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Abstract
When we see a child crying, the urge to help him and to comfort him comes to us spontaneously. We understand what he is experiencing, and feel in us something of his sadness, his distress: this is what we call empathy. This sense of the other is the fruit of our evolutionary history and is hardwired in our biology. Empathy has interested a lot of thinkers and in particular the Scottish philosophers of the Age of the Enlightenment such as Adam Smith or Hume. More recently, the philosophers Robert Gordon (St Louis, Missouri) and Alvin Goldman (Tuscon, Arizona) proposed the theory of simulation according to which when we understand the other, we simulate the other's point of view and we use this prospective to understand the other and predict his behavior. The French neuropscyhologist Jean Decety adopted this point of view. He specifies that the empathy is the capacity to mentally simulate the subjectivity of the other, to put ourselves in the shoes of another: it lies on biological systems.

"This book brings together work from a wide range of disciplines to explain processes underlying empathy and fairness. The expert contributors approach the topic of empathy and fairness from different viewpoints, namely those of social cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, evolutionary anthropology, economics and neuropathology. The result is an interdisciplinary and unitary framework focused on the neuronal, developmental, evolutionary and psychological basis of empathy and fairness."--Publisher's description, from p. [4] of cover

Intro -- Table of Contents -- 1. What Is Empathy? -- 2. The Building Blocks of Empathy -- 3. Why Is Empathy Important? -- 4. Why Is Empathy So Difficult to Achieve? -- 5. Linking Interpersonal and Social Empathy -- 6. Tools for Measuring and Assessing Empathy -- Appendix A. Research and Statistical Analysis of the Relationship Between Interpersonal Empathy and Social Empathy -- Appendix B. Empathy Assessment Index -- Appendix C. Social Empathy Index -- Appendix D. Interpersonal and Social Empathy Index -- Appendix E. Spanish Translation of the Empathy Assessment Index, the Social Empathy Index, and the Interpersonal and Social Empathy Index, by David Becerra and María del Rosario Silva Arciniega -- References -- Index

The paper deals with the concept of empathy applied in the contemplative experiment to understand the suffering of the victims of the war in Ukraine. I discuss the concept of empathy in the phenomenological perspective and symbolic interactionists' view. I needed this discussion to frame the conclusions from the contemplative experiment I did with my students. I used the contemplative methods of research. The students did self-observations and self-reports on their lived experiences while observing photos of the victims and refugees from Ukraine. Breathing exercises (pranayama) were practiced between different self-observations to clean the minds and release tensions. At the end of the experiment, the students were also asked about the empathy deficit in contemporary society, and provided comments on it. Finally, I concluded how empathy is evoked and embodied, and I answered the question about whether it is possible to be empathetic toward people in a totally different and traumatic situation. I end with the statement that empathy is a direct reaction to the condition of the suffering of other people. However, it is also socially-framed. I conclude that it could be socially-developed to cope with an empathy deficit.

Gelare Khoshgozaran, a Los Angeles–based multidisciplinary artist, gave her initial performance of "UNdocumentary" as part of the welcome to what we took from is the state exhibition at Queens Museum in New York City. This performance entailed a reading, by the artist and audience members, of Khoshgozaran's original declaration of asylum to the US government. When this produced empathetic and, in Khoshgozaran's words, "depressed" reactions from the audience, Khoshgozaran altered the performance, rewriting the document to reflect how she understands her life trajectory, as opposed to what queer asylum seekers are expected to produce to become subjects of and legible to empire. The next iteration of the performance is a refusal of legibility and empathy for a life narrative she, in some ways, lived, but simultaneously did not identify with. This article argues that the revised performance of "UNdocumentary" interrupts heteronormative space and time, crafting a queer otherwise world where relationality is pushed out of the realm of identification, inviting a bond forged through opacity rather than the violence of transparency.

Cover -- Contents -- Introduction -- Why Empathy Means Nothing-and Everything-for Ethics -- Ethics, Empathy, and Vulnerability -- Emotion, Reality, and Ownership -- Embracing Ambiguity -- The Personalistic Attitude -- The Role of Empathy in the Affective Twist of Husserl's Critique of an Axiological and Practical -- Phenomenology as Reverence -- "Against" Empathy -- Being (N)One of Us -- Tomasello, Husserl, and the Cognitive Foundations of Morality -- Fiat cura , et pereat mundus -- On the Problem of the Idealization of Empathy and Ethics -- Sharing and Other Illusions -- Thinking with the Heart -- What Is Moral about Empathy? -- Embodiment, Empathy, and the Call to Compassion -- Fictional Empathy, Imagination, and Knowledge of Value -- Affective Depth and Value -- Music and Empathic Spaces in Therapy and Improvisation -- To Step into the Life of Others -- An Empathy-Based Phenomenological Ethic for Gaming -- Empathy, Alterity, Morality -- Index -- About the Editors and Contributors.

The essay stresses the potential value of empathy in designing strategies for resilience. We question the traditional idea of empathy as an individual skill addressed to understand the other, in support of a conceptualization closer to the phenomenological interpretation, focused on the relational dynamics at stake in human encounters. The paper reconsiders empathy as an experience valuable for strengthening a resilient attitude within collaborative projects. A case study will be featured, i.e. Design in The Middle, an ongoing project that gathers designers, architects and social activists from the Middle East/Euro-Med regions with the aim of generating design proposals to address challenges relevant to the Middle East. As participants come from very different cultural, political and religious backgrounds, their cooperation is a central and critical issue, which might benefit from contextual and relational "rules" enabling empathic experiences. In the context of the first Design in The Middle workshop (2017), some strategies have proven to be crucial in enabling effective communication over complex design issues. These strategies will be analysed according to a methodology developed in a previous research carried out by the author(s) (Devecchi, 2018) about the role of empathy in collaborative processes. Assuming that a resilient society preserves and supports cultural diversity, Design in the Middle stands as an example of collaborative design practice aimed at creating a more resilient future for these regions in which the coexistence of diverse cultural, religious and political positions is a substantial matter of concern.