Abstract
Recent work on empathy has focused on the phenomenon of feeling on behalf of, or for, others, and on determining the role it ought to play in our moral lives. Much less attention, however, has been paid to ‘feeling-with.’ In this paper, I distinguish ‘feeling-with’ from ‘feeling-for.’ I identify three distinguishing features of ‘feeling-with,’ all of which serve to make it distinct from empathy. Then, drawing on work in feminist moral psychology and feminist ethics, I argue that ‘feeling-with’ has unique moral value over and above ‘feeling-for.’ I end by rebutting some likely objections to the claim that ‘feeling-with’ is morally valuable.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Availability of data and material
Not applicable.
Code availability
Not applicable.
Notes
See Maibom (2014) for an overview of the recent literature.
Maibom (ibid) is an exception, in that she conceives of empathy as an emotion felt for and with others. So, she may take issue with my limiting the use of the term ‘empathy’ to feeling for. Nevertheless, what concerns me here is the distinction between these two types of feeling. More on this in the next section.
See also Knox (2013) for a discussion of how Singer and Lamm’s distinction bears on psychoanalytic methods.
Singer and Lamm contend that empathy involves affective sharing, so, on their view, feeling-with is the empathic phenomenon and feeling-for is associated with sympathy and compassion. I do not wish to get into a debate about the definition of empathy, but note here the difference in my use of the term ‘feeling-for.’ I am using it here to refer to cases whereby A feels the same type of emotion for B, not cases in which A feels sympathy or compassion for B.
I discuss the mutual ownership condition in further detail in the following section.
I am grateful to two anonymous referees for pushing me to clarify this point.
I thank an anonymous reviewer both for pressing me to further elaborate on mutually owned emotions, and for pointing me to the already existing literature on the topic.
I will continue to use the term mutually owned emotions, because despite the many similarities between my view and the joint-ownership thesis, there are some important differences. First, Krueger associates the joint-ownership thesis with emotion sharing. While I am sympathetic to this line of thought, I do not claim that feeling-with amounts to, or is a form of, emotion sharing. Furthermore, both Krueger and Merleau-Ponty take the paradigm case of joint ownership of emotion to involve the infant and the caregiver, and thus associate joint ownership of emotion with early childhood. Given my sympathies with care ethics more generally, I take no issue with using the infant-caregiver relationship as a guide in one’s moral theorizing. That said, I do not want to restrict feeling-with, and thus mutual ownership of emotion, to early childhood experiences. In the later stages of this paper, I confine my discussion to cases where there is mutual awareness of the feeling-with, which differentiates my cases from anything that would happen between an infant and a caregiver.
I should note that Bohl (2016) argues against the plausibility of the joint ownership thesis. I do not have space here to address those criticisms, although I think there are considerations in defense of Krueger and Merleau-Ponty.
This is not to say that Roger cannot have excitement of his own. Just that, if Roger and Mirka feel excitement with each other, there will be a separate emotion that Roger co-owns with Mirka.
Again, I want to distinguish my account from both Thonhauser’s and Stein’s at least on the basis that I make no claim that feeling-with is a form of sharing.
There is support in the contemporary literature both for the notion that mental states extend beyond one’s brain and that multiple people can take part in one collective mental state. See Clark and Chalmers (1998), Wray (2001), Gallotti and Huebner (2017), Tuomela (1992), Krueger (2009), and Gallagher (2013) for some examples.
See again Maibom (ibid) and Coplan (ibid) for helpful discussions of contagion.
To be clear, this leaves us with another threefold distinction. Feeling-for, feeling-with (no awareness, control, involuntary), and feeling-with (awareness, control, voluntary). I will advocate for the moral value of the latter version of feeling-with.
There is also a great deal of evidence that empathic enterprises are aided not only by proximity but also by the closeness of the relationship. Ickes’ (1997) presents findings that empathic accuracy is greater when the parties involved have some kind of close bond. The authors in that volume have something different from feeling-with in mind when they speak of empathic accuracy, by which they mean a kind of empathic inference regarding the mental states of others (p. 2). Nevertheless, we will see that the lessons from the empathic accuracy literature are relevant to my discussion of the ethical implications of feeling-with. First, because feeling-with will also be affected by the closeness of those involved (many of my examples, though not all, involve people that are familiar with each other), it faces the same limitations that empathy does with regard to the spotlight effect. Second, empathic accuracy can serve to deepen and stabilize close relationships (Ickes & Simpson, 2018), and this is one of the benefits that I claim feeling-with can have.
See Tong and Williams (2009) for discussion.
I will discuss this in further detail below.
Gilligan’s work has produced a great deal of literature and debate, most of which I do not have time to address here. I only need the reader to agree that in some circumstances it is appropriate, indeed recommended, that one adopt a relational perspective akin to the one Gilligan describes as the final stage of a properly feminist moral development.
This is not to say that they feel with each other simply because they are brothers. Whether family members do indeed feel with each other in cases like this depends on the particular relationships among the family members. I assume here that Bob and Gary feel with each other just for the sake of example.
My goal here is not to argue that it would be bad for Bob and Gary to grieve separately. Perhaps that is called for given certain contexts and relationships. I only use this example to demonstrate that grieving with each other has important moral upsides, and that those upsides are not necessarily achieved when we only feel-for. Likewise, if Bob and Gary grieve separately, and Bob only feels grief on behalf of Gary, there are important moral benefits that are not gained when they feel-with.
To clarify a potential ambiguity in my account, it is not that when you feel with that you have emotional ownership over one’s experience of care. Rather, it is that because feeling-with involves a kind of reciprocity in the same way that a caring relationship does, feeling-with can strengthen and deepen the care that the one-caring feels. That’s because in feeling-with the party is engrossed in the other much like the way the one-caring is engrossed in the cared-for. So, in certain cases feeling-with can serve to strengthen the ties and engrossment of the one-caring, and in other cases may help to foster a caring relationship.
