The Forms Of Sympathy And Understanding Of Others’Experiences In Scheler.

Abstract

The objective is to describe the main features of the sympathy phenomenon from Max Scheler’s phenomenology. The central problem is to show how sympathy shows itself as a privileged “place” for understanding the experiences of others, because it implies a psychic-affective identification with whom one sympathizes and accepts. However, compassion and co-rejoicing cannot be understood as the apprehension of psychic contents unrelated to
the reproduction of the feelings of the other, equating mistakenly sympathizing with emotional infection. Consequently, in the first place, some reasons and ways of transformations of anthropologies and historical consolidation of the modern ratio that led to such mistake are outlined. Then, after distinguishing the plural forms of sympathy, showing its law of internal reasoning, the discussion turned to the meaning of how sympathy is to suffer and to rejoice by spelling out its intentional structure. To know the other, however, is not only to unite affectionately with others, but the free decision, proper of a spiritual being, to take part in the opening of the personal being of others, to participate in their intentional acts. It follows, then, that sympathizing presupposes the supreme form of love.