and relations compels me to believe that the

    complexity of these experiences cannot be adequately grasped by “narrow-

    ing” what we mean by empathy or by assuming that the moral potency ofour empathic sensibilities is always interpersonal.

    In addition to providing insight into the multidimensional and

    relational character of experience, adopting historically rich and plural

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    conceptualizations of empathy also expands our moral sensibilities as

    we empathize with other living creatures. For now that we have a basic

    understanding of the ways we empathize with objects, people, andtheir relations, we can begin to imagine how the scope of our empathic

    imaginations might widen whenever we empathize with one another.

    For instance, if I were to empathize with you, that is, by simulating your

    situated psychological state, the context of such an experience might

    require that I empathize with your current situation at work as well as the

    multiple relations between you and such a situation, or I might feel into

    the qualities and dynamics of our relationship, or I might even feel into the

    meaningfulness of a conversation we had two years ago—all such examplesof having empathy for objects and their relations might be relevant as

    I attempt to grasp your experiential circumstance.

    Herder’s multiple employments of the verb sich einfühlen, that is, feel-

    ing oneself into objects, persons, and relations, accentuates this variety and

    complexity of empathic experiences. For Herder provides us with a very

    rich and complex understanding of the term as well as the phenomenon

    of empathy wherein our ability to empathize with certain objects and their

    relations plays a role in our empathizing with others. Specifically, empathyfor objects (e.g., the different ideals, goals, and ways of life within cultures

    other than our own as well as the relations among these objects) is neces-

    sary for one to “feel into” and to understand the experiences of others as

    well as to “feel into” the radically different  experiences of “others” (Herder

    [1774] 1891, 502–3, 506). Quite unlike contemporary notions of empathy,

    then, where the goal of empathizing with others is to “match” the experi-

    ences of others in terms of and in line with our own, many of Herder’s

    usages of empathy aimed to identify and then to grasp (in a very incompletemanner) plural, incommensurable, yet equally valid truths found in the

    experiences of others without having the desire or need to find room for

    such truths within our own experiences. The larger aim of this pluralism

    was to provide an alternative approach for historians so that empathy would

    become central in their attempts to understand the cultures, histories, and

    time periods of other civilizations. Additionally, Herder hoped that empath-

    ically infused historical methods would show the limits and follies of overly

    rational and scientific methods used in the constructions of hierarchicaland unilinear theories of development—methods and constructions that

    Herder believed to be exemplary of the biases and ignorance of his own

    civilization.

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    An embrace of historically rich and pluralistic conceptualizations of

    empathy provides insight into the fundamentally relational character of

    our empathic experiences, where the moral significance of having empathyfor objects, animals (including human animals), and relations is contin-

    gent upon the contexts of our experiences as well as the consequences of

    our actions. But by adopting and following narrow definitions of empathy,

    which implicitly ignore historically varied conceptualizations of empathy,

    we limit our ability to understand the rich, vibrant, and relational nature

    of this phenomenon and thus exclude a variety of experiential contexts and

    circumstances, within which the experiences of others glow with a hue of

    colors quite unlike “our” own.

    notes

    1. See Novalis 1981.

    2. Jesse Prinz (2014) gives an interesting and thoughtful answer to this

    question.

    3. Hume (who used the term sympathy for what Slote here calls “empathy”)

    described this phenomenon as both the experience of another person’s feeling(s)

    infused  into us and a type of contagion between what one person feels and what

    another feels.

    4. According to Coplan (2011, 55), this distinction is based on empirical studies

    that suggest that “pseudo-empathy” or self-oriented perspective taking is fraught

    with difficulties, including but not limited to errors in prediction, misattributions,

    and personal distress.

    5. This distinction is based on very sound scientific studies and a sensible

    understanding of evolutionary history. In one such study, Simone G. Shamay-

    Tsoory (2009) and her crew noticed that patients with ventromedial lesions were

    impaired in “high-level” perspective taking, while patients with inferior frontal

    gyrus lesions were impaired in “low-level” empathy (or emotional contagion).

    6. Coplan notes, “I consider these processes to be distinctive enough to warrant

    distinctive labels. In addition, the terms ‘emotional empathy’ and ‘cognitive

    empathy’ are not used uniformly. Thus, some researchers use emotional empathy

    to refer to emotional contagion, while others use emotional empathy to refer to

    any empathic process involving an emotion, and still others use the term to refer

    to cases of empathizing with someone who is experiencing emotion (as opposed

    to someone who is thinking or reasoning)” (2011, 51).

    7. Many thanks go to Jessica Wahman, whose insights into the work of David

    Krasner (2006) led me to consider this relationship between empathy and

    pluralism. See Wahman 2014.

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    8. I make this plea for a pluralistic conception of empathy as a general

    commitment and starting point for thinking of the variegated meanings and

    usages of empathy in experience. Though this is in accord with my spirit ofphilosophical pluralism, I realize that for certain investigations that require

    specific and carefully stipulated definitions of empathy it might not be useful. For

    example, if a neuroscientist defined empathy as “the imaginative simulation of

    another’s experiences,” he or she might not find it useful to include the notion of

    empathy as “feeling oneself into an object.”

    9. For these reasons and others, I find Preston and de Waal’s definition of

    empathy exceedingly useful: “any process where the attended perception of the

    object generates a state in the subject that is more applicable to the object’s state

    or situation than of the subject’s own prior state or situation” (2002, 4).10. Decety further notes that his aim in this work, with co-author Kalina J.

    Michalska, is to “argue that the construct of empathy needs to be ‘broken down’

    into a model that includes bottom-up processing of affective communication and

    top-down reappraisal processing in which the perceiver’s motivations, intention,

    and attitudes influence the extent of empathic experience” (2012, 167).

    11. For instance, see Avenanti et al. 2005; Danziger, Prkachin, and Willer

    2006; Decety and Lamm 2009; Gu and Han 2007; etc. Certainly, not all of the

    literature is characterized by a focus on empathy’s relation to another’s sorrow,

    pain, or “disorder,” though it is sufficiently widespread to make me concerned.In a Nietzschean spirit, I hope that future scientific studies focus more upon life-

    affirming and joyful experiences in the study of helping behavior and prosociality.

    In fact, I wonder what would happen if scientific studies of empathy only focused

    upon these positive dynamics of our characters.

    12. One may locate the embryonic stirrings of these trends early in the twentieth

    century in the writings of McDougall (1909) and a more fully developed portrait

    of them by the middle of the twentieth century in the writings and practices of

    Rogers (e.g., 1957). For more recent examples of these trends, see Batson and

    Coke 1981; Eisenberg and Miller 1987; Feshbach 1978; Hoffman 1984, 2000;Rushton 1980; Staub 1978.

    13. For an excellent synopsis of this tradition of empathy, see Currie 2014.

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