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me on this point, and for directing me to Margaret Gilbert’s distinction between walking side-by-side and walking together. Gilbert argues that a logically sufficient condition for walking together is the mutual acknowledgment of, and the mutual intention to pursue, a common project. There is not space for a full discussion of relevant differences and similarities between her distinction and the for/with distinction, but I will briefly note that both walking together and feeling-with will each go hand-in-hand with a common project, setting aside the issue of which is more basic, whereas this is not the case with either walking side-by-side or feeling-for.
Here it is important to highlight the limits of feeling-with. I do not mean to say that we can easily feel-with those we do not know, such as a panhandler. I only want to point out the way in which feeling-with has interesting moral upsides that feeling-for does not. But, to be sure, feeling-with also has moral limitations in that it requires reciprocal and proximal relationships. I touch on this more below during my discussion of how feeling-with relates to concerns of justice and impartiality.
References
Bailey, O. (2020). Empathy and the value of humane understanding. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12744
Betzler, M. (2019). The relational value of empathy. The International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 27(2), 136–161.
Bloom, P. (2016). Against empathy. HarperCollins.
Bohl, V. (2016). No joint ownership! Shared emotions are social-relational emotions. Studia Philosophica Estonica, 111–135.
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3328150.
Coplan, A. (2011a). Understanding empathy: Its features and effects. In A. Coplan & P. Goldie (Eds.), Empathy: Philosophical and psychological perspectives (pp. 3–19). Oxford University Press.
Coplan, A. (2011b). Will the real empathy please stand up? Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49(4), 40–65.
Darwall, S. (1998). Empathy, sympathy, care. Philosophical Studies, 89(2–3), 261–282. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004289113917.
Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., & Spinrad, T. L. (2006). Prosocial development. In N. Eisenberg, W. Damon, & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Social, emotional, and personality development (pp. 646–718). Wiley.
Feshbach, N. D. (1975). Empathy in children: Some theoretical and empirical considerations. The Counseling Psychologist, 5(2), 25–30.
Gallagher, S. (2013). The socially extended mind. Cognitive Systems Research, 25–26, 4–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2013.03.008.
Gallotti, M., & Huebner, B. (2017). Collective intentionality and socially extended minds. Philosophical Psychology, 30(3), 251–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2017.1295629.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press.
Goldman, A. (1993). Ethics and cognitive science. Ethics, 103(2), 337–360.
Hoffman, M. (2000). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. Cambridge University Press.
Ickes, W., & Simpson, J. (1997). Managing empathic accuracy in close relationships. In W. Ickes (Ed.), Empathic accuracy (pp. 218–250). The Guilford Press.
Krueger, J. (2009). Empathy and the extended mind. Zygon, 44(3), 675–698. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2009.01024.x.
Krueger, J. (2013). Merleau-ponty on shared emotions and the joint ownership thesis. Continental Philosophy Review, 46(4), 509–531.
León, F., Szanto, T., & Zahavi, D. (2019). Emotional sharing and the extended mind. Synthese, 196(12), 4847–4867.
Little, M. (1995). Seeing and caring: the role of affect in feminist moral epistemology. Hypatia, 10(3), 117–137.
Maibom, H. (2007). The presence of others. Philosophical Studies, 132(2), 161–190. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-004-0018-x.
Maibom, H. (2014). (Almost) Everything you ever wanted to know about empathy. In H. Maibom (Ed.), Empathy and Morality (pp. 1–40). Oxford University Press.
Meyers, D. T. (2017). A modest feminist sentimentalism: Empathy and moral understanding across social difference. In R. Debes, & K. Stueber (Eds.), Ethical Sentimentalism: New Perspectives. pp. 210–229.
Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. University of California Press.
Preston, S. D. (2007). A perception-action model for empathy. In T. Farrow & P. Woodruff (Eds.), Empathy in mental illness (pp. 428–447). Cambridge University Press.
Prinz, J. (2011). Against empathy. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49(214), 214–233.
Salice, A. (2015). Sharing an emotion: A Schelerian approach. Thaumazein, 3, 83–102.
Scheler, M. (2008). The nature of sympathy. Routledge.
Schmid, H. B. (2009). Plural action. Essays in philosophy and social science. Springer.
Singer, T., & Lamm, C. (2009). The social neuroscience of empathy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1156(1), 81–96.
Slote, M. (2007). The ethics of care and empathy. Routledge.
Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Harvard University Press.
Thonhauser, G. (2018). Shared emotions: A Steinian proposal. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 17(5), 997–1015.
Tong, R., & Williams, N. (2009) Feminist Ethics (Summer 2018 Edition). Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/feminism-ethics/.
Tuomela, R. (1992). Group beliefs. Synthese, 91(3), 285–318. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413570.
Wray, B. (2001). Collective belief and acceptance. Synthese, 129(3), 319–333. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013148515033.
Zahavi, D., & Rochat, P. (2015). Empathy ≠ sharing: Perspectives from phenomenology and developmental psychology. Consciousness and Cognition, 36, 543–553.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Peter Langland-Hassan, Heidi Maibom, Vanessa Carbonell, Tony Chemero, and Kyle Furlane for pushing me to refine the ideas presented here. Thanks also to two anonymous Phil Studies reviewers for providing generous and valuable feedback. Any remaining faults in this paper are entirely my own. This work was supported by the Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.
Funding
No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gatyas, M. The moral value of feeling-with. Philos Stud 179, 2901–2919 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01807-4
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01807-4