A New Perspective on Sympathy and Its Cultivation, with Insights from the Confucian
Tradition
by
Jing Hu
Department of Philosophy
Duke University
Date:______Approved:
______David Wong, Co-Supervisor
______Owen Flanagan, Co-Supervisor
______Michael Ferejohn
______Wayne Norman
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Department of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Duke University
2017
ABSTRACT
A New Perspective on Sympathy and Its Cultivation, with Insights from the Confucian
Tradition
by
Jing Hu
Department of Philosophy
Duke University
Date:______Approved:
______David Wong, Co-Supervisor
______Owen Flanagan, Co-Supervisor
______Michael Ferejohn
______Wayne Norman
An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017
Copyright by Jing Hu 2017
Abstract
My dissertation aims to show that sympathy, when well-cultivated, is adequate to motivate and produce altruistic behavior in a consistent and reliable manner. I do so by creating a dialogue between the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions. I define sympathy as a four-dimensional emotion—including perceptive, visceral, motivational and cognitive aspects. I argue that sympathy in its mature stage is capable of motivating people in a consistent manner, and its role in morality cannot be replaced by other emotions. In addition, I argue that the leap from an unstable reaction to a mature, consistent and reliable emotion is made through proper cultivation.
Cultivational methods such as ritual practice, rational persuasion, self-cultivation, etc. are discussed and evaluated. I also discuss the limitations of sympathy and its cultivation towards the end of the dissertation.
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Dedication
To grandpa.
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Table of Contents
Abstract ...... iv
List of Figures ...... x
Acknowledgements ...... xi
1. Introduction: A Project on Sympathy ...... 1
1.1 Why Should We Study Sympathy? ...... 1
1.2 Why Now? ...... 2
1.3 What is Special about This Project? ...... 3
1.3.1 Bridging the East and the West ...... 4
1.3.2 Seeking the Missing Piece: From a Problematic Emotion to a Cardinal Virtue 6
1.4 The Primitive VS Mature Form of Sympathy ...... 8
1.5 This Project’s Tasks ...... 11
2. Sympathy Redefined ...... 14
2.1 Why Do We Need Yet a New Definition? ...... 14
2.2 ‘Sympathy’ and ‘Empathy’ in History ...... 16
2.2.1 ‘Sympathy’ ...... 17
2.2.2 ‘Empathy’ ...... 18
2.3 Sympathy/Empathy Today— 5 Reasons Why We Couldn’t Reach a Unified
Definition ...... 20
2.4 A Stipulated Definition of Sympathy in This Project ...... 29
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3. An Analysis of the Primitive Form of Sympathy ...... 35
3.1 Introduction ...... 35
3.2 An Interpretation of Mencius 2A6 ...... 36
3.3 The Contexts and the Subject of Sympathy—A General Response ...... 38
3.4 The Cognitive Component, Perception of Distress and Eliciting Condition ...... 40
3.4.1 An Evolutionary Perspective ...... 42
3.4.2 A Discussion of Hoffman’s 5 Modes of Empathetic Arousal ...... 44
3.5 The Affective Aspect/ “I Feel Your Pain” ...... 49
3.6 The Motivational Component — Dictates No Specific Action ...... 51
3.7 The Mencian Triplet ...... 53
3.7.1 The Mencian Perceptive-Affective-Motive Triplet ...... 54
3.7.2 Shared Representation ...... 56
3.7.3 Action-specific Perception Theory ...... 59
3.8 The High Cognitive Activities as a Part of Ceyin zhi xin ...... 61
3.9 The Russian Doll Model ...... 63
3.10 No Ulterior Motives and Suddenness in 2A6 ...... 67
3.11 Sympathizing with the Beasts ...... 71
3.12 Conclusion ...... 73
4. Cultivating Sympathy ...... 75
4.1 Introduction ...... 75
4.2 From Sparing an Ox to Benevolent Policy-Making ...... 77
4.2.1 Mencius 1A7 ...... 77
4.2.2 From an Ox to the King's People—3 Dimensions ...... 78
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4.2.3 Does the King Possess the Primitive Form of Sympathy? ...... 81
4.2.4 Toward the Mature Form of Sympathy ...... 84
4.3 Sympathetic Perception ...... 89
4.3.1 To See VS. To Apprehend ...... 90
4.3.2 Strengthen Basic Sensitivity ...... 94
4.3.3 To Learn and Recognize Suffering Clues ...... 99
4.3.4 Understanding Others' Perspective – Stepping into Others' Shoes ...... 100
4.3.5 Caring and Beliefs ...... 106
4.3.6 Pattern Matching ...... 108
4.4 Additional Important Factors in Cultivating Sympathy ...... 110
4.4.1 Commitment to Ethical Cultivation ...... 110
4.4.2 Verbal Persuasion ...... 111
4.4.3 Constancy ...... 115
4.4.4 Actions One Frequently Performs ...... 115
4.4.5 Ritual Practice ...... 117
5. Prinz’s “Empathy” Revisited ...... 119
5.1 Introduction ...... 119
5.2 Prinz’s “Empathy” Revisited ...... 121
5.3 Emotion Sharing VS. Other-oriented Emotion Congruent with the Other’s
Situation ...... 122
5.4 Matching Mental State ...... 127
5.5 “Concern” and “Empathy”, Prinz on Batson’s Choice of Terms ...... 131
6. Sympathy and Morality ...... 139
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6.1 Introduction and the Objectives ...... 139
6.2 Sympathy as an Altruistic Motivator ...... 141
6.2.1 Weak in Motivation? MFS and the Cultivation of Sympathy ...... 142
6.2.2 Sympathy’s Motivational Function in High-Cost Altruistic Behaviors ...... 144
6.2.3 Does “Weak Emotion” Always Issue Weak Motivation? ...... 151
6.2.4 Conclusion ...... 158
6.3 Sympathy’s Epistemic Function and Its Importance in Moral Judgment Making159
6.4 Sympathy’s Function in Moral Education & Breaking Social Barriers ...... 164
6.5 Sympathy, Anger, and Shame ...... 169
6.6 Is Anger a Better Moral Emotion? ...... 170
6.7 Sympathy and Tolerance ...... 173
6.8 Limitations and Project Conclusion ...... 176
Bibliography ...... 180
Biography ...... 187
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List of Figures
Figure 1: The Russian Doll Model illustrates the structural relationship between PAM and more sophisticated cognitive abilities. The outer layers of the doll, namely the sophisticated cognitive capacities, always stays connected to its inner core of PAM. Figure replicated from de Waal 2008...... 66
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Acknowledgements
This is not the most important part of a dissertation, but I have to admit that I have thought about it a lot. I have always had the idea that one can only write the acknowledgment after the whole dissertation is finished. It is almost imperative. I had first imagined that I would write the acknowledgment in the
Perkin’s Library of Duke University, surrounded by a group of freshmen working on their group project from organic chemistry. In the years I have been working on this project, my imagination of writing this acknowledgment changed many times. Sometimes the undergraduate students were not there; sometimes they were dressed in blue to celebrate a Duke basketball win. Now that I think about it, it is a ridiculous idea. To write the acknowledgment after I finish writing the dissertation I mean, not wearing blue to celebrate a win. It is ridiculous because writing a “thank you” note six years after I started this project means that I will almost definitely miss some who I am deeply grateful of. I wholeheartedly thank the individuals and institutes from whom/which I have received generous help from. Please know that if your name slipped my mind at this moment, your help is deeply appreciated. As a matter of fact, if you are reading my dissertation and this acknowledgment, I probably meant to thank you.
