The Invisibility of the Other

Empathy and its negation as a basis for ethics

Empathy is an injunction to understand the other. We feel the weight of the other's gaze and in recognizing them as human (or part of us) we seek to empathize with them. This injuction however, is impossible to satisfy. We are trapped in the mirror-world of our own consciousness; wherein, everything we see is merely a reflection of that which is inside of us. Consciousness is characterized by intentionality - consciousness is what we view consciously, or with attention (intention). The eye takes in many things, (light streams into the iris from all around at all times) but we are only conscious of that which is viewed intentionally (intentional objects). Everything outside of our intention is outside of consciousness - i.e. subconscious. In order to be conscious of an object we must intend to see it; meaning that what we see is only that which we intend to see. As such, the objects we view are not external to the gaze, but rather are part of the gaze. Objects exist inside our minds rather than without - and the external world cannot be reduced to the objects that we create and place in it. Therefore, objects are mirrors of consciousness, which show only that which is inside our own mind.

The mirror-world is a necessary implication of my subjective existence. Therefore, I can never experience the 0ther as such, because I can only experience myself and my own phenomenological objects. I can never experience the other as the other experiences themselves. Which is to say I can never be 0ther - a literal impossibility as it would require me to cease being myself and become other, which would then render 0ther as part of myself and thereby make it not-0ther (because it is I). Empathy is impossible. I can never know the other, I'm trapped in my own head and can't experience the other as such.

Therefore, how can one satisfy the impossible injunction to empathy, given empathy's impossibility in the face of our subjective existence?

Jean Luc-Marion contemplates this same difficulty in his attempt to chart a philosophical path to love, through the lonely expanse of subjectivity. Here is a passage from Prolegomena to Charity in which Marion finds that it is through a renunciation of seeing the other which allows one to begin to experience the other as such (as alterity):

"Of the face offered to my gaze I envisage only what cannot be seen in it - the double void of its pupils, this void that fills the least empty gazes imaginable - because if there nothing to see there, it is from there that the other takes the initiative to see (me). Gazing on the other as such, my eyes in the black of his own, does not imply encountering another object, but experiencing the other of the object. My gaze for the first time, sees an invisible gaze that sees it. I do not accede to the other by seeing more, better, or otherwise, but by renouncing mastery over the visible so as to see objects within it, and thus letting myself be glimpsed by a gaze which sees me without my seeing it - a gaze which, invisibly and beyond my aims (invisablament), silently swallows me up and submerges me, whether I know it or not, whether or not I want it to do so. The gaze of the other, or better, alterity as gaze, is not 'hypertrophied consciousness, but consciousness that flows against the current, overturning the consciousness' (E. Levinas). Consciousness that flows against the current, indeed the counter-current of consciousness: the other does not become accessible by means of intentional consciousness, but at the price of consciousness's very intentionality. Consciousness, my consciousness, should not claim to reach the alterity of the other by diving into its own depths as intentional consciousness; for intentionality merely radicalizes the irreducible and solitary primacy of the gaze of a subject on its objects. In short, with the best intentionality in the world, consciousness can intend and see only objects, thus forbidding itself the alterity of the other. The other remains invisible to my consciousness, not despite intentionality, but because of it... Of the other, who slips away as visible object, I can only passively experience the invisibility - losing consciousness of him. The other, or my loss of consciousness. But if the very moment wherein my consciousness exteriorizes itself confirms the imperially self-enclosed primacy of my consciousness, that is, if my opening still belongs to me, as the horizon where the sun of my power never sets, is it necessary, if we are to have any hope of loving, to enter into a twilight of all consciousness, to expose ourselves in all unconsciousness to the black sun of an invisible light?" (Emphasis added by me.)

The injunction to empathize - upon which rests ethics most sure foundation and humanities brightest hope - brings us to a point where we are forced to renounce empathy for its own sake (or at least empathy as a conscious project). The other is invisible to our conscious gaze. Therefore in order to understand (or at least get a sense of) the other as such we must turn our gaze away from the other and accept the invisibility, indivisibility, and infinite contingency (or haecceity) that is the essence of the other.

