Empathy, intersubjectivity, and the world-orienting other

Keane, Niall

Abstract

This chapter addresses the self-other relation through Husserl's account of empathy and phenomenological encounter. While respecting the centrality and importance of the first-person character of subjective consciousness in Husserl's phenomenology, this contribution takes a slightly different approach. By emphasising the often-marginalized self-differentiating experience of the subject's encounter with the other, it will be shown that there is a particular form of asymmetry in Husserl's analysis of the encounter with the other and what it brings about. The chapter demonstrates how the experience of the other both frees the subject from the confinement of original and quasi-anonymous self-belonging and opens the subject to a sense of the world in which it is necessarily situated. It also shows how the encounter with the other opens it to a form of worldly objectivity, self-differentiation and de-centering that would be absent without such an interruptive experience or encounter.

Citation

Keane, N. (2022). Empathy, intersubjectivity, and the world-orienting other. In A. Bortolan, & E. Magrì (Eds.), Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and the Social World: The Continued Relevance of Phenomenology (165-186). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698787-009

• Online Publication Date: Feb 7, 2022
• Publication Date: Feb 7, 2022
• Deposit Date: May 15, 2023
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Pages: 165-186
• Series Title: Volume 9 in the series New Studies in the History and Historiography of Philosophy
• Book Title: Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and the Social World: The Continued Relevance of Phenomenology
• Chapter Number: 9
• ISBN: 783110698633
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698787-009
• Keywords: Empathy, intersubjectivity, world-orienting other
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10502333
• Publisher URL: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110698787-009/html