Some Personal Musings On Empathy
In relation to the philosophy of πάθει μάθος
Empathy and The Individual
The first axiom of the philosophy of pathei-mathos is:
That human beings possess a mostly latent perceptive
faculty, the faculty of empathy - ἐμπάθεια - which when
used, or when developed and used, can provide us with a particular
type of knowing, a particular type of knowledge, and especially a
certain knowledge concerning the φύσις (the physis, the
nature or character) of human beings and other living beings. [1]
Being a natural faculty - like sight and hearing - empathy is
personal, individual, and thus depends on and relates to what-is,
and/or who-is, nearby: in range of our empathy. Thus the knowing we
acquire or can acquire by empathy is a personal knowing just as
seeing and listening to a person speaking is a personal knowing
acquired directly in the immediacy-of-the-moment. If, however, a
person be out of range of our empathy, and we have no previous
empathic or personal encounters with them, they are empathically and
personally unknown to us and therefore, since we have no knowledge
or intimation of their physis, their character, we cannot fairly
assess them and should accord them 'the benefit of the doubt' since
this presumption of the innocence of others – until direct personal
experience, and individual and empathic knowing of them, prove
otherwise – is the fair, the reasoned, the moral, the empathic,
thing to do.
For empathy, according to the philosophy of pathei-mathos, is
considered the primary means whereby we can fairly asses [2] - that
is, fairly judge - a person and thus know them (their physis) as
they are, with this knowing, by the nature of our as yet undeveloped
and underused faculty of empathy, of necessity requiring a personal
and a direct experience of them extending over a period of time. In
effect, our initial intuitions are either confirmed or modified by
such direct contact, rather as most humans may require several
periods of reading or of the hearing of some lengthy text in order
to commit it to memory and be able to reproduce it, aurally or in
writing.
There is thus what may be described as the empathic scale: that
which or those who are reachable, knowable, by means of, in range
of, our empathy; and it is this scale which, in essence, may be said
to be a measure, a function and expression, of our humanity; which
reveals, discovers, physis and thus what is important about
ourselves, about other human beings, and about the other life with
which we share this planet. Beyond the reach of empathy is the
physis of beings we do not (as yet) personally know and we have to
admit we do not know, and so cannot and should not be sure about or
make claims about or formulate some theory or opinion about.
Everything others associate with an individual, or ascribe to an
individual, or use to describe or to denote an individual, or even
how an individual denotes or describes themselves, are not relevant,
and have no bearing on our understanding, our knowledge, of that
individual and thus - morally - should be ignored, for it is our
personal knowing of them which is necessary, important, valid,
fair. For assessment of another - by the nature of assessment
and the nature of empathy - can only be personal, direct,
individual. Anything else is biased prejudgement or prejudice or
unproven assumption.
This means that we approach them - we view them - without any
prejudice, without any expectations, and without having made any
assumptions concerning them, and as a unique, still unknown, still
undiscovered, individual person: as 'innocent' until proven, until
revealed by their actions and behaviour to be, otherwise.
Furthermore, empathy - the acausal perception/knowing and revealing
of physis - knows nothing of temporal things and human manufactured
abstractions/categories such as assumed or assigned ethnicity;
nothing of gender; nothing of what is now often termed 'sexual
preference/orientation'. Nothing of politics, or religion. Nothing
of some disability someone may suffer from; nothing of social status
or wealth; nothing regarding occupation (or lack of one). Nothing
regarding the views, the opinions, of others concerning
someone. For empathy is just empathy, a perception different
from our other senses such as sight and hearing, and a perception
which provides us, or which can provide us, with a unique
perspective, a unique type of knowing, a unique (acausal) connexion
to the external world and especially to other human beings.
