Empathy in the Context of the Hermeneutics of Suspicion

Autores/as

  • Lou Agosta Lecturer in the Medical Humanities, Ross University Medical School, Saint Anthony Hospital, Chicago (USA)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/errs.2023.628

Palabras clave:

Empathy, Hermeneutics of Suspicion, Understanding, Receptivity, Responsiveness

Resumen

We defend in this essay Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics of suspicion against Toril Moi’s debunking of it as a misguided interpretation of the practice of critical inquiry, and we relate the practice of a rigorous and critical empathy to the hermeneutics of suspicion. For Ricœur, empathy would not be a mere psychological mechanism by which one subject transiently identifies with another, but the ontological presence of the self with the Other as a way of being —listening as a human action that is a fundamental way of being with the Other in which “hermeneutics can stand on the authority of the resources of past ontologies.” In a rational reconstruction of what a Ricœur-friendly approach to empathy would entail, a logical space can be made for empathy to avoid the epistemological paradoxes of Husserl and the ethical enthusiasms of Levinas. How this reconstruction of empathy would apply to empathic understanding, empathic responsiveness, empathic interpretation, and empathic receptivity is elaborated from a Ricœurian perspective.

Citas

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Publicado

2023-12-20

Número

Vol. 14 Núm. 2 (2023)

Sección

Varia

Licencia

Derechos de autor 2023 Lou Agosta

Creative Commons License

Esta obra está bajo una licencia internacional Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0.


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