Cztery odmiany empatii

• Authors: Breczko Jacek

Title variants

EN

FOUR VARIATIONS ON EMPATHY

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

This article deals with the notion and the phenomenon of empathy from an ethical, rather than psychological, point of view. I distinguish four types of empathy: two connected with a sympathetic approach to another human being (“shared rejoicing” and “compassion”), two connected with a hostile approach (“envy” and “cruelty”), for empathy is wrongly associated only with a merciful penetrating the interior of a suffering human. The capacity for empathy is typical of the humankind and consists of what Miłosz described as the fact that “consciousness can, for a moment, move into this Other”. It is, thus, a basis and a condition not only for what is beautiful in the human world but also what is ugly (animals can be predatory but are not cruel). Therefore, expecting a radical moral improvement of our civilization as well as of the human kind, connected with an increase in empathy, for instance in the vision of “emphatic civilization” proclaimed by Jeremy Rifkin, seems unjustified, or at least premature.

Keywords

EN

HUMAN KIND; MORALITY; EMOTIONS; EMPATHY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Umiejętności / Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Kwartalnik Filozoficzny
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 42
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 155-169

Contributors

author

Breczko Jacek

• Studium Filozofii i Psychologii, Uniwersytet Medyczny, ul. Szpitalna 27, 15-295 Białystok, Poland