Empathy as a basis for overcoming subjectivism

The subject of this essay is to see the historical context of why and how subjectivism became a prevalent attitude in modern era not only in philosophy but also in everyday life, and how to overcome it. Even if we see many philosophers moving into postsubjectivism, the consequences of it are so deeply rooted in our lives that we are too blind to notice the attempts of those "elitist" scholars from the whole mass of information floating around us. And whether the subjective way of living is the consequence of philosophy or was philosophy just formulating the changes taking place in the society anyway, is more a question of a perspective.

My proposition is, firstly, that there is a need to overcome subjectivism not only in philosophy but also in our attitudes as to stop the ultimately self-destructive process caused by it and to find or rather regain a more harmonious existence with ourselves, our fellow beings and our environment as a whole. I claim the solution to be empathy. As this is a highly ambitious claim, I, secondly, have to explain what do I mean by empathy as such and why have I chosen it as a remedy for the situation allegedly so grave. Why do I think the situation is in need of any improvement in the first place? Why would subjectivism be so "bad" after all?

Let me give you an example from our present. Imagine a gathering of youngsters in a cafe. There are some seven or eight of them all friends from the same school. Suppose they just had an exam and are now relaxing after tense days of reading, writing and memorising. What would you imagine them to do? Of course you would think them laughing, chatting loudly about some silly unimportant things, making some inside jokes, eating something good together. Yes, this is what you'd expect in such a situation. But instead, you have a museum, old folks' home sitting in silence with serious faces as if at a funeral. What kind of solemnity is this where nobody is permitted to talk, as if every one of them were going through some personal inward mourning? What is wrong with them? Is somebody really dead?

No, nobody has died, except perhaps it feels a bit lifeless here. Though it resembles a certain kind of solemnity, those kids are just having a most serious relationship with their smartphones, iphones or other modern devices of communication. They chat in Skype, play mobile games, send or watch instant pictures, float in the endless stream of anonymous consciousness called Facebook or are occupied in some other virtual way. They all have a feeling of being occupied, being "active", "communicating", although we see a bunch of almost motionless statue-like figures with their glazed eyes fixed on little screens with only fingers moving silently on their luminous surface. Are these hypnotised zombies or human beings in their liveliest years?

We do not talk to each other. We "chat". We do not make long walks in sunny afternoons with lively conversations with each other, breathing fresh air and listening to many different voices from nature, such as birdsong or babbling of a brook. We watch sports or Discovery Channel on television. We do not sing at family parties or play piano to our loved ones in the silence of quiet evenings. We have our music and "peace" headphones on. We do not tell each other stories of ancient times, fairy tales or ghost stories, myths and legends sitting around the fireplace during cold dark winter nights, perhaps doing also some small manual work like knitting or carving therewhile. We passively consume cheap emotions and artificial lives of non-existent characters served in an endless monologue of soap-operas with empty plots and empty morals, because we do not have any real life of our own anymore, and perhaps we do not even have the imagination, because everything has already been imagined for us. We live in a simulation of simulacrums of non-existent reality as described by Jean Baudrillard¹. We are prisoners of subjectivity, indifference, our selfish little selves, or rather what is left of it. We do not see others around us, we do not see the world around us, because we content ourselves with a virtual reality existing in our minds not even as an active world of ideas as the one Descartes had, but as a surrogate of everything forgotten long ago.

When Martin Heidegger spoke of the forgetfulness of Being the things were not yet as bad as that. He tried to overcome subjectivism, he tried to escape the "clutches" of language as an aim in itself, to return to the ontological roots of our being and not just talk about talking, think about thinking, doing things because of things themselves. So how did it happen? What caused the changes in the course of humanity to go this way? Some say it was Descartes, father of subjectivism or even of the whole modern era called modernism. But as Lev Tolstoy put it: "To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its impotence—apart from the cooperation of all the other coincident causes—to occasion the event."² In other words, there cannot be just one cause for the whole course of history, nor a single person behind it.

