“Seeing-in” and twofold empathic intentionality: a Husserlian account

• Published in: Continental philosophy review Vol. 51; no. 3; pp. 301 - 321
• Main Author: Luo, Zhida
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.09.2018; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Education; Empathy; Husserl, Edmund (1859-1938); Mind body relationship; Phenomenology; Philosophy; Philosophy of Man; Political Philosophy; Social perception; Empathic intentionality; Image-consciousness; Seeing-in; Twofoldedness; Quasi-ness
• ISSN: 1387-2842; 1573-1103
• DOI: 10.1007/s11007-017-9432-6

In recent years, the phenomenological approach to empathy becomes increasingly influential in explaining social perception of other people. Yet, it leaves untouched a related and pivotal question concerning the unique and irreducible intentionality of empathy that constitutes the peculiarity of social perception. In this article, I focus on this problem by drawing upon Husserl’s theory of image-consciousness, and I suggest that empathy is characterized by a “seeing-in” structure. I develop two theses so as to further explicate the seeing-in structure in question: first, empathy as a phenomenologically sui generis act is an intentional fusion of both presentation and re-presentation; and second, empathic intentionality is in essence twofold in that it is at once directed at both the other’s sensuously given body and the other’s non-sensuously given mentality. In this light, I argue that empathy is better conceived as a quasi-perceptual act that is fundamentally different from external perception simpliciter and other complex acts such as signitive, recollective and imaginative intention.