Ternary Moral Empathy Model from the Perspective of Intersubjective Phenomenology

Abstract

The phenomenon of empathy is an intersubjective process of feeling and a particular form of intentionality. Moral empathy refers to a type of empathy that can trigger moral action, with the embodied intersubjectivity laying the foundation for its emergence. This paper attempts to propose a comprehensive theoretical model of moral empathy from the perspective of intersubjective phenomenology, which includes the following. (1) The moral dimension of perceptual empathy: at the subpersonal, unconscious, and perceptual–motor level, embodied empathic practices are essential for the formation of moral consciousness and the emergence of moral empathy. (2) The moral dimension of situational empathy: following the development of shared attention mechanisms, children can direct towards the intentional objects of others through embodied situational cues to perceive the psychological state of others and generate the moral empathy of “ought”, leading to dyadic morality that promotes cooperative behavior. (3) The moral dimension of narrative empathy: the narrative practices of moral empathy refer to the processes by which children could perceive and understand the moral situation of characters within an embodied narrative structure, subsequently generate prosocial motives such as empathic concern, and then accept the “objective” moral norms of the group consciousness embedded in the narrative.

Keywords

• moral empathy
• intersubjectivity
• embodiment
• lifeworld
• ontogeny