We may think it was the Incarnation, religion of Word made flesh which caused the shift towards subjectivism. It is true that man was raised into responsibility of personal, individual perfection through it. Christianity replaces collective salvation of one chosen nation by a personal salvation which demands also a personal relationship with one's Creator. But still, for many centuries, there was a strong dependence on social relations and hierarchy, a balance, harmony between individual and collective perspective, little human being and the whole universe. And afterwards, when Reformation came along, individual relationship with the Divine was even more deepened and there was asserted a need for personal understanding and interpretation of the Divine Word, as the religion moved from a wholesome view of a human being into the believer's heart. Gradually language, written word, the Holy Scriptures gained a stronger position over oral Tradition, which had been closer to mythical consciousness of ancient times when philosophers were rather preachers on streets, having their disputes in public, not in written form. The living word became written, "dead", although it initially wasn't meant to be. The Word had become flesh, a living human being and not some prescription, argument on a piece of paper. I would say the invention of typography had a much stronger influence for causing the shift into subjectivism than writings of Descartes ever had. General literacy is more a father of modernism, of modern situation where human being feels much more isolated even in reading a book, i.e. being more alone in his activities than in those times when illiterate peasants had shared their activities and were telling stories to each other by the fireside.

But Descartes, being still a visible milestone for the new era, even Revolution, as some have called it, we should have a closer look at the roots of subjectivism in his thinking. And we must never forget there is a difference in perspective. What he did in his time was revolutionary, even if we from our perspective do not perceive it to be very different from modern thought. On the other hand, Descartes still has something very different from us – strong remnants of the old way of seeing the world where God is the centre and source of everything, even if he wants to doubt this everything except his mind and God. "It is true that, since my decision to doubt everything has left me sure of the existence of only two things, God and myself; but when I think about God’s immense power I have to admit that he did or could have made many things in addition to myself, so that there may be a universal scheme of things in which I have a place."³ He is not really doubting God, like we would imagine from our perspective, but everything else but himself and God – all other things God has created. But this otherness is a way much important than we or he would think. Doubting things secondary to God (and himself, of course) has a much stronger impact on the course of history than Descartes in his innocent experiment would have thought. Because it ultimately lead to doubting also God (firstly by Kant), consequently losing him and finally ourselves too. (If there is no meaning of life anymore, existence comes unbearable as felt by existentialists.)

Besides doubting there is another important thing Descartes does. He brings the zero point, perspective into his own mind, his ego. Although focusing on human being is nothing new with Renaissance and especially with Enlightenment, these had the human person in or as the centre of the world, but not with the centre of a world in his mind only, of a world created by himself through thinking. The difference is simply whether the world is outside or inside the mind. The glorification of the pure reason is at it's highest here. It needs nobody or nothing but itself. Even God is more like an attribute, his own idea in his mind, than something coming from outside. Human mind becomes his own little god, and it's only natural that it will ultimately throw also God out from his mind like from a temple – a metaphor of human body as being a temple of God⁴ - as it literally happened on the 10^th of November, 1793, during French Revolution when churches across France were transformed into modern Temples of Reason, with largest ceremony of all held at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, where Christian altar was dismantled and an altar to Liberty was installed and the inscription "To Philosophy" was carved in stone over the cathedral's doors.⁵ This visible metaphor of throwing God out of the actual temple was but a sign of throwing God out from human mind, body and soul.

There is also a "small" detail we have to consider in the Meditations of Descartes. Human being is no longer considered here a "thinking animal" in Aristotelian sense, but a "thinking thing". "I am, I exist – that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. But perhaps no longer than that; for it might be that if I stopped thinking I would stop existing; and I have to treat that possibility as though it were actual, because my present policy is to reject everything that isn’t necessarily true. Strictly speaking, then, I am simply a thing that thinks – a mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason, these being words whose meaning I have only just come to know. Still, I am a real, existing thing. What kind of a thing? I have answered that: a thinking thing."⁶ He is identifying human being with its thinking, with its one faculty, its one part – the mind. He is no longer a harmonious biological being with a body and senses and mind, but rather a machine, mechanical construction, a ticking unemotional clock producing thoughts like minutes without any concern for life going on around or even for its own body. Then it would be no wonder if this "thinking thing" sees other human beings as also mere things.

This is a shift from zoosemiotics into narrow understanding which banishes philosophy into pure reasoning without the background of any biological, living world. In a way it is a neoplatonic attitude, but in its extreme – the pure forms are not emanated, but opposed to materia. It is idealism, opposed to realism. It is a separation, opposition of mind and body, or even deletion, erasure of body, of all visible and real. This is a triumph of fantasy, a blind man's dream, a cage of the kingdom of ideas without any certainty of reality. It casts the poor mind into loneliness, into lonely prison of his own finiteness. It is an illusion to think we do not need reality, that our mind is sufficient, where we have a nice cosy little relationship with our personal God through which we can be saved in our small personal paradise alone. This paradise is an empty heaven where only one person is saved, because it has forgotten to pray for others.