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My thanks go to my advisors David Wong and Owen Flanagan. Without them, this project would not have been possible. Through the years, David and
Owen have offered me many helpful comments on my earlier drafts of this project and the many versions of its proposal. Some of the ideas in this project are inspired by David’s work, the long chats we had during my independent studies and our regular meetings. From working with David as a teaching assistant, I have learned how to be a patient teacher who understands students’ perspectives and different temperaments. I am also deeply grateful for the help I have received from Owen, who gave me some of the most critical comments regarding not only this project but also my career. It is impossible to summarize my gratitude to them in a few sentences after knowing and working with them for so long. Perhaps the least I can say is that David and Owen are amongst the people who greatly influence my intellectual life and my life in general; they will always be my role models, as philosophers and as teachers.
I would also like to thank my committee member Michael Ferejohn, who has taught me most of the things I know about of ancient Greek philosophy and has led me through my first job market year. Wayne Norman for the positivity he brought to me and the project, the helpful comments I received—and not to forget, for writing a song about the Mencian four sprouts and human nature.
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I would also like to take this chance to thank the philosophy department at Duke, for having me as a part of it and making me feel a part of it. I want to thank Gopal Sreenivasan and Karen Neander for being amazing DGS (Director of Graduate Studies), I also want to thank Janelle Haynes, for being incredibly helpful since the day I landed in Durham. Thank you, my fellow graduate students, for attending my Work-in-Progress seminars and dissertation seminar.
My friends in Durham: Antong Liu, Bre Kerchner, Carlos Mariscal, Daniela
Miteva, Daniel Stephens, Heather Mayer, James Ong, John Park, Lok Chen, Ming
Lei, Nathaniel Gindele, Steve Martin, Susan Meyer, Yang Yu, Wenqing Zhao, and Galip Gurkan Yardimci, thank you all for keeping me in good spirit.
During my research, I have received generous financial support from the
James B. Duke Fellowship and the Summer Research Scholarship from Fred and
Barbara H. Sutherland Fellowship Endowment.
Lastly, I’d like to thank my parents and my family for their unwavering support. In the year of 1994, when my uncle Dr. Ye called us from Palermo, Italy where he worked as a surgeon, he told my cousins and me who were in China that, he knew it, there will be a doctor in each generation of our family. “There will be one in your generation too,” he said on the phone from the other side of the globe. When he said that, he did not mean a doctor in philosophy, nor did he have his eyes on me. After all, he is right.
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Chapter 1 1. Introduction: A Project on Sympathy
The subject of this project is sympathy,1 an emotion that attracts philosophical minds for its ability to make people feel the pain of others, to urge people towards helpful behavior, and to enable people to take perspectives other than their own. The project concerns many aspects of sympathy, such as the cultivation of sympathy, which has been examined closely in both Western and East Asian philosophical traditions. I hope to gather insights by studying not only the Western ethical theories on sympathy but also the early
Confucian and Mencian ideas such as ceyin zhi xin.2 In the following sections of this chapter, several issues that motivate this project’s inquiries are discussed before outlining the main questions this project seeks to answer.
1.1 Why Should We Study Sympathy?
The rich and intriguing philosophical literature on sympathy piques philosophical curiosity. Great thinkers discussed sympathy at length: Some tried to build a whole freestanding ethical and political system upon sympathy [e.g. Adam Smith]; some argued that it can be cultivated into one of the cardinal virtues. The epistemic function of
1 How sympathy is defined is addressed in chapter 2.
2 Ceyin zhi xin, sometimes translated as the heart of compassion, of commiseration. In my project, I take it to denote a sympathetic response to others in distress, see chapter 2 and 3 for a discussion of ceyin zhi xin.
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sympathy is also celebrated: By providing accesses to others’ minds that are distinct yet similar to that of our own, sympathy3 helps us to “Know ourselves!” in addition to “Know thyself”. Being one of the most celebrated and ancient gifts humans possess, sympathy has never ceased drawing academic interest throughout human intellectual history.
In today’s academic world, how to understand sympathy is the subject of heated debate. Aside from the Aristotelian tradition’s discussion on compassion and the sentimentalist tradition’s continuing interest in sympathy, empirical studies on this subject also blossomed in the recent decades. Many philosophical questions revolving around sympathy arise; some are ages-old, and some are new. What is sympathy? What is sympathy’s role in morality? Does it pose an obstacle for fairness and justice? Is sympathy a good guide to contemporary ethical questions resulting from emerging medical/technological development? I aim to address some of the questions here.
1.2 Why Now?
A cross-cultural study of sympathy is especially called for in the modern, interconnected globe we live in and share with each other. Globalization brings us chances to interact and cooperate with people who were not previously accessible due to geographical remoteness. Nowadays, frequent intercontinental flights connect the world in ways it has never been before. Technologies such as online video sharing and cloud computing are spreading information over the mountains and the sea. Emerging new technologies help to bridge geographic distances, but geographic barriers are not only obstacles that
3 Throughout the project I mainly use ‘sympathy’ to denote the emotion that is the subject of this project. I occasionally mention studies done under the term empathy, compassion, and pity. The differences between these terms are addressed and discussed in Chapter 2 and Chapter 5.
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separate people. Humans, separated by the mountains and the sea before, have developed different cultures and customs. Can they now truly understand one another?
Can they truly understand others who have different table manners, family structures, religious beliefs, and different looks? A study of sympathy may reveal some of the answers.
After all, if sympathy is an ancient gift, so ancient that humans possessed it before the mountains and the sea separated them; perhaps it could help reunite them now that the geographical obstacles cease to be.
The empirical research in both psychology and neuroscience allow us to take advantage of this body of literature as well. Philosophers stand a better chance than ever at uncovering not only the nature of this emotion but also its role in human psychology and in morality. My project is one of the many that set off to ride the tides of this wave of groundbreaking empirical studies.
1.3 What is Special about This Project?
This project is a cross-culture one that looks at both the Eastern and Western philosophical tradition. Drawing insights form the early Confucian thinkers, it seeks to address sympathy’s function in contemporary moral practice and normative theory. It bridges different philosophical traditions and brings in a dynamic outlook on sympathy.
By viewing sympathy as a changing process that can be cultivated, this project adds a missing piece into our understanding of the emotion’s value; it outlines the trajectory from a fleeting emotion to a cardinal virtue.
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1.3.1 Bridging the East and the West A cross-culture study of sympathy helps us to better understand a number of issues.
Through contrast, we can begin to understand the “raw” emotion of sympathy, or its essence, before cultures have shaped the emotion to various forms. Furthermore, the ancient Confucian thinkers such as Confucius and Mencius never had a chance to discuss their insights with their contemporary philosophers in Greece. This study aims to create such a dialogue. The early Confucian thinkers, especially Mencius, had many valuable ideas about human nature and moral psychology that strike us as plausible and insightful when tested against findings of contemporary empirical studies. The Confucian ethical system is frequently compared with Aristotelian virtue ethics not only because of their period of origin but also because of their similar interests in virtues, cultivation/habituation of virtues and human flourishing in general. How does Aristotle’s understanding of “habituation” differ from the Confucian cultivation of virtues? What are the specific methods of cultivating sympathy/compassion according to ancient wise minds? This project offers such a “dialogue” between the two traditions.
The benefits and significance of such a dialogue are two ways. On one hand, it helps the Western tradition to learn from its parallel traditions. Not only can we take insightful ideas from Mencius and other Eastern thinkers but also, we could reflect upon our methodology. Such reflection may lead us to question some of the most fundamental assumptions in the history of Western philosophy. For the former, Michael Slote has offered several compelling reasons of why we should learn (and what we could learn) from the Confucian tradition in “The Philosophical Reset Button: A Manifesto.”4 For the
4 Michael Slote, “The Philosophical Reset Button,” Dao 14, no. 1 (2015): 1-11.
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latter, David Wong points out in “Growing Virtues” 5 that the Eastern philosophical tradition does not make a sharp distinction between reason and emotion, as the Western philosophical tradition does. The dichotomy starting from Plato is deeply ingrained in
Western mainstream philosophy: Reason/rationality is superior to emotions; they keep the chaotic emotions in check. The 18th century sentimentalists think the opposite is the dominant partner in the dichotomy, as the iconic statement from Hume suggested
“reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (T II.3.3 415). 6 Despite their difference in believing whether reason or emotion is dominant, the dichotomy persists.