I understand empathy as a dialectic - a conversation between two impossibly irreconcilable positions. We feel the injunction to understand and therefore better accommodate the other, but in so doing we nuetralize the other and render him or her as an object of our intentional gaze (the other slips away as we turn our gaze towards him or her). Therefore, we must turn our gaze, and let the other be other - impossibly unknowable and irreducible to the object(s) of our gaze. This process characterizes ethics. There is a movement towards the other, but that movement can never bridge the gap that separates us from the other (and will broaden the gap if we assume we have grasped the other - thereby creating an idol). Therefore, empathy, love and ethics are never-ending projects whose completion will always allude us. Learn to love the journey. Constant progress and constant set-back (push and pull) is the most we can hope for.

Empathy is Violent

I'm often surprised at how many people are anti-empathy. I'm not just saying people lack empathy (I'm commonly guilty of that), but some people are actually opposed to the very idea of being empathetic.

I participated in a discussion in an English class one time where me and my buddy Mike were advocating an ethic of empathy. The majority of the people who participated in the discussion opposed our advocacy and voiced the opinion that empathy is a bad thing! I personally knew some of these kids to be Christians (and the majority of my school was LDS), which makes these kids opinions all the more unsettling. Given Christ's project of charity, I thought empathy would just be intuitive. How can you claim to love another person - Christ said love all people - if you can't even claim to understand the person? [1]

Why did so many of these students distrust empathy? Their comments suggested that fear was the primary problem. The idea was that if you understand another person, than you will either become like them or understand them so well that you won’t be able to hurt them, e.g. if we empathize with Osama Bin Laden then we will lose the will to kill him.

Which is understandable, yet weak. The critics fail to grasp the possibility of Cold Compassion. Essentially, you can understand and even love a person, yet still do what is necessary to and against them. The critics of empathy are correct in saying that it is much more difficult to kill your enemy when you understand your enemy – but when has the path of the courageous ever been easy?

Yet the critics of empathy are on to something. To truly understand another person is scary. To truly understand another person requires you to become another person in a way. When my cousin Jake blogged about empathy, he dropped the common saying, "walk in another person's shoes." Which is a pretty deep concept. This saying implies actually being another person for a period of time, in order to understand them – if you’re not that other person than what would you be doing in their shoes! Shoe thief!

But if you don't like the other person, this is a scary proposition. Bending one's own will to the will of another is a self-sacrificial gesture (similar to Christ's sacrifice). Empathy as self-overcoming, other-becoming, is a form of divine violence and can be uncomfortable and even painful. For instance, there are some people with whom I am (so far) simply incapable of empathizing. It’s too painful. But that doesn't justify giving up on trying to relate to people; thereby lapsing into solipsism. Rather it only means that I need to further break down my own ego. I need to be more violent to the representations of reality that I hold so dear in order to break through into a glimpse of another person's reality.

Empathy is particularly dangerous to our ego when the people with whom we try to empathize are people that we hate. We don't want to try to understand them because we don't want to be like them. We don't want to be in their skin and we certainly don't want them under ours.

To be true to one's self and truly empathetic one must learn to be a little skizo. One must master the art of seeing from multiple perspectives at once and learning not to devalue the parallax perspective.

Empathy, like love, is as scary as it is violent. However, it is an awe-some and worthy challenge. An ethic of empathy can help you chip away at the soft weak parts of your soul, until all you have left is the hard, inner core. (This is what Nietzsche meant in Beyond Good and Evil about becoming hard). Empathy, then, despite being self-destructive is also self-creative:

Breaking down the artificial constructions I've built around myself is part of the process of becoming what I am.

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[1] It's completely wrong-headed for a Christian to say, “even though I don't like so-and-so, I do love so-and-so as a child of God or because I know Christ loves her/him.” Christ said be like him, not just worship him. And when he said love one-another, he meant it as in you personally need to learn to love people – even those that despitefully use you. So it’s dumb to just claim Christ's love as your own - it's a cop-out that stunts your own progress in learning to love while on this Earth.