Because in this little paradise of ours we do not need others. It is remarkable that Descartes never mentions other human beings directly in his Meditations. They are remotely mentioned among all the other bodies and things which may or may not even exist. Even with his own body, as the most immediate physical reality which he manages to grasp, he's concerned just a little bit, as a framework or decoration to his self-sufficient thoughts. Even things outside the mind are rather mere ideas produced by it than subjects having their own existence, although he admits there is a chance that, because of their appearance and "noise" they make with their disturbance against his will, it may somehow be that that these things might be something more than just illusion. "I find in myself countless ideas of things that can’t be called nothing, even if they don’t exist anywhere outside me. For although I am free to think of these ideas or not, as I choose, I didn’t invent them: they have their own true and immutable natures, which are not under my control."⁷

In other words, even if the reality outside the mind really existed, if the things the mind happens to perceive really had their own existence, it is of secondary importance. I do not care. This is the core of subjectivism. Everything exists or pretends to exist only because of me. I'm just sitting and enjoying the show. But if this is only a show, the actors go home after the spectacle. They did their work, had their payment and are only happy to leave alone. If you do not care for them, why should they care? You have your little palace of thoughts, you have your golden cage of pure reason, certainty based on shadows. And you don't even care if these are only shadows, as long as the show goes on – with new characters, new actors, new impressions and thoughts.

We see into what kind of loneliness this shift into self-centred and self-sufficient world will lead in Kierkergaard. His opposition to or even negation of others disturbing his perfection, personal relationship with God, is obvious. But there is so much loneliness, despair and feeling of guilt in his works. Giving up even those he loved, caused bitter regrets later on in his life when things were already nonreversible. And when this lonely wonderer, new type of philosopher, abandons even God and his loneliness decreases to such a point that his state becomes undescribably pitiful, we come to Nietzsche. To live without any living or divine being must be a truly unbearable state. But is it very different from the one we mostly have today? There must have never been so much loneliness, sense of uprootedness and lack of belonging in the history of mankind like today.

Thus in our loneliness and identity crisis we create an artificial world and religion to survive, like did Nietzsche. It is no wonder, that during the ultimate triumph of Modernism in the 19^th Century, creativity and art substituted religion in may places. We see a rise of new type of composers and artists in Western Europe with more stress on individuality and personal fame than there ever was in the modesty of medieval craftsmanship. In Russia, literature will be raised into a state of religion by such great writers like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, who could be moulded into such a literary perfection only by a combination of deep natural tendency for religion in a Russian soul and influences of modern thinking. And now, we have lost even creativity. With the invasion of virtuality, artificiality instead of art, consumerism hiding true emptiness of soul, our new religion is the simulacrum of all simulacrums, pure performativity as described by Lyotard⁸. The clock of Descartes has stopped. We have stopped thinking, so we cannot exist?

The further away we wonder from the real world, nature and organic life, into our mind's illusions, the further away we are from the chance of surviving – spiritually and even physically. "The animal’s survival depends on getting right the manner in which the physical environment is incorporated into its world of objects, its Umwelt."⁹ This Umwelt Deely is talking about is a common world for animals and human beings as thinking animals. It is called zoosemiosis. It is the world where we give meaning to things we see, hear or smell, making these objects part of our inner subjective world, objectifying them. Without the ability to objectify, to give meaning to things around us, we will be lost. The difference for human beings from other animals is that there are also pure ideas or thoughts which can be objectified in our inner world and we usually share them with each other through language, which is exceptionally characteristic to human semiosis alone. The other exceptional characteristic for human Umwelt is that it is open to all the other Umwelts: zoosemiosis, phytosemiosis and the whole physiosemiosis which includes inorganic forms as well.

But in our human Umwelt even the pure ideas or thoughts have to have a connection with subjects in the real world outside the mind. If we lose this connection, interaction between the two, we become isolated, we are lost in the virtuality of our inner world. We become kind of autistic. We no longer discern the signs which come from the outer world enabling us to survive. We would live like a total stranger in China without understanding any Chinese, if we are not willing to learn the language, if we prefer to stay in our small ghetto of ignorance, where it would be very difficult to manage even with the easiest needs of life. The situation would be even worse when people totally dependent on modern technology, accustomed to live in virtuality, would suddenly face a catastrophe sweeping away all modern conveniences and leaving them in a wasteland, with no familiar guiding sign of their former world of subjectivity. They would be absolutely helpless. They would not know how to find water, food or other natural means of survival. Because the natural bond between outer and inner world has been lost. Instincts of a person constantly living in a virtual world are most probably diminished into artificial needs which are of no help in the real world.

