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http://emr.sagepub.com/content/4/1/94The online version of this
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DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421391 2012 4: 94Emotion Review
Jan Georg SffnerEmpathy
A Response to Fritz Breithaupt's Three-Person Model ofComment:
Empathy and Participation
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Emotion ReviewVol. 4, No. 1 (January 2012) 94 95
The Author(s) 2012ISSN 1754-0739DOI:
10.1177/1754073911421391er.sagepub.com
Abstract
Fritz Breithaupts Three-Person Model of Empathy (2012) offers a
brilliant approach to relate empathy to side-taking. By thereby
grounding empathy in subjective observation though, it becomes
difficult to focus on how empathy interferes with phenomena of
shared and embedded activity. This comment therefore raises the
question of how Breithaupts theory of empathy can be related to
phenomena of participatory sense-making and second-person
interaction.
Keywordsempathy, participatory sense-making, second-person
interaction, sympathy
In its literal and etymological meaning, the word empathy is not
very clear about its object: Is empathy just about putting oneself
into the shoes of others, or is it also about establishing a
feeling relation with objects or the surrounding world? When Edward
B. Titchener (1909) retranslated the German term Einfhlung as
empathy (the Ancient Greek empatheia means affection or passion),
it still held much of the Romantic implication of building up a
felt relation with an aesthetic phenomenon (such as a work of art).
Only in recent usage has the term been limited to questions of
understanding other persons.
The advantage of this limited usage of the term is clear: It
allows for precise questions about how we emotionally under-stand
others approached either in terms of theory theory (TT)
(understanding others by building mental models of them) or
simulation theory (ST) (understanding others by subliminally
simulating them), not in terms of interaction theory (IT) (cf.
Gallagher & Zahavi, 2007). This limitation makes for a highly
convincing and neat definition of empathy. But three kinds of
liminal phenomena also raise the question of how feeling oneself
into other persons relates to other forms of feeling oneself into
the surrounding world, and how important phenomena on the verge of
empathy yet do not exactly converge with concepts of taking another
persons perspective. These three liminal phenomena are: (a)
transitional objects (e.g., a
child feeling empathy for and interacting with a teddy bearcf.
Winnicott, 1971, pp. 125); (b) swarm phenomena (e.g., mass panic
uniting a group of individuals in a shared emotion and action); and
(c) cooperation with assigned roles (e.g., three people washing
dishes together). If we consider the fact that emotions can be
considered intrinsic evaluations or betterorientations of human
activity, these liminal phenomena become extremely important.
Accordingly, in the first case it is obvious that empathy with
persons and empathy with objects can take place on very similar
scalesempathy here seems to be a way of constructing the object as
another person, rather than being an effect of such a construction.
The second case shows that empathy can be felt within a shared
situation, and not only with a singular person. The third case
indicates that feeling empathy in an interaction might have a
shared focus instead of separating into personal perspectives:
enactivist thinkers (cf. De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007) would
argue that, to grasp the plate in the right moment to dry it, one
feels within the intrinsic logic of the inter-action rather than
putting oneself into the shoes of the other. Accordingly, the
mentioned phenomena imply that emotions are not necessarily bound
to a subjective perspective: Their focus is shared, participatory,
and interactive rather than being bound to the divergent stances of
self and other. And thereby they raise the question opposed to the
question of how we feel ourselves into other persons: How do we
feel ourselves out of a shared interactive emotionality and gain or
take perspectives?
Fritz Breithaupt (2012) raises the related question of how
empathy in the person-based meaning of the word arisesand offers a
highly interesting and persuasive answer. He starts with the
empathetic person as an observer rather than a participant. If one
understands empathy as putting oneself into the shoes of somebody
else, a clear delineation between two persons is required; the
other person must be opaque to the feeler of empa-thy. This
requires distinct perception of a self and other; it there-fore
requires observation instead of enactive embeddedness. Empathy
accordingly requires a state wherein the problem of other minds
occurs. This leads either to hot empathy, due to simulation of the
other (ST), or cold empathy, due to theory
Empathy and ParticipationA Response to Fritz Breithaupts
Three-Person Model of Empathy
Jan Georg SffnerInternationales Kolleg Morphomata, Universitt zu
Kln, Germany
Corresponding author: Jan Georg Sffner, Internationales Kolleg
Morphomata, Universitt zu Kln, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Kln,
Germany. Email: [email protected]
421391 EMRXXX10.1177/1754073911421391SffnerEmotion Review
Comment
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Sffner Empathy and Participation 95
building about the other (TT). Accordingly, empathy is grounded
in the relation between first-person feelings and third-person
observation, avoiding second-person interaction or IT. In making
his point, Breithaupt brilliantly grounds empathy in a triangular
constellation. Instead of describing empathy as taking place in an
immediate two-person interaction, he explains it as an effect or
aspect of side-taking rather than partaking; empathy requires a
judgment made from outside rather than one intrinsic in shared
interaction (as would be intrinsic in taking a plate, referring to
the earlier example).
To accordingly make conflict rather than cooperation the core
aspect of empathy might, at first glance, seem a weakness of
Breithaupts (2012) theory, as evolutionary anthropology
increasingly agrees that the human species is highly coopera-tive,
and that this cooperativeness is the prime ground for and effect of
language and culture. Nevertheless, this complemen-tary premise
allows for understanding the divergent aspects of empathy as
sympathetic compassion on the one hand and schadenfreude on the
other.
This is highly convincing for the narrow term of empathy. But,
to return to the broader and etymological meaning of the word, the
argument does not thoroughly account for phenom-ena of
participatory sense-making, shared interaction, swarm phenomena, or
interaction with transitional objects. Making a teddy bear live
works through the interaction with it and it requires much more
than side-taking. And to give another example: Breithaupts account
is extraordinarily fruitful for explaining how the emotional
perception of a soccer match
changes from the moment the spectator takes sides and feels
positively for one team and negatively against the other. On the
other hand, a different, participatory dimension of feeling with
others that can only be described in terms of IT seems very
important as well. It seems to be extremely important, for example,
for describing the shared and swarm-like behavior of soccer fans
(and the common emotion organizing this swarm), or the cooperative
feelings addressed in team building and required for the
coordinated interaction of a team.
Future exploration might focus on how Breithaupts (2012)
three-person model of empathy and the model of emotional
cooperation and participation intersect, interfere with, or imply
each other. Evidently, the latter concept needs a new term;
ety-mologically speaking, this term would be sympathy, feeling with
instead of feeling (oneself) into. However, the shift in the
meaning of sympathy itself undermines its application in this
context.
ReferencesBreithaupt, F. (2012). A three-person model of
empathy. Emotion Review,
4, 8491.De Jaegher, H., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2007).
Participatory sense-making:
An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the
Cognitive Sciences, 6, 485507.
Gallagher, S., & Zahavi, D. (2007). The phenomenal mindAn
introduction to phenomenology and philosophy of mind. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Titchener, E. B. (1909). Lectures on the experimental psychology
of thought processes. New York, NY: Macmillan.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. New York, NY:
Routledge.
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