A question of character
analogy and the empathic life of things
pp. 245-269
in: Vanessa Lux, Sigrid Weigel (eds), Empathy, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
In various disciplines, the debate on empathy has focused on empathic experiences within the inter-subjective context, either between two individuals or among groups. But this is only one side of the coin. Since ancient times, subject–object and even object–object relationships were described as "animation", or "personification", in a way that we would today call "empathic". Pinotti explores these objectual implications of empathy. He criticizes the projective "hydraulic" model of communicating vessels – from subject to object – which builds the hermeneutical mainstream paradigm of such relationships. With recourse to the Gestalt theory of expression, "realistic" phenomenology, and the theory of symbolic forms, he proposes a characterological approach that acknowledges the originary expressive and pathemic character of things as the fundamentum in re of objectual empathy.