Thinkers in certain non-Western traditions on the other hand, free from the constrains posed by said dichotomy, face a richer set of possibilities in interpreting emotions, motivations and the cultivating of emotions. Therefore, we should learn from our parallel traditions about such interpretations that are free from the reason/emotion dichotomy; and perhaps further question this assumed dichotomy that has been challenged by recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience.
On the other hand, my project updates our understanding of the early Confucian ideas such as ceyin zhi xin ( ), bu ren ren zhi xin ( ), and the cultivational methods with the contemporary empirical studies. My work thus further provides us chances to gain a deeper understanding of the ancient philosophers’ insights.
5 David Wong, "Growing Virtue: The Theory and Science of Developing Compassion from a Mencian Perspective" in The Philosophical Challenge from China, ed. Brian Bruya (MIT Press, 2015), 23-24. 6 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, rev. P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), II.3.3 415. This iconic statement does not accurately reflect Hume’s thoughts, a lot would argue, but nonetheless showcases one typical view.
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1.3.2 Seeking the Missing Piece: From a Problematic Emotion to a Cardinal Virtue Virtues related to sympathy (e.g. compassion, and benevolence/ren) are frequently praised in secular and religious contexts. However, the emotion of sympathy is sometimes not trusted in philosophical theories as a reliable motivator. Sometimes this is due to the fact that it is an emotion, which in general should not be trusted to some. For example, Kant states that when “…a universal law the human race could admittedly very well subsist, no doubt [is] even better than when everyone prates about sympathy and benevolence and even exerts himself to practice them occasionally, but on the other hand also cheats where he can, sells the right of human beings or otherwise infringes upon it.” (4:423)7 Sympathy is obviously not very reliable to Kant as it only performs occasionally and allows one to
“cheats where he can, sells the right of human beings or otherwise infringes upon it.”
When describing that anyone in the right mind will certainly choose reason over altruistic emotions, Kant further states that sympathy and general benevolence are useful yet burdensome inclinations.8 Are we wrong about sympathy being a reliable motivator?
What accounts for the gap between the unstable/unreliable emotion and a cardinal virtue?
This project offers an answer.
Although many thinkers were impressed by how strongly sympathy can motivate people, few of them went so far as to claim sympathy alone was adequate for an altruistic
7 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. And ed. Mary Gregor, with an introduction Christine M. Korsgaard (Cambridge University Press: 1998)
8 Ibid., 101. Kant states, “there is no one - not even the most hardened scoundrel, if only he is otherwise accustomed to use reason — who, when one sets before him examples of honesty of purpose, of steadfastness in following good maxims, of sympathy and general benevolence (even combined with great sacrifices of advantage and comfort), does not wish that he might also be so disposed. He cannot indeed bring this about in himself, though only because of his inclinations and impulses; yet at the same time he wishes to be free from such inclinations, which are burdensome to himself.”
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grounding of morality. The reason for this is seemingly self-evident: Emotions, including sympathy, are often considered unstable and being subject to many morally irrelevant factors (such as one’s mood, one’s physical condition, physical distance between the agent and the object, etc.). It is argued that as powerful as sympathy is, it should not be trusted with the role of motivation for altruistic behavior.
Furthermore, philosophers differ in their opinions when it comes to what kind of power sympathy has. The debate has been going on for centuries, with one side asserting that sympathy or compassion can be a major moral or altruistic motivator, while the other side criticizing them for being inconsistent and unreliable. This debate is alive and well in our own times. Michael Slote promotes ethics of care, in which gender and ethnic discrimination would diminish while tolerance will prevail. 9 If we can sympathize more with people with different problems, people from different backgrounds, wouldn’t the world be a better place? Regarding the role of sympathy, the middle ground may be that sympathy needs guidelines. We certainly cannot do without sympathy, yet sympathy is not all that is required for laying the moral foundation of an individual. This seems to be a reasonable and safe-if-not-creative take on the matter. However, some philosophers disagree with this statement as well. For example, the contemporary philosopher Jesse
Prinz argues that sympathy is not necessary for morality. Prinz criticizes sympathy for being highly selective yet weak in its motivating power. What accounts for the huge differences with regarding to sympathy’s value in the abovementioned theories? The cultivation of sympathy, I argue, is the missing link between the spontaneous, unreliable and fleeting sympathy and the celebrated virtue of benevolence.
9 Michael Slote, The Ethics of Care and Empathy (Routledge, 2007), 10-15.
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Water flows downwards; seeds grow into trees and flowers. Emotions change and
“grow” too. The cultivation of sympathy, a process emphasized in both the Aristotelian tradition (known as habituation) and the Mencian tradition, is the central subject of this project and also the missing piece I bring into our understanding of sympathy. This missing piece enables the leap from an unstable, biased primitive sympathetic response to a mature, consistent and reliable emotion. Through proper cultivation, sympathy can be transformed into its mature stage, which becomes a reliable moral guide. When studying sympathy’s function and value in morality, this missing piece may not help us solve the entire jigsaw puzzle, but certainly leaves important clues.
1.4 The Primitive VS Mature Form of Sympathy
Following the last section’s topic of the cultivation of sympathy, I make an important distinction here. I draw the distinction between a natural and uncultivated form of sympathy and a well-cultivated form of sympathy. By doing so, I hope to illustrate both the nature form of sympathy and the function of cultivation.
The cultivation process, which I claim has the power of transferring the natural and raw material of sympathy into a consistent and reliable virtue, calls for close scrutiny.
This is one of the tasks this project takes upon. To better study this process, I make an important distinction: The Primitive Form of Sympathy (PFS) and the Mature Form of
Sympathy (MFS).
The term “mature form of sympathy” may seem a little strange at the first glance.
In everyday life we call someone sympathetic if that person cares for others, feels others’ pain, and tries to be helpful to others. There are people who show more sympathy than
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others; and there are people who show less, or little sympathy. However, rarely do we say that one shows a mature form of sympathy or that one has sympathy, but in a very immature form. The distinction between relatively mature and primitive or immature form of sympathy is crucial in this project. Sympathy, as a quality of an individual, is a changing process rather than a static one. How people exhibit sympathy not only varies among individuals but also varies throughout one particular individual’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Even after one enters adulthood, this process of change does not necessarily stop.10 In this project, I use the phrase “the mature form of sympathy” to refer to an individual’s sympathy if it is properly-cultivated and well-toned. The cultivating methods are examined and discussed in Chapter 4, which ends with an account of the MFS.
A glimpse into the MFS tells us that it has the following characteristics:
Sympathetic Perception:
The MFS includes the capacity of perceiving a situation sympathetically. Scholars have studied properties of sympathy that apply to MFS. Lawrence Blum calls it
“apprehension” of a situation;13 Nancy Sherman calls it a “practical reason as a kind of perception, as a way of judging or construing the case prior to deciding how to act”.14
One must have a sympathetic perspective to perceive others as in need of help or in distress—this sympathetic perspective involves an affective aspect. It is through this affective aspect one perceives not only the operative information of a scene but gives priorities to others’ pain and distress. The affective aspect of the perception allows one to see and feel others’ distress. The way one perceives a situation, or one’s “take” on a particular situation, determines a large part of how one would act in response to the
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situation.15 Without this ability, one would not be able to see other’s pain accurately, let alone feel other’s pain. Individuals with MFS, when in a normal physical and psychological state, are able to appreciate others’ distress, picking up important clues indicating distress and constructing a situation as one that calls for help.16 If one cannot see and feel other’s pain when the pain was fairly obvious, one cannot be said to be a sympathetic person despite one’s willingness or even eagerness to help.
