Perceiving Others

Abstract

Abstract If empathy is a sui generis form of perceptual intentionality, one may wonder whether empathic acts are governed by norms and have a sui generis character as well. This chapter answers this question positively and identifies the norms that are at play in our empathic understanding of others. Since empathy involves embodied, affective, and cognitive processes that yield different forms of understanding of others, the chapter distinguishes between basic empathy and various higher-level forms of social understanding. Drawing in the work of Husserl, Stein, and Merleau-Ponty, it suggests that different sets of norms come into play in every such form of experience. While considering arguments recently put forward by critical phenomenology, the chapter then argues that the norms identified by classical phenomenologists, which constitutively belong to the perceptual processes of empathy, should not be confused with the impact that social, historical, and cultural norms have on our experience of others.