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 10th
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 19th
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.