Thus we have seen there has to be a harmony between outer and inner, object and subject. Semiotics is offering a larger basis for overcoming the self-centeredness of all sciences which have also drifted into kind of subjectivism where larger picture is lost. "We have opened a new era of intellectual culture, for philosophy first of all, to be sure, but also for science and all the humanities, wherein the split between nature and culture, inner and outer, is no longer the last word, because the quasi-error of the external world has finally been laid to rest, and with it modern philosophy."¹⁰ The opposition between idealistic and realistic, body and mind has to be overcome. And the basis for overcoming is empathy, which is very close to semiotics. Empathy is the means, the way which will lead back to harmony between the two worlds. It is the bridge between the two – outer and inner.

But firstly, let us define empathy. I will base my approach on the doctoral thesis of Edith Stein, which is unfortunately not so known. She was the first one to take it her main object of consideration. And because empathy had not yet "come out from shadows", there were some misunderstandings and half-way solutions to the problem she had to bring forth. It is also interesting that it was Stein who wrote down the thoughts her teacher Husserl had on the subject. They did mostly share the same approach, which was based on phenomenology, but Stein developed it further on. Stein was a Catholic like Deely, and they both had a Thomistic background. Even Husserl wanted to convert later on in his life, but felt there was not enough time left for going through all the dogmas and teachings of the Church. But the catholic (i.e. universal) attitude helped those thinkers to form a wholesome, universal picture for philosophy.

Thus Husserl uses the so-called method of phenomenological reduction where things and essences are suspended and there remains a realm of transcendental consciousness, which is different from individual consciousness. It is a pure consciousness similar to the one referred by Descartes, but Husserl's consciousness is more actively directed towards something. The subject of consciousness, the mind, is what wills, perceives, remembers, knows and imagines. The will is intentionally directed towards its intentional object, the phenomenon. This is similar to the semiotic approach of John Deely. In Deely's concept of semiosis the subject is objectifying things he perceives in his mind. These objects, phenomenons are like shadows on the screen surrounding mind's inner world. But the thing is, we cannot forget it is only a screen and there's the real world behind it.

In connection with empathy Edith Stein brings in the notion of intersubjectivity, the concept which came in already with Husserl. Stein sees "intersubjective experience as the constitution of real outer world"¹¹ This is very important. What does she mean? She compares the subjective world of mind with the world of fantasy - both do not really exist because they are not primordially given. But the human condition is necessarily primordially oriented. We are living now and here, not in a fantasy of past or future. If there is a conflict between being primordially now and here with the inner realm, as we saw with the youngsters who do not have a need to "bring this non-existence into givenness" because they live in fantasy, there is no connection with the real world and the inner semiosis remains fruitless and unhelpful for the survival of human species in the longer run. Empathy is a question of survival. It is serious. We have to wake up from the dream.

"The world I glimpse emphatically is an existing world, posited as having being like the world primordially perceived. The perceived world and the world given emphatically are the same world differently seen."¹² Seeing the world though other's eyes, through different standpoint helps to overcome the individual consciousness and limited view of the world, to see it more realistically. Thus we see that empathy is not only a matter of understanding others. It is also a way of perceiving more clearly reality itself. If the human mind were "imprisoned within the boundaries" of his individuality, it could not go beyond the world as it appears to him. Empathy helps to cross these boundaries and to obtain different appearances which are independent from each other. It is a matter of perspective. Same method can also be used towards a historical event. "Thus empathy as the basis of intersubjective experience becomes the condition of possible knowledge of the existing outer world."¹³

But let us have a closer look at empathy itself. Usually empathy is associated with understanding the other person's moods and feelings. Stein will argue that it is something much wider and fundamental. "If empathy stopped at sensations, it would be something frankly pitiful and lamentable"¹⁴ Empathy belongs to the constitution of the individual itself. Human being cannot live without empathy, the outer world and others, as we have demonstrated. Others teach us something of the world, everything we perceive in the world teaches us something, has a message, becomes a sign if we let it teach and if we let it into our inner realm. Thus Stein formulates empathy in a following way: "The comprehension of foreign experiences – be they sensations, feelings, or what not – is a unified, typical, even though diversely differentiated modification of consciousness and requires a uniform name... empathy."¹⁵ And this comprehension demands a certain openness to everything which surrounds us now and here, even if it is only a book we are reading. Without openness we are not able to comprehend, as Gadamer put it: "All that is asked is that we remain open to the meaning of the other (person or text)."¹⁶ If we are open, silently "listening", we will hear what the other has to say – be it a painting, a crying infant or a falling leaf.