Empathy - and the knowing that derives from it - thus transcends
'race', politics, religion, gender, sexual orientation, occupation,
wealth (or lack of it), 'status', and all the other things and
concepts often used to describe, to denote, to prejudge, to
classify, a person; so that to judge someone - for example - by and
because of their political views (real or assumed) or by their
religion or by their sexual orientation is an act of hubris [ ὕβρις
].
In practice, therefore, in the revealing of the physis of a person,
the political views, the religion, the gender, the perceived
ethnicity, of someone are irrelevant. It is a personal knowing of
them, the perception of their physis by empathy, and an acceptance
of them as - and getting to know them as - a unique individual which
are important and considered moral; for they are one emanation of
the Life of which we ourselves are but one other finite and fallible
part.
Concerning The Error of Extremism
Extremism - as defined and understood by the philosophy of
pathei-mathos - is a modern example of the error of hubris. An
outward expression - codified in an ideology - of a bad individual
physis (of a bad or faulty or misguided or underdeveloped/unmatured
individual nature); of a lack of inner balance in individuals; of a
lack of empathy and of pathei-mathos.
There is thus, in extremists, an ignorance of the true nature of
Being and beings, and a lack of appreciation of or a wilful
rejection of the numinous, as well as a distinct lack of or an
aversion to personal humility, for it is the nature of the extremist
that they are convinced and believe that 'they know' that the
ideology/party/movement/group/faith that they accept or adhere to -
or the leader that they follow - have/has the right answers, the
correct solutions, to certain problems which they faithfully assert
exist in society and often in human beings.
This conviction, this arrogance of belief, or this reliance on the
assessment of someone else (some leader), combined with a lack of
empathy and a lack of the insight and the self-knowing wrought by
pathei-mathos, causes or greatly enhances an existing inner/interior
dissatisfaction (an unbalance, a lack of harmony) within them in
regard to what-is, so that some vision, some ideal, of the future -
of society - becomes more important to them, more real, more
meaningful, than people, than life, as people and life are now.
Thus, they with their ideology, their faith, with and because of
their dissatisfaction, possess or develope an urge to harshly
interfere, continually finding fault with people, with society, with
life itself, and so strive - mostly violently, hatefully,
unethically, and with prejudice and often with anger - to undermine,
to violently change, to 'revolutionize', or to destroy, what-is.
In simple terms, extremists fail to understand, to appreciate, to
know, to apprehend, what is important about human beings and human
living; what the simple reality, the simple nature, the real physis,
of the majority of human beings and of society is and are, and thus
what innocence means and implies. That is, there is a failure to
know, to appreciate, what is good, and natural and numinous and
innocent, in respect of human beings and of society. A failure to
know, a failure to appreciate, a failure to feel what it is that
empathy and pathei-mathos provide: the wisdom of our personal nature
and personal needs; of our physis as rational - as balanced - human
beings possessed of certain qualities, certain virtues, or capable
of developing balance, capable of developing certain qualities,
certain virtues, and thus having or of developing the ability to
live in a certain manner: with fairness, with love, and without
hatred and prejudice.
What is good, and natural - what should thus be appreciated, and
respected, and not profaned by the arrogance (the hubris) of the
extremist, and what empathy and pathei-mathos reveal - are the
desire for personal love and the need to be loyally loved; the need
for a family and the bonds of love within a family that lead to the
desire to protect, care for, work for, and if necessary defend one's
loved ones. The desire for a certain security and stability and
peace, manifest in a home, in sufficiency of food, in playfulness,
in friends, in tolerance, in a lack of danger. The need for the
dignity, the self-respect, that work, that giving love and being
loved, provide.