Stable State:
Sympathy in its mature form would arise in a consistent manner. In the case of someone who occasionally exhibits sympathetic behavior, or someone who acts helpfully out of a whim, we cannot conclude such a person is a sympathetic person, or to be accurate, possesses the MFS. What accounts for this stability is one’s capacity related to sympathy (such as sympathetic perception), one’s regulating of emotions, and one’s altruistic beliefs. With these in place, one’s sympathetic responses will exhibit a pattern, instead of being fleeting.
Motivation:
The MFS comes with altruistic motivations. Upon detecting clues of distress, the one with the MFS would gain motivation to help or comfort the distressed.
Emotion Regulation:
An individual with the MFS can properly evaluate a situation. She is able to compare different situations and consult her beliefs so as to regulate her sympathy. An individual with MFS could regulate her sympathy and consult her other faculties such as an evaluation of the situation, her believes about social justice, and her other emotions such as anger at the unjust and her understand of the responsibility.
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Perhaps now is a good time to answer this question: Is one’s possession of PFS or
MFS merely a matter of degree in sympathy? It is not. Nor is it the case that the “more” sympathy the better. Excessive sympathy may cloud one’s judgment and compromise one ability of behaving altruistically. For example, an adequate amount of sympathy to victims helps one to stay emotionally connected yet not overwhelmed; excessive sympathy on the other hand may undermine one’s role as a helper. Think of the doctors and nurses in a war time hospital, sympathy for the victims may be what drives them to the profession yet they cannot allow excessively sympathy in individual cases—which will undermine their professional performance. The MFS allows one to have adequate amount of sympathy; it also allows one to make adequate judgments, even when the judgments are against one’s sympathetic inclination.
Personal Relationship &Community:
MFS is cultivated and fostered within a community and its members. MFS, in turn, contributes to the flourishing of individuals and their relationship with others. MFS creates and strengthens interpersonal bonding rather than weakening and diminishing it.
It is one of the key elements towards understanding people with different backgrounds; sympathy therefore enables a healthy relationship inside and outside of the community.
Besides contributing on the individual level, sympathy in its mature form would also help in creating an understanding and tolerant environment in society.
1.5 This Project’s Tasks
This project studies sympathy. To be more specific, it studies sympathy in its primitive stage, in its mature stage and the process that bridges these two stages—the cultivation of
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sympathy. I examine the following questions in this project:
Q 1: What is Sympathy?
Q 2: What is the Primitive Form of Sympathy? What characteristics does it possess?
Q 3: What is MFS?
Q 4: What are the ways to cultivate PFS into MFS?
Q5: Is MFS attainable?
Q6: What is sympathy’s role in morality?
I examine them in the following order:
Chapter one introduces the theme and questions of the project. It discusses the uniqueness and significance of such a cross-culture and interdisciplinary project. It also provides a preliminary answer to Q3. After the questions and objectives are presented,
Chapter two offers a terminological discussion of the terms “sympathy” and “empathy”.
In this chapter I stipulate a working definition of sympathy and explain how relevant terminological issues are dealt with in the dissertation. After laying down the terminological groundwork for this philosophical project, Chapter three aims to uncover the characteristics of The Primitive Form of Sympathy (PFS). It answers Q1 and Q2.
In this chapter, I took Mencius 2A6 as the core case to describe PFS. Based upon my understanding of PFS in the previous chapter, Chapter four illustrates the cultivational methods—addressing Q4. It starts with Mencius 1A7. By discussing how
Mencius moves from “Sparing an Ox” to “Benevolent Policy-making” in his conversation with King Xuan of Qi, I demonstrate that sympathy could be extended to objects considered less likely to evoke the emotion. Cultivational methods such as preserving basic sensitivity, learn and recognize suffering clues, verbal persuasion, ritual practice (see 4.3-4.3) to name but a few, are also discussed. Mostly importantly this
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chapter gives a philosophical justification that MFS is attainable, thus addressing Q5.
Chapter five defends sympathy against its critics. I argue that sympathy plays an essential and irreplaceable role in morality, addressing Q6. I further suggest that being one of the essential moral emotions, sympathy’s role in morality is related to one’s understanding of human psychology and a boarder account of “human nature”. I thus conclude the project by restating sympathy’s unique functions in morality. I would also like to invite thinkers to work on sympathy and other moral emotions from interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives.
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Chapter 2
2. Sympathy Redefined
Sympathy is a frequently discussed phenomenon in philosophy in addition to a common emotion. What the term sympathy means and what it denotes is not without dispute—as is true of any intensely discussed notion in philosophy. To preempt possible confusion that may arise from the different usages of ‘sympathy’, this chapter provides a working definition of it. One may ask, why not use an existing definition of sympathy to describe the emotion? I argue in the following sections that it is nearly impossible to find a universal or widely accepted definition of sympathy, not to mention one that fits the purpose of this project. To support my claim, I briefly survey some of the historical and contemporary accounts of the terms ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’, I then discuss the difficulties in finding a unified or widely accepted definition of the emotion that is the subject of this project. After providing five reasons of why finding a unified definition of sympathy/empathy in the existing literature may be an effort in vain, I stipulate my own definition of sympathy based on the core case of Mencius 2A6 in the second half of the chapter. This chapter thus lays down the terminological groundwork for the rest of this dissertation. It provides a definition of sympathy, and thus paves the way for the discussion of the primitive form, the mature form, and the cultivation of sympathy.
2.1 Why Do We Need Yet a New Definition?
The phenomenon I wish to discuss is the emotion of distress one experiences in reacting to others’ suffering. It is vividly depicted in Mencius 2A6, which we will discuss in a later
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section of this chapter when analyzing the nature of this phenomenon. Facing the need of a clear and comprehensive definition of this emotion, I propose to use the term
“sympathy” to denote this emotion in this project. I then stipulate a working definition of
“sympathy” in Section 2.5 that fits the purpose of this project and my understanding of the phenomenon.
A stipulated definition is appropriate for two reason: 1) the current existing definitions and usages of ‘sympathy’, ‘empathy’, ‘compassion’ and ‘pity’ are various; they invite confusions in scholarly endeavor. There is little consistency in the way these terms are used. A meaningful discussion demands a clear working definition. 2) The current definitions in contemporary works lacks unity. Especially with the increasing uses of
“empathy” to cover much of what used to be denoted by ‘sympathy’, we are facing even more confusions and ambiguities. Stipulating a working definition is the most efficient and reasonable next step to take.
In the next section 2.2, I will briefly review several typical ways the terms
‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’ are used, before starting to describe my definition of sympathy in section 2.3 and 2.4. I shall use ‘sympathy’ to refer to the emotional phenomenon that
I study in this project unless otherwise noted. Exceptions may be made when I am directly citing another scholar who uses a term other than sympathy.1 By sticking with the term ‘sympathy’, I hope to preempt confusion that may result from terminological differences when discussing the ideas from other scholars.
1 Certain literature that I cite may use ‘compassion’, ‘empathy’ or other different notions to refer to their subject. That is not a problem. Be it studied under the name of empathy or compassion, it is within the scope of my research as long as it refers to the emotion above- mentioned, and fit in my definition of sympathy. I will note it if the cited author’s understanding of sympathy is different from mine.
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2.2 ‘Sympathy’ and ‘Empathy’ in History
The emotion I study in this project is sometimes referred to by ‘sympathy’,2 other times by ‘empathy’, ‘compassion,’3 or ‘pity.’ There are many differences amongst how notions like sympathy, empathy, pity, and compassion are used by individual philosophers. Some of these differences are subtle, and some are seemingly critical. These notions can be used to refer to very similar, if not the same phenomena sometimes. The pair of terms
‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’ is particularly confusing. In neither academia nor everyday usage is there a clear and widely accepted definition of the pair of notions. Let us examine them one by one.
2 ‘Sympathy’ may be used in ways different from my definition; e.g. it may refer to an attitude (A is sympathetic to B’s view), which issues no motivation or affective components. The words “I sympathize with you” often have a polite, symbolic meaning in everyday discourse, but they do not necessarily express an actual moral emotion with affective and motivational components. I will eschew the use of the term sympathy for such behaviors or processes.