In this openness there is also the aspect of perspective. We have a living body through which we are posited in time and space, now and here, into a certain perspective, a zero point of orientation, with which we face the spatial outer world. Other physical bodies are also given to us at a certain location, at a certain distance from us as the "centre of spatial orientation, and in a certain spatial relationships to the rest of the spatial world". If we in our openness see another physical body and interpret it as another sensing living body and "emphatically project" ourselves into it, we obtain a new viewpoint, new image of the spatial world and also a new zero point of orientation. This happens not by shifting our zero point into his, because we retain our primordial zero point here and now. We are not primordially, but emhatically, obtaining his zero point, which for the other is as primordial as our point is for us. Thus we do not create a fantasized image of the world from a fantasized point of the other, but we create a con-primordial point through emphathized experience, because the other physical body is given to the other mind primordially, even though I grasp it non-primordially through empathy.

Empathy does not only let us see the world "through other's eyes" and through feeling ourselves "in other's shoes", interestingly enough it is also "a condition of the possibility of constituting our own individual"¹⁷ We see that our own zero point is not really a zero point, but a spatial point among many. We learn to see our living body among other living bodies, our mind among others. But even if we feel certain oneness with others, we always retain our zero point. The con-primordiality doesn't mean our spatial points coincide. There will always remain the distinction between the foreign "I" and our own. Even if we can project the experience of the other through empathy into our inner realm, even if we primordially have a similar feeling in our bones, our experience and other's experience remain distinct. We do not really have the same experience as we are not one and the same person.

It is interesting that scientists have recently discovered that reading a book has a physical impact on our brain as if we were going through the same experiences as the characters in the book we read. It was known already that going into other's experience through reading a book would enlarge our capacity for empathy, but we didn't know it had a real physical impact. This discovery should make us more careful about what we actually read. It can be lethal! But even if we were endlessly reading depressing books or emphatizing with murderers, we would still remain ourselves, with our own free will and intellect. Killing emphatically innocent people through reading doesn't make us necessarily real murderers guilty of a murder, because there are no real people killed through reading nor are our hands covered with blood after closing a book. But the con-experience remains and this can change our inner world. We are what we eat, after all.

The other aspect of reading a book and feeling ourselves in other's shoes is that it can help us to identify our own personal tastes, preferrings, attitudes and moral values. In comparison with another we find our own individuality. "We become aware of levels of value in ourselves by emphatizing with persons of our type. By empathy with differently composed personal structures we become clear on what we are not, what we are more or less than others."¹⁸ It is true that it is easiest to emphathize with a kindred spirit, but this does not mean we cannot emphathize with a totally different type of personality than our own. This is the difference of empathy and sympathy. The former one is only a condition for the latter one, which is reserved to much narrower spectrum of possibilities depending on our values, preferences and will.

The possible range of empathy is thus much wider, almost limitless and total. It can potentially cover the whole universe, although the restrictions of time and space do not allow any living being to realize it. Rather it is an ability which could be attributed to God who is all-powerful and all-knowing. We could say that God is all-emphatic and the more emphatic we are, the closer we are to his likeness in which we were created, as it were. "The miracle of understanding consists in the fact that no like-mindedness is necessary to recognize what is really significant and fundamental (in tradition). We have the ability to open ourselves to the superior claim the text (the other person) makes and to respond to what it has to tell us."¹⁹

This response is an important tool in the chain of interpretation which is another aspect of empathy. We do not only comprehend, we interpret. The circle of semiosis is a constantly changing triadic relationship between an object, subject and the interpretant as defined by Charles Sanders Peirce. "The ontological and triadic relations which turn all this physical interaction and subjective actions and reactions into a semiotic web sustaining objectivity (which is the Umwelt of any given animal) come from both sides, from the animal mind and from nature, to the sole end of the animal surviving at the least, flourishing if possible."²⁰ Thus empathy is a necessary condition for the continuation not only of an individual human being but for a whole mankind. Interpretation without empathy, the true comprehension, would turn our thinking into an illusion of a worst kind.

