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Primary Intersubjectivity: Empathy, Affective Reversibility, ‘Self-Affection’ and the Primordial ‘We’

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Abstract

The arguments advanced in this paper are the following. Firstly, that just as Trevarthen’s three subjective/intersubjective levels, primary, secondary, and tertiary, mapped out different modes of access, so too response is similarly structured, from direct primordial responsiveness, to that informed by shared pragmatic concerns and narrative contexts, to that which demands the distantiation afforded by representation. Secondly, I propose that empathy is an essential mode of intentionality, integral to the primary level of subjectivity/intersubjectivity, which is crucial to our survival as individuals and as a species. Further to this last point, I argue that empathy is not derived on the basis of intersubjectivity, nor does it merely disclose intersubjectivity, rather it is constitutive of intersubjectivity at the primary level. Empathy is a direct, irreducible intentionality separable in thought from the other primary intentional modes of perception, rationality, memory and imagination, but co-arising with these. In regard to the inter-personal level, the concrete relations with others, primary empathy is both the ground for the possibility of the secondary manifestations—pity, sympathy, perspective taking, etc., and motivates them. Thirdly, it is the movement in the core of subjectivity initially generated by shifting attention between the ‘I’ and ‘we’ perspectives and later ‘solidified’ through affect to become shifting identification, which opens up the intersubjective domain. So we can affirm that we are not only born into sociality but our sociality goes to the roots of our being as Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty have claimed.

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Notes

  1. Representationalists—Dretske (1981, 1995), Fodor (1981), Devitt (1996), Tye (2009), Clark (2002), Chalmers (2004), Block (2003), Hohwy (2007). What I dispute strongly in the representationalist account is the pre-eminence given to cognitive capacities over non-cognitive capacities and the tendency to claim that this account is the definitive account. On the basis of the work of the philosophers mentioned below, it is clear that representation plays no role at the level of primary subjectivity. However, I do recognise the important though more circumscribed than previously supposed role that cognitive capacities and representation may play at the secondary level of subjectivity and that they are crucial at the tertiary level of intersubjective engagement wherein metadiscursive capacities are paramount. For analyses which decisively repudiate the hegemony of representationalist accounts see Gallagher et al. (2013), Gallagher & Zahavi (2010), Gallagher (2006), Zahavi (2004), Varela et al (1991), Gallagher (2005), Zahavi (2005), Dreyfus (1998), Kelly (2002).

  2. Trevarthen (1998).

  3. Gallagher (2005).

  4. This paper is a revised, condensed version of a chapter from my doctoral thesis “The problem of the other in the work of Merleau-Ponty: from epistemology to ethics” (2012). The thesis sought to explicate Merleau-Ponty’s implicit ethics on the basis of his accounts of alterity and also drew on recent neuroscience as empirical support to vindicate some of his claims.

  5. See the later discussions of Batson (2009) and Coplan (2012).

  6. “What is the Reversibility Thesis? The reversibility thesis is the thesis that self, other and world are inherently relational—not in the obvious and trivial sense that they stand in relation to each other, can affect each other, that there are actual and potential causal connections between them. This without question is so and these relations occur between entities that are external to each other. Merleau-Ponty’s Reversibility Thesis, however, proposes that self, other and world are internally related, that there is interdependence at the level of ontology. What does it mean to be internally related? The other—whether other subjectivities or the otherness of the world and things—is essential for self-awareness and vice versa. No self can be apprehended without an-other. Ipseity and alterity are mutually dependent and this interdependence is both pervasive and intrinsic. What is at stake in the reversibility thesis is whether it is able to overcome skeptical objections in assuring real communication and at the same time avoid any collapse into solipsism in assuring real difference. The other must be a genuine, irreducible Other” (Daly 2013).

  7. Merleau-Ponty (1968, 1964b) (VI: 133, 138, 142, 147, 153, 155, 215, 263, 272; VI: 176, 182, 187, 194, 200, 204, 268, 316, 325).

