Empathy and Transnational Solidarity. Reflections on a Lecture by Carol C. Gould

Abstract

The increase of aggressiveness and the popularization of psychopathic "ideals" all over the world contributed to focusing the current interests of the Psychology and the Political Philosophy on the notion of empathy, attempting to restore balance in the human relationships. This paper briefly reconstructs its history, from Aristotle to Stein, in a line that goes through Rousseau, Herder, Fichte, the romantics, Dilthey and Husserl. The empathy arises from the intrauterine maternofilial link and it constitutes the emotional basis that let the intersubjectivity articulate. As a consequence, it allows also to give a meaning to the empirical world and to the life in society. In this regard, empathy is a neutral faculty that moves in different directions. Its development depends on the education and the contact among human beings. In this context, the paper analyzes Nussbaum´s proposal for a poetic justice and the possibilities of empathy in order to generate solidarity with distant Others.