Slaby Jan
Institute of Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 30, 14195, Berlin, Germany,
Med Health Care Philos. 2014 May;17(2):249-58. doi: 10.1007/s11019-014-9543-3.
The aim of this paper is to mount a philosophical challenge to the currently highly visible research and discourse on empathy. The notion of empathetic perspective-shifting-a conceptually demanding, high-level construal of empathy in humans that arguably captures the core meaning of the term-is criticized from the standpoint of a philosophy of normatively accountable agency. Empathy in this demanding sense fails to achieve a true understanding of the other and instead risks to impose the empathizer's self-constitutive agency upon the person empathized with. Attempts to 'simulate' human agency, or attempts to emulate its cognitive or emotional basis, will likely distort their target phenomena in profound ways. Thus, agency turns out to be empathy's blind spot. Elements of an alternative understanding of interpersonal relatedness are also discussed, focusing on aspects of 'interaction theory'. These might do some of the work that high-level constructs of empathy had been supposed to do without running into similar conceptual difficulties.
本文的目的是对当前备受瞩目的关于同理心的研究和论述发起一场哲学挑战。从规范责任能动性哲学的立场出发，对同理心视角转换这一概念——对人类同理心的一种概念要求较高的高层次解释，可说是抓住了该术语的核心含义——进行了批判。从这种严格意义上来说，同理心无法实现对他人的真正理解，反而有可能将共情者的自我构成能动性强加于被共情者身上。试图“模拟”人类能动性，或试图模仿其认知或情感基础，很可能会以深刻的方式扭曲其目标现象。因此，能动性成为了同理心的盲点。本文还讨论了一种关于人际关联的替代性理解的要素，重点关注“互动理论”的各个方面。这些要素或许能完成一些高层次同理心建构本应完成的工作，同时又不会陷入类似的概念困境。