  8. Zur Phänomenologie de Intersubjektivität III, in Husserliana XV, 74–75 and also in Erste Philosophie II in Husserliana VIII, 480 These references represent approximations to the quote above, which has been frequently cited by other researchers. Merleau-Ponty also writes: “Transcendental subjectivity is a revealed subjectivity, revealed to itself and to others, and is for that reason an intersubjectivity” (pp. 361, 421, 419). Zahavi (2002)—furnishes the most conclusive and thorough account of this scholarly dispute. He writes: “As I have already indicated, scholars have occasionally claimed that not all of Merleau-Ponty’s references to passages in Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts should be taken at face value. Spiegelberg, for instance, points out that Merleau-Ponty’s repeated quotation of a statement in Husserl’s Krisis to the effect that transcendental subjectivity is an intersubjectivity is actually not contained in this work. But although Husserl might not have made exactly that statement in Krisis, he did so elsewhere, for instance in Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität III. Here Husserl writes: “I have to distinguish: the currently transcendentally phenomenologizing subjectivity (as an actual ego—monad), and transcendental subjectivity as such; the latter turns out to be transcendental intersubjectivity, which includes the transcendentally phenomenologizing subjectivity within itself” (Hua XV 74–75). … [and further] he writes that transcendental subjectivity in its full universality is exactly intersubjectivity (Hua VIII 480).” Zahavi (2002, p. 24), this issue.

  9. For explanations of phenomenological methodology see Zahavi (2005): 4–6, Gallagher (2012), Merleau-Ponty (1945, 2006).

  10. Trevarthen Op. Cit. (1998, pp. 15–46).

  11. Bateson (1979).

  12. Coplan (2012).

  13. Zahavi (2001, 2005, 2007).

  14. Sheets-Johnstone (2006).

  15. This serves a similar function to the ‘reflective equilibrium’ in various accounts of ethical justification (Rawls 1971; Daniels 1996; Scanlan 2002). However, it is important to note that ‘reflective equilibrium’ remains in the conceptual domain, as the designation indicates.

  16. To be very clear, I am not suggesting that empathy or the embodied, embedded intuitions can replace the evaluative and judgment capacities. Nor am I endorsing unreflective intuition as a reliable arbiter of moral value. However, I am proposing that pre-reflective empathy and embodied, embedded intuitions may serve to alert us if these evaluative and judgment capacities have been co-opted for destructive purposes as in the cases of dehumanisation and demonization.

  17. Varela (1992).

  18. Batson (2009).

  19. Which Batson acknowledges in a footnote.

  20. Scheler (1913).

  21. ibid p. 8.

  22. ibid p. 9.

  23. Zahavi, Op. Cit. (2007, p. 37), this issue.

  24. Batson, Op. Cit. (2009, p. 3).

  25. Concept 1: Knowing Another Person’s Internal state, Including His or Her Thoughts and Feelings; Concept 2: Adopting the Posture or Matching the Neural Responses of an Observed Other, (see—Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and the various neuroscientific findings Gordon (1995), Dimberg et al. (2000), Hoffman (2000), Lipps (1903), Meltzoff and Moore (1977), Titchner (1909), Preston and de Waal (2002) in Batson (2009); Concept 3: Coming to Feel as Another Person Feels, Hume (1740/1896), Smith (1759/1853), Hatfield et al. (1994), Zahn-Waxler et al. (1992), Hodges and Wegner (1997), Hoffman (2000) in Batson (2009); Concept 4: Intuiting or Projecting Oneself into Another’s Situation was originally inspired by what was termed ‘aesthetic empathy’, wherein artists could project themselves into the subject-matter of their work of art, Stein (1964); Concept 5: Imagining How Another is Thinking and Feeling, Stein (1964); Concept 6: Imagining How One Would Think and Feel in the Other’s Place has various historical antecedents—Adam’s Smith’s “changing places in fancy”, Mead’s “role-taking”, Povinelli’s “cognitive empathy”, Darwell’s “projective empathy” or “simulation” and Piaget’s “perspective taking” or “decentering”; Concept 7: Feeling Distress at Witnessing Another Person’s Suffering. To my mind, distress may arise from two very different orientations; the first is other-oriented and therefore moves naturally into Concept 8 engendering a ‘selfless’ response; the second kind of distress is a self-oriented, parasitic distress; Concept 8: Feeling for Another Who is Suffering, tips the balance from empathic understanding, through responsivity towards empathic action—aimed at relieving the suffering of the other. As Batson writes, this kind of empathy refers to “an other-oriented emotional response elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone else”. He notes that in the literature this is sometimes termed “pity”, “compassion”, “sympathetic distress” or “sympathy”. But what differentiates it markedly from other versions of empathy is that it is concerned with congruent response and the self truly-leaves-home. The concern is entirely directed at the suffering other, neither as a projected nor introjected ‘project’—but as a genuine other.

