Empathy! So What?

Abstract

The paper deals with the concept of empathy applied in the contemplative experiment to understand the suffering of the victims of the war in Ukraine. I discuss the concept of empathy in the phenomenological perspective and symbolic interactionists’ view. I needed this discussion to frame the conclusions from the contemplative experiment I did with my students. I used the contemplative methods of research. The students did self-observations and self-reports on their lived experiences while observing photos of the victims and refugees from Ukraine. Breathing exercises (pranayama) were practiced between different self-observations to clean the minds and release tensions. At the end of the experiment, the students were also asked about the empathy deficit in contemporary society, and provided comments on it. Finally, I concluded how empathy is evoked and embodied, and I answered the question about whether it is possible to be empathetic toward people in a totally different and traumatic situation. I end with the statement that empathy is a direct reaction to the condition of the suffering of other people. However, it is also socially-framed. I conclude that it could be socially-developed to cope with an empathy deficit.

Keywords

• war in ukraine
• empathy
• symbolic interactionism
• phenomenology
• contemplative research