Our societies have evolved, painfully slowly, to try and provide
such simple, such human, such natural, such ineluctably personal,
things; to allow opportunities for such things; and have so evolved
often because of individuals naturally gifted with empathy or who
were inspired by their own pathei-mathos or that of others, and
often and thus also so evolved because of the culture that such
societies encouraged and sometimes developed, being as such culture
was - via, for example, literature, music, memoirs, poetry, Art -
the recorded/aural pathei-mathos and empathic understanding of
others often combined with the recorded/aural pathei-mathos and the
empathic understanding of others in other societies. A pathei-mathos
and an understanding that may form or in some manner express the
ethos of a society, and thence become an inspiration for certain
laws intended to express, in a society, what is considered to be
moral and thus provide and maintain or at least aid valued human and
personal qualities such as the desire for stability, peace, a loving
home, sufficiency of food, and the need for the dignity of work.
But as I mentioned in some other musings regarding my own lamentable
extremist past:
" Instead of love we, our selfish, our obsessed, our extremist
kind, engendered hate. Instead of peace, we engendered struggle,
conflict, killing. Instead of tolerance we engendered intolerance.
Instead fairness and equality we engendered dishonour and
discrimination. Instead of security we produced, we encouraged,
revolution, violence, change.
The problem, the problems, lay inside us, in our kind, not in 'the
world', not in others. We, our kind - we the pursuers of, the
inventors of, abstractions, of ideals, of ideologies; we the
selfish, the arrogant, the hubriatic, the fanatics, the obsessed -
were and are the main causes of hate, of conflict, of suffering,
of inhumanity, of violence. Century after century, millennia after
millennia." Letter To My Undiscovered Self
For perhaps one of the worst consequences of the extremism of
extremists - of modern hubris in general - is, or seems to me to be,
the loss of what is personal, and thus what is human; the loss of
the empathic, the human, scale of things; with what is personal,
human, empathic, being or becoming displaced, scorned, forgotten,
obscured, or a target for destruction and (often violent)
replacement by something supra-personal such as some abstract
political/religious notion or concept, or some ideal, or by some
prejudice and some often violent intolerance regarding human beings
we do not personally know because beyond the range of our empathy.
That is, the human, the personal, the empathic, the natural, the
immediate, scale of things - a tolerant and a fair acceptance of what-is
- is lost and replaced by an artificial scale posited by some
ideology or manufactured by some τύραννος (tyrannos); a
scale in which the suffering of individuals, and strife, are
regarded as inevitable, even necessary, in order for 'victory to be
achieved' or for some ideal or plan or agenda or manifesto to be
implemented. Thus the good, the stability, that exists within
society is ignored, with the problems of society - real, imagined,
or manufactured by propaganda - trumpeted. There is then incitement
to disaffection, with harshness and violent change of and within
society regarded as desirable or necessary in order to achieve
preset, predetermined, and always 'urgent' goals and aims, since
slow personal reform and change in society - that which appreciates
and accepts the good in an existing society and in people over and
above the problems and the bad - is anathema to extremists, anathema
to their harsh intolerant empathy-lacking nature and to their
hubriatic striving:
" [The truth] in respect of the societies of the West,
and especially of societies such as those currently existing in
America and Britain - is that for all their problems and all their
flaws they seem to be much better than those elsewhere, and
certainly better than what existed in the past. That is, that
there is, within them, a certain tolerance; a certain respect for
the individual; a certain duty of care; and certainly still a
freedom of life, of expression, as well as a standard of living
which, for perhaps the majority, is better than elsewhere in the
world and most certainly better than existed there and elsewhere
in the past.
In addition, there are within their structures - such as their
police forces, their governments, their social and governmental
institutions - people of good will, of humanity, of fairness, who
strive to do what is good, right. Indeed, far more good people in
such places than bad people, so that a certain balance, the
balance of goodness, is maintained even though occasionally (but
not for long) that balance may seem to waver somewhat.
Furthermore, many or most of the flaws, the problems, within such
societies are recognized and openly discussed, with a multitude of
people of good will, of humanity, of fairness, dedicating
themselves to helping those affected by such flaws, such problems.
In addition, there are many others trying to improve those
societies, and to trying find or implement solutions to such
problems, in tolerant ways which do not cause conflict or involve
the harshness, the violence, the hatred, of extremism." Notes
on The Politics and Ideology of Hate (Part Two)
Yet it is just such societies - societies painfully and slowly
crafted by the sacrifice and the goodness of multitudes of people of
good will, of humanity, of fairness - that extremists with their
harsh intolerant empathy-lacking nature, their hubriatic striving,
their arrogant certainty of belief, their anger and their need to
harshly interfere, seek to undermine, overthrow, and destroy.
No Hubriatic Striving, No Impersonal Interference
Since the range of empathy is limited to the immediacy-of-the-moment
and to personal interactions, and, together with pathei-mathos, is a
primary means to reveal the nature of Being and beings - and
since the learning wrought by pathei-mathos and pathei-mathos itself
is and are direct and personal - then part of the knowledge, the
understanding, that empathy and pathei-mathos reveal and provide is
the wisdom of physis and of humility. That is, of the empathic scale
of things and of acceptance of our limitations of personal knowing
and personal understanding. Of (i) the unwisdom, the hubris, of
arrogantly making assumptions about who and what are beyond the
range of our empathy and outside of our personal experience, and
(ii) of the unwisdom, the hubris, of adhering to some ideology or
some belief or to some tyrannos and allowing that ideology
or that belief or that tyrannos to usurp the personal judgement, the
personal assessment, that empathy and pathei-mathos reveal and
provide.
This acceptance of the empathic - of the human, the personal - scale
of things and of our limitations as human beings is part of wu-wei.
Of not-striving, and of not-interfering, beyond the purveu of our
empathy and our pathei-mathos. Of personally and for ourselves
discovering the nature, the physis, of beings; of personally working
with and not against that physis, and of personally accepting that
certain matters or many matters, because of our lack of personal
knowledge and lack of personal experience of them, are unknown to us
and therefore it is unwise, unbalanced, for us to have and express
views or opinions concerning them, and hubris for us to adhere to
and strive to implement some ideology which harshly deals with and
manifests harsh views and harsh opinions concerning such personally
unknown matters.
Thus what and who are beyond the purveu of empathy and beyond
pathei-mathos is or should be of no urgent concern, of no passionate
relevance, to the individual seeking balance, harmony, and wisdom,
and in truth can be detrimental to finding wisdom and living in
accord with the knowledge and understanding so discovered.
For wisdom, it seems to me, is simply a personal appreciation of the
numinous, of innocence, of balance, of εὐταξία [3], of enantiodromia, and the personal
knowing, the understanding, that empathy and pathei-mathos provide.
An appreciation, a knowing, that is the genesis of a balanced
personal judgement - of discernment – and evident in our perception
of Being and beings: of how all living beings are emanations of ψυχή
and of how the way of non-suffering causing moral change and reform
both personal and social is the way of wu-wei. The way of personal,
interior, change; of aiding, helping, assisting other individuals in
a direct, a personal manner, and in practical ways, because our
seeing is that of the human, the empathic, the muliebral, scale of
things and not the scale of hubris, which is the scale either (i) of
the isolated, egoist, striveful, unharmonious human being in thrall
to their selfish masculous desires or (ii) of the human being
unbalanced because in thrall to some tyrannos or to some harsh,
extremist, ideology, and which harsh ideologies always manifest an
unbalanced masculous, unempathic, nature redolent of that hubriatic
certainty-of-knowing and that intolerant desire to interfere which
mark and which have marked, and are and were the genesis of, the
tyrannos.
David Myatt
April 2012
Notes
[1] The Way of
Pathei-Mathos - A Philosophical Compendiary (Second
edition, 2012)
[2] To assess is to reasonably consider and thus arrive at a
balanced, a reasonable, a fair, judgement/assessment.
[3] qv. 'An Appreciation of The Numinous' in The Way of
Pathei-Mathos - A Philosophical Compendiary (Second edition,
2012)
Usage of Terms and Explanations
In order to avoid confusion, I outline here how I understand
and use certain terms. My usage may thus sometimes differ from how
such terms are commonly used or how they have been previously
defined and/or used in some academic and other works relating to
society, politics, extremism, philosophy, and so on. Some of the
explanations are taken from, or are based upon or expand upon
those given in, my The Politics and Ideology of Hate and
the second edition of my The Way of Pathei-Mathos.
For terms not explained here - such as ψυχή,
hubris, εὐταξία, and τύραννος (tyrannos) -
refer to The Way of Pathei-Mathos.
Enantiodromia
A term used to refer to, to name, to describe, the process - the
natural moral change, the reformation - that occurs or which can
occur in a human being because of or following πάθει μάθος.
Part of this process is a knowing, an acceptance, and an interior
balancing within the individual, of the muliebral and of the
masculous.
Extremist/Extremism
By extreme I mean to be harsh, so that my
understanding of an extremist is a person who tends toward
harshness, or who is harsh, or who supports/incites harshness, in
pursuit of some objective, usually of a political or a religious
nature. Here, harsh is: rough, severe, a tendency to be
unfeeling, unempathic.
Hence extremism is considered to be: (1) the result of
such harshness, and (2) the principles, the causes, the
characteristics, that promote, incite, or describe the harsh action
of extremists. In addition, a fanatic is considered to be someone
with a surfeit of zeal or whose enthusiasm for some objective, or
for some cause, is intemperate.
In the philosophical terms of my weltanschauung, an extremist is
someone who commits the error of hubris; and error which
enantiodromia can sometimes correct or forestall.
Ideology
By the term ideology is meant a coherent, organized, and distinctive
set of beliefs and/or ideas or ideals, and which beliefs and/or
ideas and/or ideals pertain to governance, and/or to society, and/or
to matters of a philosophical or a spiritual nature.
Innocence
Innocence is regarded as an attribute of those who, being personally
unknown to us, are therefore unjudged us by and who thus are given
the benefit of the doubt. For this presumption of innocence of
others – until direct personal experience, and individual and
empathic knowing of them, prove otherwise – is the fair, the
reasoned, the moral thing to do.
Empathy and πάθει μάθος incline us toward treating other
human beings as we ourselves would wish to be treated; that is they
incline us toward fairness, toward self-restraint, toward being
well-mannered, and toward an appreciation and understanding of
innocence.
Muliebral/Masculous
The term muliebral derives from the classical Latin word muliebris,
and in the context The Numinous Way/The Way of Pathei-Mathos refers
to those positive traits, abilities, and qualities that are
conventionally and historically associated with women, such as
empathy, sensitivity, gentleness, compassion, and a desire to love
and be loved over and above a desire for conflict/adventure/war.
The counterpart to muliebral is masculous, which is used to refer to
certain traits, abilities, and qualities that are conventionally and
historically associated with men, such as competitiveness,
aggression, a certain harshness, the desire to organize/control, and
a desire for adventure and/or for conflict/war/violence/competition
over and above personal love and culture.
Extremist ideologies manifest an unbalanced, an excessive, masculous
nature.
Masculous is from the Latin masculus. and occurs,
for example, in some seventeenth century works such as one by William
Struther: " This is not only the language of
Canaan, but also the masculous Schiboleth." True Happines,
or, King Davids Choice: Begunne In Sermons, And Now Digested
Into A Treatise. Edinbvrgh, 1633
Physis
By physis - φύσις - is usually meant either the nature,
or character, of individuals, or the natural nature of all beings,
beyond their outer appearance, and which natural nature we, as human
beings, have a natural [an unconscious] inclination to conceal;
either because of ὕβρις or through an ignorance, an
unknowing, of ourselves as an emanation of ψυχή.
Politics
By the term politics is meant both of the following, according to
context. (i) The theory and practice of governance, with governance
itself founded on two fundamental assumptions; that of some minority
- a government (elected or unelected), some military authority, some
oligarchy, some ruling elite, some tyrannos, or some leader - having
or assuming authority (and thus power and influence) over others,
and with that authority being exercised over a specific geographic
area or territory. (ii) The activities of those individuals or
groups whose aim or whose intent is to obtain and exercise some
authority or some control over - or to influence - a society or
sections of a society by means which are organized and directed
toward changing/reforming that society or sections of a society in
accordance with a particular ideology.
Religion
By religion is meant organized worship, devotion, and faith, where
there is: (i) a belief in some deity/deities, or in some supreme
Being or in some supra-personal power who/which can reward or punish
the individual, and (ii) a distinction made between the realm of the
sacred/the-gods/God/the-revered and the realm of the ordinary or the
human.
The term organized here implies an established institution, body or
group - or a plurality of these - who or which has at least to some
degree codified the faith and/or the acts of worship and devotion,
and which is accepted as having some authority or has established
some authority among the adherents. This codification can relate to
accepting as authoritative certain writings and/or a certain book or
books.
Society
By the term society is meant a collection of people who live in a
specific geographic area or areas and whose association or
interaction is mostly determined by a shared set of guidelines or
principles or beliefs, irrespective of whether these are written or
unwritten, and irrespective of whether such
guidelines/principles/beliefs are willingly accepted or accepted on
the basis of acquiescence. These shared guidelines or principles or
beliefs often tend to form an ethos and a culture and become the
basis for what is considered moral (and good) and thence become the
inspiration for laws and/or constitutions.
As used here, the term refers to 'modern societies' (especially
those of the modern West).
State
By the term The State is meant:
The concept of both (1) organizing and controlling – over a
particular and large geographical area – land (and resources);
and (2) organizing and controlling individuals over that same
geographical particular and large geographical area by: (a) the
use of physical force or the threat of force and/or by
influencing or persuading or manipulating a sufficient number of
people to accept some leader/clique/minority/representatives as
the legitimate authority; (b) by means of the central
administration and centralization of resources (especially
fiscal and military); and (c) by the mandatory taxation of
personal income.
My personal (fallible) view is that by their nature States often
tend to be masculous (hence the desire for wars, invasions,
conquest, competition, and the posturing often associated with
'patriotism'), although in my view they can become balanced, within,
by acceptance of certain muliebral qualities, qualities most
obviously manifest in certain aspects of culture, in caring
professions, in pursuing personal love and the virtue of wu-wei, and
in and by the empowerment and equality of, and respect for, women
and those whose personal love is for someone of the same gender.
The Good
The good is considered to be what is fair; what alleviates or does
not cause suffering; what is compassionate; what empathy by its
revealing inclines us to do.
Thus the bad - what is wrong, immoral - is what is unfair; what is
harsh and unfeeling; what intentionally causes or contributes to
suffering.
Way
By the term Way - or Way of Life - is meant a weltanschauung shared
among or accepted by a number of people where there is distinction
made between the realm of the sacred/the-revered/the-numinous and
the realm of the ordinary or the human, but which: (i) is not
codified in writings or books but which is often or mostly
transmitted aurally; (ii) has no organization beyond - and does not
require any organization beyond - the communal/local level; and
(iii) whose ethos and rites and customs are inclined toward
maintaining the natural balance - the natural healthy harmonious
relation between humans, life, and 'the sacred' - and not toward
avoiding the punishment of some powerful deity/gods or some
supra-personal power(s).
One essential difference thus between a religion and a Way is that a
religion requires faith and belief (and thus words, concepts, and
dogma and organization and conformity), whereas a Way tends to be
empathic/intuitive and more a customary, unspoken, way of doing
things and which way of doing things - not being organized and by
its ethos neither requiring organization nor conformity - varies or
can vary from place to place.
Thus, religions tend to be or tend to manifest what is masculous
whereas Ways in the past tended to be or tended to manifest what is
muliebral.