  26. Coplan Op Cit. (2012, p. 6).

  27. In both cases being ‘informed’ is preferable to being ‘constrained’.

  28. Bennett and Hacker (2007), drawing a parallel with a quote from Aristotle,—“to say that the soul [psyche] is angry is as if one were to say that the soul weaves or builds. For it is surely better not to say that the soul pities, learns or thinks, but that a man does these with his soul” (De Anima 408b, 12–15)—Bennett and Hacker assert that this is the same as ascribing experiences to the brain—when in fact, these should be ascribed to the human as a whole. Thus the capacities for thinking, reasoning, desiring, planning and imagining cannot be reduced to neural events, but they may be co-arising. The failure to recognize this distinction is the mereological fallacy of neuroscience, p. 132.

  29. Coplan Op. Cit. (2012, p. 6) my italics.

  30. ibid.

  31. See Gallagher Op. Cit. (2005) and Zahavi Op. Cit. (2005) for critiques of simulation accounts (Zahavi, this issue).

  32. Gallagher (2001, p. 91).

  33. Merleau-Ponty (1964c, 1960).

  34. Einfühlung literally, “feeling one’s way into” was originally used in German aesthetics in the late (nineteenth century, which itself was derived from the Greek “empatheia” which is translated as “passion, state of emotion”. It was first translated into English as “empathy” by Titchener (1909), after which it came into common usage in American psychological research. So it would seem that the original sense has become confused and mixed with the word “sympathy”. “Sympathie” (fr) is “affinity between certain things”; the Latin “sympathia” is “community of feeling”: and the Greek “sympatheia” is “Fellow-feeling”. Colwyn Trevarthen has written most cogently on this confusion and he proposes that “the word ‘sympathy’ clearly conveys best the core sense of intersubjective awareness of agency and emotion that works reciprocally between persons” (2012: 466). With apologies to Trevarthen, I will be using the term “empathy” as an umbrella term to encompass all these renderings, which are I propose (perhaps with the exception of the original Greek) able to capture the sense of affective reversibility.

  35. Merleau-Ponty, M. Op. Cit. (1964a, b, c, p. 170); Op. Cit. (1960, p. 217).

  36. Meltzoff and Moore (1995), Adolphs (2000), Gallagher and Hutto (2008), Slaby (2007), Fuchs (2005). Fuchs notes “It was Erwin Strauss [20; p. 151] who aptly distinguished a ‘pathic’ and a ‘gnostic’ component in perception…” p. 135.

  37. Merleau-Ponty (1964a, p. 30).

  38. Merleau-Ponty (1948, fr, 1970).

  39. I propose that the reason why there is such a strong expectation of reciprocity in regard to empathic behaviour is that just as with perception—even if the perceptive relation is asymmetrical and non-reciprocal—the important point is that the other defines an external vantage on the self. So too with empathy—regardless of non-reciprocity, the other still nonetheless defines an external potentially affectively reciprocal vantage on the self. Furthermore, ‘fellow-feeling’/empathy, as I am arguing, is constitutive of subjectivity.

  40. See earlier footnote this paper, Bennett and Hacker pp. 8 and 9.

  41. Zahavi, Op. Cit. (2001).

  42. Zahavi Op. Cit, (2001, p. 155).

  43. Zahavi Op. Cit, (2001, p. 155).

  44. Zahavi Op. Cit, (2001, p. 156).

  45. The empathy account refers to accounts based on the work of both Max Scheler and Edith Stein. That Scheler’s work is titled The Nature of Sympathy and Stein’s On the Problem of Empathy already signals the complications at this early stage in the precise use of terms to cover affectively responsive intersubjective engagements. Nonetheless, both were developed in rejection of the earlier prevailing account of intersubjectivity—the Argument from Analogy.

  46. Zahavi, Op. Cit. (2001, p.165).

  47. Ibid, p. 153.

  48. Ibid, pp. 153 and 154.

  49. At this point (2001) Zahavi’s philosophical interests are directed towards the more cognitively demanding aspects of intersubjectivity. More recently it would seem that he has returned to an examination of the first person perspective and specifically the “we—perspective”. See Zahavi (2013).

  50. My use of the term ‘self-affection’ is consistent with, but not identical to, the interpretations offered by Zahavi (1999, 2005) and Sheets-Johnstone (2006).

  51. The three levels of subjectivity/intersubjectivity—primary, secondary and tertiary—refer to the seminal work of Trevarthen, Op. Cit. (1998).

  52. Merleau-Ponty (1964c, p. 175).

  53. Merleau-Ponty (2006) (pp. 405–407, 470–472, 466–468) Imbalances between these perspectives may I propose lay the grounds for sociopathology and psychopathology.

  54. Gallagher (2005), Zahavi (2005), Fuchs (2008) offer thorough accounts of both the phenomenology and the neuroscience.

  55. Daly (2013).

  56. Sheets-Johnstone, Op. Cit. (2006).

  57. ibid, pp. 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 376 etc.

  58. ibid, p. 371.

  59. ibid, p. 376.

  60. Zahavi, Op Cit (Zahavi 2005, p. 54).

  61. ibid, pp. 71 and 72.

  62. Merleau-Ponty’s Chapter “Temporality” in The Phenomenology of Perception pp. 410–433, 477–503 and; “time is ‘the affecting of self by self’; *what exerts the effect is time as a thrust and a passing towards a future: what is affected is time as an unfolded series of presents: the affecting agent and affected recipient are one, because the thrust of time is nothing but the transition from one present to another. This ek-stase, this projection of an indivisible power into an outcome which is already present to it, is subjectivity” (p. 495). * footnote—The expression is applied by Kant to the Geműt. Heidegger transfers it to time: ‘Die Zeit is ihren Wesen nach reine Affektion ihrer selbst.’ Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, pp. 180–181.

  63. Zahavi Op. Cit. (2005, p. 124).

  64. Sheets-Johnstone Op. Cit. (2006, p. 376).

  65. Merleau-Ponty (1993) my italics.

  66. Zahavi (1999).

  67. Sheets-Johnstone, Op Cit, (2006, p. 364).

  68. Merleau-Ponty (1962:360–361, 2006:420, 1945:418–419) my italics.

  69. Restak (2002), Gied et al. (1999).

  70. Eisenberg and Eggum (2009).

  71. The work of Vittorio Gallese on the mirroring mechanisms in the brain offers much in the way of supporting such claims (Gallese, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2010a, b). So too, the work of Jordan Zlatev (2007) which emphasizes the linguistic dimensions.

  72. Trevarthen, Op. Cit. (1998, p. 18).

  73. “In the absence of reciprocity there is no alter ego, since the world of the one then takes in completely that of the other, so that one feels disinherited in favour of the other… co-existence must in all cases be experienced on both sides.” The Phenomenology of Perception (1962:357, 2006:416, 1945:415).

  74. Trevarthen, Op Cit (1998, p. 34, 2012).

  75. Bateson (1979).

  76. Proponents of the Theory Theory school of thought include Baron-Cohen (1995), Gopnik and Meltzoff (1998), Wellman (1990), Baron-Cohen (2001).

  77. Leslie (1987), Currie and Ravenscroft (1992).

  78. Thomas Fuchs and his team in the psychiatric department, University of Heidelberg, have done much to illuminate the role of perception and embodiment in psychopathology. See Fuchs Op. Cit. (2005), Fuchs and Schlimme (2009).

  79. Merleau-Ponty (1962:360, 2006:419, 1945:418).

  80. ibid (1962:360, 2006:419, 1945:418).

  81. This refers to the extremely well-known central aim of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical project—to establish a non-dualist ontology, also known as a relational ontology.

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  1. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Anya Daly

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Daly, A. Primary Intersubjectivity: Empathy, Affective Reversibility, ‘Self-Affection’ and the Primordial ‘We’. Topoi 33, 227–241 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9206-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9206-7

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