“All that we see or seem. Is but a dream within a dream.”²¹ If we stay in this illusion, prison of our own little mind and do not even try to reach beyond it, we sink deeper and deeper into this dream within a dream. As the semiotic circle is endless, so is the circle of illusion. Everything redoubles, multiplies itself. If we do a good act, it is a cause for another possible good act. If we shout in the middle of mountains, we get the echo back. Life has a circular structure. It can be seen as a constant flow of energy. If we close ourselves to this energy, we leave ourselves without heat and nurture. The plants need the sun and rain. We all need so many different things to sustain us, but we also need each other. We can emphathize with a leaf. We have much more in common than we might think. Organic life is not so differentiated after all. Life is a wholesome living organism.

It is funny that once there was a time when philosophers wanted to raise beyond the natural world, everything that exists. They reached for the transcendental, to find answers there. Now we have to transcend beyond our little minds, search for the "metaphysics" of the real world. The perspective and amplitude of the search has been drastically diminished. The world of an average person in our present could consist of shopping in a nearby store, performing his small task in a factory, spending his spare time with a tv set and nothing much more. It is obvious that the world of a simple peasant in a small village in some deepest woods, who never travelled any further from home and had no Discovery Channel either, was much larger and harmonious, because everything he did was real, and even if the thing done was just little and unimportant thing, it was made under the eyes of a whole universe and thus attained a special place in it. Everything had a meaning. A small ant among other almost identical ants lives a more real life than a greatest computer game player who has achieved the highest levels in all possible games.

Virtuality is a trap. It is the worst temptation that human being ever had. It hypnotises, it forms an addiction of a worst kind. With a free will and intellect we have something above all other species and yet through them we can fall down to the lowest. When we saw Descartes freeing himself from everything which was doubtful, which did not serve his mind's selfish designs, we saw him still in a natural milieu. He was still a normal human being. He still had his dressing-gown on, he had a candle made of wax and a glass of wine, sitting cosily by the fireside and dreaming of what might world look like if everything existed only in his mind. This was just an innocent game for him. But would he continue it if he saw the consequences?

Would he not do everything in an opposite way? Would he not try to prove that the candle really existed, that it was really there, that it wasn't just an illusion. Would he not try to emphatize with it, try to feel the warmth of the flame, what it felt to be melting like wax? Would he not dream of at least somebody to share his thoughts with or who would just listen silently by the fireside? Perhaps a loyal dog would be enough to warm up his frozen heart, which had become cold over centuries of sitting there all alone, even if only in his imagination? The centuries have gone by. Would not the coldness of the fireplace, long without the heat which should come from the firewood, because there was nobody bringing the wood anymore - would not this coldness wake him up from his daydreaming? Would not the centuries old thirst and hunger send a signal of alarm that it's becoming lethal, that it's dangerous to stay this way?

Of course this is only a metaphor. Descartes has become a metaphor long before this essay. And there is much more richness in empathy than to be just the "sole end of the animal surviving". How much has it been a cause for flourishing? How many beautiful and moving novels and poems have been written through the special ability to sense, grasp and emphathize the world? What a difference has it made that we had Shakespeare, Keats, Tolstoy or Solzhenitsyn? We might say, they managed to change the course of mankind – not in the history of kings and queens, politicians, wars and battles, but in the history of human hearts and lives. Even if one single soul found its way back into his heart's home, the whole beautiful, living and breathing universe of brightest stars, smells and sounds of countless species, of other beings like him, it all had not been useless. It all has a sense waiting to be emphasized.

1 Simulacra and Simulation, 1981.

2Lev Tolstoy, War and Peace, Book 9, Chapter 1.

3René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy in which are demonstrated the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body, FOURTH MEDITATION: Truth and falsity.

4 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own".

5 Kennedy, Emmet (1989). A Cultural History of the French Revolution. Yale University Press.

6Ibid, SECOND MEDITATION: The nature of the human mind, and how it is better known than the body.

7Ibid, FIFTH MEDITATION: The essence of material things, and the existence of God considered a second time.

8 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition

9John Deely, Semiotics and Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of umwelt.

10John Deely, The Semiotic Animal A postmodern definition of human being superseding the modern definition ‘res cogitans’, 2003.

11Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross Discalced Carmelite, On the Problem of Empathy. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, p. 63.

12Ibid, p.64.

13Ibid, p. 64.

14Ibid, p. 60.

15Ibid, p. 60.

16Truth and Method.

17Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross Discalced Carmelite, On the Problem of Empathy. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, p. 63.

18Ibid, p. 116.

19 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method.

20John Deely, Semiotics and Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of umwelt.

21 Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream.