Repository | Book | Chapter

The special hermeneutic of empathy now moves decisively beyond Heidegger's Being and Time, although the interpretation also circles back to inform our reading of the role of conscience, the self, death and trauma (the latter not a Heideggerian term). The critical path lies through distinguishing everyday, ontic empathy from empathy as ontologically creating the possibility of being human — and what that means. The loss of the other is equally fundamental with the inevitable possibility of death; and, in the final analysis, it does not make sense to try to say which is more basic. From the perspective of individualization, death has priority; from the perspective of humanization, the other (individual) has priority. According to this approach, empathy is not merely a cognitive function of knowing what is going on with other (although it is that too); it is a foundational way of being in the world with the other. Empathy is ontological, and its withdrawal or absence is an ontological crisis ("who am I?') that renders individuals (and communities) vulnerable to breakdowns — traumas — that are dreaded as much (and sometimes more) than death itself.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230275249_4

Full citation: