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Empathy and second-person methodology

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Abstract

How the phenomenology of empathy in Husserl and beyond and the second-person approach of cognition are able to mutually enrich and constrain each other? Whereas the intersubjective empathy is limited to face-to-face inter-individual relational experiences or, when socially embedded, results a non-individualized understanding of others in general, the second person approach of cognition opens the way for a plural relational yet individualized understanding of the other. I would like to show in this paper how the integration of both phenomenological and cognitive fields paves the way for the more encompassing description of intersubjective experience as a “relational multiplicity,” which I will ultimately describe through the empirical practice of an emergency psychiatric unit.

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Notes

  1. Depraz (1995); Kern (1962).

  2. Husserl (1973); Ricœur (1990); Depraz (1995).

  3. Depraz, Varela, Vermersch (2003, p. 85).

  4. Depraz, Varela, Vermersch (2003, p. 84).

  5. Depraz and Cosmelli (2003).

  6. Depraz (2001).

  7. Spiegelberg (1995).

  8. Depraz and Cosmelli (2003: p. 191).

  9. Goldstein (1995: pp. 37–40).

  10. Varela, Shear (1999); Petitmengin (2009).

  11. Varela (1996).

  12. Varela and Depraz (2000); Varela and Depraz (2003).

  13. Bitbol (2002).

  14. Depraz, Varela, Vermersch (2003/2011).

  15. Levine (1983); Chalmers (1995).

  16. Depraz and Cosmelli (2003).

  17. Wittezaele (2003, pp. 31–101).

  18. Elkaïm (1989).

  19. Robin (1998).

  20. Depraz (2005), Boszormenyi-Nagy (1987), Michard (1991).

  21. Kannas (2000).

  22. Depraz and Mauriac (2005).

  23. Larchet (1996: pp. 141–151), Yannaras (1983), Zizioulas (1981).

  24. Yannaras (1986).

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Depraz, N. Empathy and second-person methodology. Cont Philos Rev 45, 447–459 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-012-9223-z

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