Suchergebnisse

Some historical preliminaries -- Some conceptual preliminaries -- Empathy as simulation -- A priori and a posteriori empathy -- Re-enacting the thoughts of others -- Empathy and the emotions -- Empathy and ethics -- Empathy and aesthetics

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.

What is empathy? -- The building blocks of empathy -- Why is empathy important? -- Why is empathy so difficult to achieve? -- Linking interpersonal and social empathy -- Tools for measuring and assessing empathy -- Appendix A: Research and statistical analysis on 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 Maria del Rosario Silva -- Arciniega -- References -- Index

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.

Empathy dissolves the boundaries between self and others, and feelings of altruism towards others are activated. This process results in more compassionate and caring contexts, as well as helping others in times of suffering. This book provides evidence from neuroscience and quantum physics that it is empathy that connects humanity, and that this awareness can create a more just society. It extends interest in values-based management, exploring the intellectual, physical, ecological, spiritual and aesthetic well-being of organizations and society rather than the more common management principles of maximising profit and efficiency. This book challenges the existing paradigm of capitalism by providing scientific evidence and empirical data that empathy is the most important organizing mechanism. The book is unique in that it provides a comprehensive review of the transformational qualities of empathy in personal, organizational and local contexts. Integrating an understanding based upon scientific studies of why the fields of positive psychology and organizational scholarship are important, it examines the evidence from neuroscience and presents leading-edge studies from quantum physics with implications for the organizational field. Together the chapters in this book attempt to demonstrate how empathy helps in the reduction of human suffering and the creation of a more just society.

With its foundations of injury, harm, and pain, the sociology of punishment is poised to give attention to the role of empathy at precisely those instances of social experience where human connection, understanding, and social knowing are destroyed, avoided, prohibited, or simply impossible. I explore this predicament through a specific case drawn from fieldwork in a geriatric prison, where institutional and intersubjective relations established by prison workers challenge empathic connections. The 'graying' of the prison population, one of mass incarceration's unanticipated consequences, brings issues of pain, death, and dying to the fore. The majority of research to date on aging and dying in prison has had an important descriptive and policy orientation. There has been less of an emphasis upon the theoretical underpinnings of such a turn and the nature of intersubjective relations at the intersection of care and punishment. There have been no intensive ground-level analyses of aging in prison against the backdrop of mass incarceration in the contemporary era. This study seeks to fill that vacuum while offering a more complex understanding of the relevance and limits of empathy to the study of punishment.

AbstractThis article starts from the premise that empathy is an inherent part of social and political life but that this is not sufficiently theorised in International Relations (IR). Building on the burgeoning debates on emotions in world politics, it argues that the study of empathy should be developed more rigorously by establishing an interdisciplinary and critical framework for understanding the experiences and processes of empathy in IR. The central contribution of the article is twofold: firstly, it highlights limitations of the dominant perspective on empathy in IR, and secondly, it argues that a range of meanings may be attributed to empathy when examined within the sociopolitical conditions of particular contexts. Drawing on research on the conflict in Israel and Palestine, the article identifies and articulates two such alternative interpretations: empathy as non-violent resistance and as a strategy of normalisation.