Empatiens mange ansikter: fenomenologisk og positivistisk empati

Abstract

Understanding of the concept of empathy is often subject to change. The manifold conceptualisations, as well as the terminological ambiguities regarding the concept, are observed by studying interdisciplinary, overlapping and even contrasting perspectives of the phenomena across public discourse and academic literature. In this article we do not attempt to reduce the concept of empathy to a single entity, but rather strive to illuminate the many approaches to it. We identify a categorisation of the literature on empathy into two overarching approaches and propose two prototypical epistemological positions that might describe the definitional variations in understanding and applying it, namely a phenomenological or a positivist model underlying understandings of the concept. These two categories encompass wide subsets of traditions and perspectives which we summarise in a nomological network. Such a framing enables us to document the basis for the concept of empathy within a diversity of disciplinary traditions. Keywords: empathy, phenomenology, positivism, nomological network