3 The term ‘compassion’ has been widely accepted and discussed in ethical studies. For example, Martha Nussbaum defines ‘compassion’ as “a word used to refer to the painful emotion occasioned by the awareness of another person’s undeserved misfortune.” Nussbaum includes the “undeservingness” into the definition of compassion, and empathizes that the suffering involves has to be serious rather than trivial. I discuss the former point in relation to Mencius 3A5 where he implied that in the core case of 2A6 it was not the child’s fault that she is in danger of great suffering. I also discuss the latter point about the seriousness of the suffering in chapter five as an argument against Prinz’s claim that fellow feelings are not very motivating when the risk involves in helping are high. Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p 301. In everyday language, compassion is mostly used in a positive light; in ethical theories, it is often discussed as a quality that is desirable and of moral value – which is a virtue, a goal for ethical education. Paul Bloom suggests that compassion is distinct from empathy, in his own terms. He argues in Just Babies that compassion can exist independent of empathy and is a preferred emotion compared to empathy. I am skeptical on this account. It is not clear how compassion can be separated from the abilities that enables empathy. Bloom has a forthcoming book titled Against Empathy, perhaps he will offer new arguments on this point in this new book. See Paul Bloom, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil (Crown, 2013), 33-58.
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2.2.1 ‘Sympathy’ ‘Sympathy’, originally used to refer the harmonious relationship between humans and the universe, and then one’s body and soul; it can be trace back to the Greek sympatheia, or the Latin sympathia, means literally "with" (syn) "suffering" (pathos).4 In German, Mitleid and Mitgefuhl are used to translate the words from Latin; the former is more common while the latter is less so. In the Oxford dictionary, the word sympathy has two meanings:
“1. Feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune; 2. Understanding between people; common feeling.”5 These two definitions of the word, which are supposed to correspond to how we understand sympathy in our daily lives, reflect two aspects of the emotion: the “concern/sadness” directed at others and the special epistemological function of understanding others’ minds based on shared feelings. Interestingly, these two usages also reflect the philosophical dispute over the term ‘sympathy’ as mostly an epistemic tool or one’s caring attitude and concern.
The most famous and impactful account of sympathy comes from the 18th century sentimentalism. Hume famously claims that, “minds of men are mirrors to one another”
(T II.2.5).6 Regarding to this powerful faculty of the mind, his close friend Smith describes sympathy as, “whatever is the passion which arises from any object in the person principally concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of this situation, in the breast of every attentive spectator (1759: II.i). ”7 The 18th century sentimentalists
4 Lauren Wispé, "The Distinction Between Sympathy and Empathy: to Call Forth a Concept, a Word is Needed," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,50, No. 2 (1986): 314.
5 “Definition of Sympathy in English,” Oxford Dictionary, March 7. 2016, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/sympathy.
6 Hume, Treatise, II.2.5 163.
7 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. K. Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1759/2002).
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not only changed the prevailing view of emotions at the time but also greatly shaped philosophers’ understanding of sympathy. In the sentimentalists’ eyes, sympathy not only is an altruistic motivator but also could serve as the foundation for a sentimentalist ethical and political theory.
It is worth noting that the thinkers of the sentimentalist tradition are well aware of the fact that sympathy can be, and frequently is biased. They nonetheless believe that a freestanding ethical system can be built upon it. The reason is that we can achieve a fair and just standpoint through sympathizing with the “general point of view (Hume)” or the “impartial inspector (Smith).”8 Although fascinating, this doctoral project is not one that is devoted to explore and reexamine the sentimentalist tradition; nor do I subscribed to some of the sentimentalist views of sympathy being the foundation of a theory of justice (e.g. Smith).
2.2.2 ‘Empathy’ “Empathy” is a much younger word compared to “sympathy”. German psychologist
Theodor Lipps used the Greek word empatheia, meaning experiencing strong emotion or passion, as a translation of Einfuhlung. Einfuhlung, which means “feeling into” is then translated by Titchner into ‘empathy’ in 1909. 9 Thinkers such as the sentimentalists use
“sympathy” or “pity” (e.g. Rousseau) to denote a group of phenomena including basic motor mimicry and imagination facilitated sympathy. The word “empathy” wasn’t available to the English writers till 1909 when it was first introduced into English. This
8 Michael Frazer, The Enlightenment of Sympathy: Justice and the Moral Sentiments in the Eighteenth Century and Today (Oxford University Press, 2010), 66-97. For a discussion of how Hume and Smith uses the idea of sympathy combined with impartial spectator and general point of view to arrive at a just morality, especially chapter 3 and 4.
9 Edward Titchener, Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-processes (New York: Macmillan, 1909), 21.
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means that, in the past, “sympathy” was used to denote many of the functions that are studied under the name of “empathy” by today’s empirical researchers, such as motor mimicry, imagining being in another’s place, and etc.
After being introduced into English, “empathy” was first used in an aesthetic context—when facing artwork, we “feel into” a piece of art so as to appreciate it; we can also “feel into” the nature world, which is a special epistemological function the early users of the term ‘empathy’ had attributed to it.10 The abilities of empathy are thought to be essential to understanding the minds of others. Lipps argues, as summarized by de
Waal, “empathy is a special capacity, which enables one to identify with other’s experience. Such identification…cannot be reduced to any other capacities, such as learning, association, or reasoning. Empathy offers direct access to ‘the foreign self’.”11
In addition to its epistemological function, Lipps believed that empathy is based on “inner imitation”— that empathy is based on “an innate, instinctual and, beyond that, ultimately inexplicable human tendency to motor mimicry.”12 The view that sympathy is based on motor mimicry is not new to philosophers—as has been observed by Smith:
When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do…(1759: II.i)13
10 Karsten Stueber, “Empathy” in Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions, ed. Anne L C Runehov and Lluis Oviedo (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2013), 723–727, Web. Lauren Wispé, “History of the Concept of Empathy” in Empathy and its Development, ed. Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 17-37.
11 Frans de Waal, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society (Random House, 2010), 65.
12 Stueber, “Empathy”, 7-8.
13 Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 12.
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As we can see, Smith observes the close relationship between imitation and sympathy. It is not hard to imagine that the term ‘empathy’, in its development in the last century, was heavily influenced by the preexisting concept of ‘sympathy’. Some tried to use ‘empathy’ to substitute for ‘sympathy’, others tried to use ‘empathy’ to denote phenomenon that are related to but not denoted by sympathy. It is worth noting that
‘empathy’ falls out of popularity in philosophy only decades after it was first introduced.
It is then broadly used in empirical studies such as psychology and social science. Very recently, in the philosophical world, the term ‘empathy’ has regained some popularity as an attempt to relate to the empirical works and/or taking a naturalistic approach. As we can see, the two words ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’ are interlinked in their development ever since they both appeared in English. ‘Sympathy’ may carry heavier philosophical implications because of its longer history, and because of a few extraordinary philosophers whose names and philosophical contributions remain associated with the term sympathy.
Through the development of the words sympathy and empathy, we can see that they were once used interchangeably. Differences between these two words result more from the historical contexts and disciplinary custom, rather than the nature of the phenomenon they denote. In the next section, let us take a look at how these two notions are used in today’s academia and why it is nearly impossible to reach unified definitions.
2.3 Sympathy/Empathy Today— 5 Reasons Why We Couldn’t Reach a Unified Definition
Given the many different definitions and usages of the terms ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’
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and the confusion arising from such ambiguity, it seems necessary to reach a unified or at least widely accepted definition before we can have a meaningful discussion of the emotional phenomenon we are nothing but too familiar with. Such a task may not be possible according to Andrew Terjesen.14 In addition to offering a comprehensive survey of the terms ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’ in historical and contemporary philosophical literature and empirical studies, Terjesen concludes that the effort to find a unified or universal definition of these two “inextricably linked” terms is deemed to be in vain. Is
Terjesen right in his claim? Let us take a look at a few examples.
Instead of summarizing and examining the different accounts of sympathy and empathy, tasks already performed sufficiently by scholars such as Terjesen, I examine a number of representative definitions before stipulating a definition of my own.
One often-cited definition of sympathy comes from Darwall
Sympathy for a person and her plight is felt as from the third-person perspective of one- caring, whereas empathy involves something like a sharing of the other’s mental states, frequently, as from her standpoint. 15
In this definition, empathy refers merely to emotional sharing; sympathy, on the other hands, highlights its third-person perspective and the feeling of concern (or some kind of emotional investment to the victim’s welfare) towards the victim. Including the element of concern in sympathy is not uncommon. The first definition of sympathy in the Oxford dictionary, as noted above is: “Feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.”16 In addition, the assumption that sympathy contains certain kind of
14 Andrew Terjesen, “The Role of Sympathy and Empathy in Moral Judgment; with Special Reference to David Hume and Adam Smith” (doctorate dissertation, Duke University, 2005), 3-14.
15 Stephen Darwall, "Empathy, Sympathy, Care," Philosophical Studies 89.2 (1998): 263.
16 “Definition of Sympathy in English,” Oxford Dictionary. See Footnote 14.
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emotional investment directed at the other party’s wellbeing might precisely be why the influential psychologist Martin Hoffman, whose 5 modes of empathetic distress I discuss in chapter 3, stresses that “empathic/sympathetic distress” is a more accurate term compared to “empathetic distress”, which he continues to use for convenience. Hoffman defines empathy by stating that the key requirement of an empathetic response is “the involvement of psychological processes that make a person have feelings that are more congruent with another’s situation than with his own situation.” 17 He also maintains in his influential book Empathy and Moral Development that at around 2 years of age, as one’s sense of self begin to emerge empathetic distress has a sympathetic distress component, namely that in addition to feel a parallel emotion to the victim [empathy], children are able to feel “sympathy” [understand others’ perspective and be concerned for others, as Hoffman uses this word] for the victim. This transformation is crucial and will stay with the children throughout their lives. In other words, every adult’s empathetic distress has some sympathetic distress in it. One’s empathetic distress thus involves both feeling for a victim and feeling with the victim. The term “Empathetic distress” risks leading one to believe Hoffman’s research is merely about one’s matching emotional response and not an emotion felt for the victim. Hoffman mentions in his book, and later stressed it again in 2011 that “the term empathic/sympathetic distress would be a more exact description (for what he previously called empathy)”, he admits— though he had to continue use “empathetic distress” for convenience.18 19
17 Martin Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development: Implications For Caring And Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 30.
18 “This transition [of gaining sympathetic distress] occurs in toddlerhood, at around 2 years of age. As the sense of self and others as separate beings begins to emerge, empathic distress is transformed in part into sympathetic distress. That is, the child continues to feel empathic
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As we can see, there is no consistent distinction between what ‘empathy’ and
‘sympathy’ denotes. Even when the distinction seems neat and clear, they may end up denoting different aspects or components of one same emotional phenomenon, as
Hoffman’s later adjustment to the concept of “empathic/sympathetic distress” suggests.
Prinz, in spite of his inherited ideas of sympathy from Hume and Smith, chooses to use ‘empathy’ in his critical account of the emotion. This might be a result of Darwall’s influence. Prinz states that his idea of empathy refers to “a kind of vicarious emotion: it’s feeling what one takes another person to be feeling.”20 He too, agrees with Darwall
“sympathy is a third‐person emotional response, whereas empathy involves putting oneself in another person’s shoes.” However, he affirms that concern is not a part of what he calls ‘empathy’. This distinction is essential to his account, since later he claims that empathy is not necessary for morality and is not a reliable altruistic motivator—but concern may be. 21
distress, more or less matching and operating in parallel with the victim’s feeling, but the child now also has a reactive feeling of sympathetic distress or compassion for the victim. From then on, through the last three empathy development stages and throughout adult life, empathic distress has a sympathetic component. This is crucial because the sympathetic component gives empathic distress a clearly pro-social dimension for empirical evidence and a theoretical analysis of the processes underlying this transition). That is, one is now motivated to reduce another’s distress, not only to reduce one’s own empathic distress. The term empathic/sympathetic distress would be a more exact description but I’ll stick with the less cumbersome ‘empathic distress’ for convenience. But please keep in mind the sympathetic component: empathic distress past toddlerhood and throughout adult life involves feeling for as well as with the victim. “ Martin Hoffman, “Empathy, Justice, and the Law,” in Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, ed. Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 234-236.
19 Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development., 89-90
20 Jesse Prinz, “Is Empathy Necessary for Morality?” in Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, ed. Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 212.
21 This view comes from Prinz, “Is Empathy Necessary?” in which he argues that empathy (so defined by him) is not necessary for morality whereas sympathy (so defined by him) and concern is useful. In a later publication “Against Empathy” Prinz changes his view about concern. He
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Hoffman’s definition of empathic/sympathetic distress, if compared with Prinz’s definition of empathy, allows the subject to feel an emotion that is “more congruent with another’s situation”22 rather than what one expects the other to be feeling. In other words, what matters is the other’s situation, rather than mental state. Prinz’s definition of “feeling what one takes another person to be feeling,”23 denotes a more limited scope of phenomenon. For example, individuals are sometimes motivated by what Hoffman calls empathic/sympathetic distress to help when observing an acute distress of others’; Prinz’s definition may exclude this type of motivation from “empathy” since the potential helper may not be experiencing the same distress as the potential victim. I offer a more detailed discussion of Prinz’s definition and its implications to his argument of the value of empathy and other fellow feeling in chapter 5.
As we can see from the distinction between Hoffman and Prinz’s definition, not only there is no consistent distinction between ‘empathy’ and ‘sympathy’, there is no unified definition for ‘sympathy’ and what it really denotes. Reaching a unified definition of sympathy is notoriously frustrating and confusing; ‘empathy’ on the other hand, despite having a relatively short history, faces the same problems as ‘sympathy.’ Researchers have long noticed the ambiguities over ‘empathy’.24 Accounts addressing terminological issues over ‘empathy’ can be found in the introductory section of most empirical literature on
goes on to argue that even concern or care may not be needed or useful for morality either. I discuss Prinz’s arguments in details in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6. Jesse Prinz, "Against Empathy," The Southern Journal of Philosophy 49.s1 (2011): 214-233.
22 Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development, 30.
23 Prinz, “Is Empathy Necessary for Morality?” 212.
24 Wispé, “History of the Concept of Empathy”, 17-37. Wispé provided arguably the most famous survey of different ways the terms ‘empathy’ has being used in research.
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empathy nowadays. Two notable studies examining the various phenomenon the term
‘empathy’ covers are from Amy Coplan and Daniel Batson.
Coplan summarized her survey of different ways to understand empathy in the following points:
Some of the most popular (ways to understand empathy) include the following:
(A) Feeling what someone else feels (B) Caring about someone else (C) Being emotionally affected by someone else’s emotions and experiences, though not necessarily experiencing the same emotions (D) Imagining oneself in another’s situation (E) Imagining being another in that other’s situation (F) Making inferences about another’s mental states (G) Some combination of the processes described in (A)–(F) 25
As we can see, a number of the phenomenon commonly denoted by ‘sympathy’ can be found in this list too. Such as (B) denotes what Darwall included in ‘sympathy’, and (A) and (F) are highlighted in Prinz’s definition of ‘empathy.’ Batson provides a somewhat similar list of eight concepts in “These Things Called Empathy: Eight Related but Distinct Phenomena”.
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 Concept 3: Coming to Feel as Another Person Feels Concept 4: Intuiting or Projecting Oneself into Another’s Situation Concept 5: Imagining How Another Is Thinking and Feeling Concept 6: Imagining How One Would Think and Feel in the Other’s Place Concept 7: Feeling Distress at Witnessing Another Person’s Suffering Concept 8: Feeling for Another Person Who Is Suffering 26
25 Amy Coplan, “Understanding Empathy” in Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, ed. Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4.
