Content area
Full Text
Contents
- Abstract
- Moritz Geiger as an Eclectic Thinker
- Geiger’s Contribution in Context: Early Twentieth-Century Psychology and Phenomenological Developments
- The “Question of Fact” (Phenomenology)
- The “Psychological Function”
- The “Question of the Origins”
- Geiger’s Empathy and Jaspers’ Understanding
- Geiger’s Empathy and Present-Day Cognitive Neuroscience
- Conclusion
Abstract
This article discusses Geiger’s review of empathy, expressed in a lecture at the IV German Congress of Experimental Psychology in 1910. It deals with the key psychological question of how it is possible to know the minds of others. This question is complex and needs clarification, so Geiger divided it into 3 basic questions: The first is phenomenological (what is the conscious experience of empathy?); the second relates to the psychological function performed by the empathic act; and the third question asks whether and how empathy is acquired during personal development. Finally, Geiger introduces a distinction between basic empathy and reliving. Geiger’s conceptual clarification is discussed and its relevance for the psychology and philosophy of his time is considered, as well as its possible influence on Jaspers’ General Psychopathology. Finally, the current debate in the neurocognitive science of empathy is examined in light of Geiger’s conceptualization.
The idea of empathy developed within Romanticism, which conceived of the relationship between human beings and nature as one of direct attunement, as feeling oneself into nature. From this metaphysical origin, empathy gradually entered into technical debates in aesthetics, hermeneutics, and finally psychology.
In aesthetics, Johann Gottfried von Herder (1774) first used the term “sich einfühlen” to denote identification with an admired object. Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1889) used “einfühlen” to describe the idealistic view of architectural forms, and his son Robert Vischer (1872) is credited with coining the term “Einfühlung,” used as a substantive, to account for the feeling generated when one is exposed to artwork. From its origin in aesthetics, the concept of empathy gradually moved into the realm of psychology. For example, Hermann Lotze used empathy to describe the emotions that we experience as we feel our way into a work of art; he also extended this concept (using the word “Mitgefühl”) to apply to the relationship between two persons: “One directs aesthetic empathy to the specific content of the pleasure or...