26 Daniel Batson, “These Things Called Empathy: Eight Related But Distinct Phenomena” in The Social Neuroscience of Empathy, ed. Jean Decety and William Ickes (Cambridge: MIT Press 2009), 4- 8.
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In these two lists, which illustrate the various ways scholars have been using the term ‘empathy’, only Batson’s Concept 2 of “Adopting the Posture or Matching the
Neural Responses of an Observed Other” is not included in Coplan’s list. These 7 or 8 distinct yet related phenomenon listed above are evidences of the lack of unity when it comes to the term ‘empathy’.27 At the same time, we can see Darwall’s definition of sympathy and Prinz’s definition of sympathy are included in the lists: Darwall’s sympathy is included in Coplan’s list as (B) and in Batson’s list as Concept 8; Prinz’s definition of sympathy is included in Coplan’s list as (A), (D), (E), (F) and in Batson’s list as Concept 1,3,4,5,6. ‘Empathy’, as we can see, has being used in academia to denote the emotional phenomenon sympathy used to denote and now still do denote.
What is apparent is that all the ambiguities and confusions over ‘empathy’ are the result of only about a hundred years of time, compared to the long history of
‘sympathy’. It makes us wonder what accounts for such difficulties in reaching a clear definition. At least for ‘empathy’, philosophers’ notorious habit of creating new terms and new definitions whenever they see fit should not to take the blame, since much of the disagreements over empathy’s definition stem from disciplines other than philosophy.
Terjesen, who claims that reaching a unified definition of sympathy and/or empathy is impossible, provides three reasons for his pessimistic claim on this matter:
1. … some people have defined ‘sympathy’ in a certain way and then define ‘empathy’ as something different, but someone else has taken the exact same contrast but flipped the terms. 2. Another reason … (is) the history of the terms. ‘Empathy’ is a linguistic latecomer and has often been used to refer to concepts that were once entirely the province of the term ‘sympathy’….
27 Roughly, Concept 3=(A), Concept 1\5=(F), Concept 6=(E), Concept 7=(C), Concept 8=(B), Concept 4 =(D).
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3. Different disciplines have narrowed the definition of the concepts to reflect their particular notion of what is important and have created a certain tradition of usage.28
I agree with Terjesen. Defining the pair of terms with the presumption that they refer to different phenomenon, ‘empathy’ being a linguistic latecomer, and the distinct emphases in different disciplines all contribute to this confusion. Relating to his third reason that distinct emphases in different disciplines result in confusion, I would like to add that even within a discipline, different methodology and distinct focuses of research contribute to confusion over definition as well. In addition to the three reasons Terjesen suggested, at least two other factors contributed to the confusion.
Reason number 4 is that researchers take different approaches in defining sympathy/empathy. Some define sympathy by its eliciting condition, some by the matching mental state between the sympathizer and the object, some by its action tendencies, some by the underlying neurological components, and yet, some by a combination of the above of some sort. For example, philosopher Martha Nussbaum defines ‘compassion’ as “a word used to refer to the painful emotion occasioned by the awareness of another person’s undeserved misfortune.”29 In this definition, one’s cognitive state is highlighted: one has to be aware of the other’s undeserved misfortune. In empirical science, some researchers, such as Jean Decety, define sympathy by its hypothesized underlying mechanism. Decety, whose account we discuss in Chapter 3 and 4, analyzes the functioning architectural of human empathy and claims that empathy is constituted by three major components: Shared neurological representation, self-other awareness and regulatory function. Different defining methods sometimes
28 Terjesen, “The Role of Sympathy and Empathy in Moral Judgment,” 3-14.
29 Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 301.
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reflects a disciplinary difference such as the difference between Nussbaum and Decety, but is not always so. For example, psychologists Hoffman’s definition that we discussed earlier focuses on the phenomenon rather than the underlying mechanism. In Frans de
Waal’s words, as he discusses the various ways the term ‘empathy’ is used: “Some definitions of empathy stress the sharing of emotions, whereas other definitions stress the capacity to put oneself into the other’s ‘shoes.’”30 As we can see, the differences in researchers’ focuses are account for a part of the different understanding and definitions.
The fifth and the last reason is our yet insufficient knowledge of this emotional phenomenon (or perhaps, a group of phenomenon) that I call sympathy. Defining it from different aspects without the whole picture in mind is like the old parable of “the blind men and an elephant” in which a group of blind men touch an elephant to discover what it is. Each person can only feel one part of the animal, such as its snout, ears or torso.
When the blind men compare their impressions of the animal, they find out that they are in disagreement. Our research of sympathy and/or empathy is similar to the blind men’s effort in picturing the elephant. Some definitions capture the affective and other-directed forms of the emotion; some capture the epistemological and affective aspects; some notice that whether the perceived victim deserves the distress plays a role in sympathetic reaction (e. g. Nussbaum’s definition of compassion, and Mencius, discussed in chapter 3 and 4). The disagreement in definition may in fact be due to our yet incomprehensive understanding of this emotional phenomenon (or this group of phenomenon) we refer to by a number of different names. The fifth reason may relate back to Terjesen’s third reason that “different disciplines have narrowed the definition of the concepts to reflect
30 Frans de Waal, "Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: the Evolution of Empathy," Annu. Rev. Psychol. 59 (2008): 282.
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their particular notion of what is important.”31 It is partially due to the fact that researchers do/did not have sufficient knowledge of the emotion, they define sympathy and empathy according to what they deem to be the most important features of the phenomenon. It is my belief that once we get to know more about the different aspects of the emotion, we will be able to diminish some of the compartmentalization created in the past, which has been hindering our understanding of sympathy. A complete agreement on the definitions of these terms may be hard to reach; for the present study it is therefore important for us give a working definition and keep in mind how the terms are used by different scholars.
2.4 A Stipulated Definition of Sympathy in This Project
Terjesen warns against stipulating a new definition of sympathy. He worries that by stipulating new concepts of sympathy or empathy, we risk detaching the philosophical debates from common language. However, a working definition is called for before we could proceed with any meaningful research. Only after arriving at a working definition of this emotion I call sympathy, are we able to further explore the characteristics of the primitive and the mature form of sympathy and their roles in morality. From here onward, I will use the term ‘sympathy’ to denote the emotion that is the subject of this project, which is referred to by many names such as empathy, compassion, pity and so on. While I choose to use ‘sympathy’ and provide a working definition of this emotion, other scholars may have different preference and considerations—they may use
31 Terjesen, “The Role of Sympathy and Empathy in Moral Judgment,” 3-14.
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‘empathy’ or ‘compassion’. The difference in terminology shouldn’t hinder academic dialogues, even though it often does. In this project, some of the research I cite or discuss may use ‘empathy’, ‘compassion’ or other terms; I will provide a footnote or a paragraph addressing the terminological difference when necessary.
To define sympathy, I start from its basic characteristics. I use a case from
Mencius 2A6 as the core case of sympathy. Philosophers (ethicists in particular) and social psychologists outside of the special area of Chinese philosophy discuss and refer to this case frequently nowadays: Darwall cited this case at the beginning of “Empathy,
Sympathy, Care,”32 to showcase the important role of sympathy; the “opponent” of sympathy Paul Bloom discusses this case in his book Just Babies as evidence of natural sympathy and compassion.33 In addition to its increasing popularity in academia, choosing 2A6 as the core case brings obvious advantages. As an example from a parallel philosophical tradition, 2A6, or commonly known as “the baby in the well” case is relatively free from the terminological confusion over sympathy/empathy we discussed in the last section. Moreover, coming from a foreign tradition it is free from one of the most fundamental assumptions of Western philosophy: As Wong points out, the studying of
Mencian philosophy, including the studying of this case, undermines the categorical distinction between reason and emotion.34 The divide between reason and emotion, while having dominated Western philosophy for a long time, has been frequently challenged by empirical studies (and by philosophers) nowadays. At the same time, the interdisciplinary study of psychology and neuroscience “are opening up a richer set of possibilities for the
32 Darwall, "Empathy, Sympathy, Care," 261.
33 Bloom, Just Babies, 44-45.
34 Wong, “Growing Virtue”, 23-24.
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relationship among reflection, deliberation, emotion and desire in ways that resonate with early Confucian philosophy.”35 Free from this categorical distinction between reason and emotion, we are well set to uncover the nature of moral emotions such as sympathy. In addition to the reasons above mentioned, Mencius also provides an account of sympathy’s role in normative ethics and an account on its cultivation. Thus, 2A6 is a perfect anchor for a project such as this one, which is by nature cross cultural and interdisciplinary, and with focuses on the cultivation of sympathy and its role in morality.
I will now briefly summarize the four components of sympathy and provide a working definition. The work of carefully examining each of the proposed component of sympathy is left to the next chapter. Let us take a look at 2A6 and see what essential components are there in sympathy:
The reason why I say that all humans have hearts that could not bear other’s suffering (bu ren ren zhi xin " is this. Suppose someone suddenly saw a child about to fall into a well: anyone in such a situation would have a feeling of shock, alarm and sympathy (chuti ceyin zhi xin )—not because one sought to get in good with the child's parents, not because one wanted to gain good reputation among their neighbors and friends, and not because one would dislike the sound of the child's cries. From this we can see that if one is without the heart of ceyin zhi xin ( " one is not human… [ [ [ 99),
It seems a strange approach for me to define what sympathy is before offering a careful study of its components, which is a task I save for chapter 3. Here, for the
35 Ibid., 24-25.
36 Mencius 2A6. Mengzi and Bryan Van Norden, Mengzi: with Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Hackett Publishing, 2008). And 7 8 0 ' , " - )
Please note that this English translation is based on Van Nordan’s translation in Mengzi (2008) ; I made some changes to it to better suit my understanding of the original text that is from Bojun Yang’s ( ) version of Mengzi Yizhu (1960). All cited translations and original texts of Mencius (or Mengzi) in this dissertation, unless otherwise specified, are from the abovementioned two sources and with changes made by me. Please refer to this note for the citations from Mencius.
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purpose of informing the readers of what the subject of the research is, I provide a working definition that fits my study that is carried out in the later chapters.
Sympathy is an emotion that arises from facing others in distress/need; it has 4 components (they may overlap, e.g. the bodily visceral component overlaps with the feeling of the emotion). Based on the above texts, and Wong’s analysis of this passage in
“Growing Virtue”, I stipulate a definition of ‘sympathy’ as having the following four components:
1. A cognitive component of recognizing others in distress/need;
2. A bodily visceral response;
3. A motivational component;
4. The “feeling” of the emotion sympathy itself. 37
The first component is the perceptive component of sympathy. The sympathizer perceives and registers the others’ distress. In the 2A6 case, the bystander recognizes that the infant is in imminent danger without much of conscious deliberation. The perception of the infants’ forthcoming distress is an effortless and fast process that doesn’t require complicated mental processing. This is not always the case. The perception of others’ distress in sympathy may also take slower forms that require complicated mental processing. For example, when we read a UNICEF report that presents condition of children in poverty, sympathy may arise as we understand and perhaps imagine what the numbers and graphs mean. In this example, the perception is no longer a spontaneous and fast reaction to imminent distress or danger; it is a carefully cognitive process that
37 Wong, “Growing Virtue,” 23.
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includes semantic processing, rational calculation and imagination. More about this cognitive components of sympathy is discussed in section 3.2-3.6 at the beginning of the next chapter. The component of perceiving others’ distress is the first component of the primitive form of sympathy.
The bodily visceral response includes contracting muscles, quickened breath and heart rate, escalated blood pressure and so on. These physiological responses overlap with the motivational component and the “feelings” of sympathy. This feeling is mentioned in the texts by “a feeling of shock, alarm and sympathy (chuti ceyin zhi xin ) ” and later in 1A7 as “a feeling of unable to bear (others’ sufferings)”.38 Ce and Yin both refer to some kind of painful feeling, yet it is different from directly experience the distress of falling into a well. They refer to an affective feeling of the sympathizers, which I will discuss in section 3.5 in details.
The motivational component, on the other hand, refers to the urge to aid. This motivation is best described as an action tendency—it does not demand an actual action, whether planned or not. The motivation may eventually result in various responses— one may respond by directly help or seek help from others, one may also turn one’s back to it. In 2A6, Mencius doesn’t state what action the sympathizer should or is likely to take. In section 3.6, I argue that sympathy issues an action tendency without dictating the action to take.
In my definition of sympathy, all four components must present. If one were missing, I would refrain from calling this phenomenon sympathy. In the next chapter, I discuss the four components in details in order to give an account of the primitive form
38 See note 45.
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of sympathy, which is the starting point of the cultivation.
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Chapter 3
3. An Analysis of the Primitive Form of Sympathy 3.1 Introduction
In order to better understand how we can cultivate sympathy, which is one of the major questions this project addresses, it is important to understand what “raw materials” we have to work with. After offering a stipulated definition of sympathy in chapter two, this chapter studies the nature of the primitive form of sympathy. Basing on a comprehensive study of Mencius 2A6, this chapter paves the way for further discussion on the cultivation of sympathy, the mature form of sympathy and sympathy’s role in morality.
This chapter aims to uncover a form of sympathy that is triggered easily and sometimes spontaneously: a form that we can find in most, if not all, human beings, a form of sympathy we can agree to be the starting point for cultivation. My discussion of the primitive form of sympathy begins by introducing Mencius’s botanical metaphor of the four sprouts (or beginnings/ ) that can grow into full-fledged cardinal virtues.1 I focus on the first of the four sprouts—that is, the sprout of ren known as ceyin zhi xin. I use ceyin zhi xin, especially as it is presented in passage 2A6, to be the core case of the primitive form of sympathy (PFS, PFS is short for The Primitive Form of Sympathy). In doing so, I
1 For readers unfamiliar with the Mencian account, in a Mencian view, the four sprouts/beginnings are the innate predispositions of humans. Mencius employs a botanical metaphor in his theory— the four sprouts of virtues would, in an ideal situation, grow into four virtues: ren (benevolence, humaneness ), yi (righteousness ), li (propriety, observance of rites ), and zhi (wisdom ).
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am able to take advantage of the rich literature on this well-known case of unlearnt sympathetic response.
The objective of this chapter is thus twofold: First, it seeks to provide the dissertation project with a corner-stone by defining and describing sympathy in its unlearnt form, thus paving the way for further discussion on the cultivation of sympathy and the mature form of sympathy (MFS short for the Mature Form of Sympathy).
Secondly, I hope to make a special contribution to the Chinese philosophy community by offering a new interpretation of ceyin zhi xin that is informed by recent empirical studies. In the following sections of the chapter, I first examine the perceptive, affective and motivational aspects of ceyin zhi xin individually; I then illustrate the triplet that I call the
Mencian perceptive-affective-motive triplet. In the end, I discuss the implication my interpretation of 2A6 and Mencian ethics, which leads to the topic of the chapter after— the cultivation of sympathy.
3.2 An Interpretation of Mencius 2A6
Let us now consider the famous passage from Mencius 2A6 [cited at the end of chapter 2], in which the “sprout/ ” of ren is described as an unlearnt and spontaneous reaction to a child being in sudden mortal danger. In the text, this sympathetic reaction is universal, free from calculation, and has a motivational component. I situate Mencius’ observations in a modern psychological framework and offer a description of the basic characteristics of ceyin zhi xin.
In the original text, bu ren ren zhi xin ( ) literally means the heart of
“could not bear.” Mencius also uses ceyin zhi xin ( ) and chuti ceyin zhi xin (
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