Page 101 - ARTE!Brasileiros #41

spreads by the popularization of digital images and by The fourth quarter of empathy is the retribution of
the condition, increasingly important, of a preliminary the route to the other him self that occurred in these
aesthetic affinity as a condition for production of three previous passages. The sharing of the sensible
feelings of admiration, respect and interest: pets, happy is not necessarily a love sharing, not even sharing of
children and strawberry ice creams are nice. But what admiration or approval. Empathy is just an experience
we can expect from sympathy is the moral experience that involves a moment of disidentifying and strangeness.
of tolerance for sharing of identities. The landmark of this separation is my own condition of
Freud read Lipps, who read Vischer, and used the term object, exiled in another. That’s the traumatic core that
Einfüllung to refer to the most promising meetings we are not prepared to admit: the joy of the other as
between analyst and analysand. Empathy, combining source and disruption and my own ontological security.
German with English version, is a journey of recognition, This fourth moment involves, therefore, a kind of critique
is not just strict affection. If empathy is assigning of judgment, a suspension of determination terminating
human traits to nature, we can say she is political and the other in your image. A resource or sign that this
psychological, aesthetic, as is also the idea of catharsis, happens can be found in the surfacing of humor and
i.e., purification or “cure” that happens at the Greek comical. It’s in your theory about the jokes that Freud
tragedies. develops the notion of empathy (Einfüllung). It wouldn’t
The first step of empathy is recognizing themselves in be for another reason that the preferred framework of
what is inhuman by definition, nature, with its scenic the Germans, in a recent poll, is precisely the work of
expressions, with his convulsive seas, with his still lifes. Spitzweg called “Poor Poet” (1839):
Empathy is not only put yourself in the place of another, Reduced to a cubicle with gutters, with your pen and
(another shoes) but perceive the other as the other not your robe he has a rumpled face, which makes us think
only as a double of himself. Put yourself in the viewpoint of the ridiculous situation that who want to think about
is to make a geometrical recognition of the other. Here sounding problems having before him the most obvious
the other has no body, there’s no rocks in my shoes or and imminent limitations. But that’s not the condition
calluses, no body. of all of us? You can see as well as empathy part of the
Take the painting of Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885) that particular, discovers in it to your own uniqueness to finish
exemplifies the landscape aesthetic that Vischer had. He a movement of universalization, which is expressed in
can awaken extreme sympathy to produce the illusion terms of compassion.
of a same point of view when the viewer also includes The limits of our capacity for empathy are also the
lonely clouds and the distant landscape. The contrast boundaries of our experience of language, of our optical
with the plants that mimic country life, longing as feeling form and of our own condition of object so when we
empathetic designed in nature. A simple life, with organic found a grotesque figure, half man, half woman, half old
relationships, without as much concern, certainly will trying to make herself young , macrocephala with hands
arouse sympathy. disproportionate and inappropriate clothing, as we see in
The same solitude that we see on this screen in which table of Quinten Metsys (1465-1530) we tend to say that
the character is crushed by the weight of the books and it’s unpleasant. But is here and not in the peacekeeping
by your unlikely read on top of a ladder. But it turns Spitzweg screens that we put in prove our empathy,
out that he didn’t realize to be in danger, absorbed Empathy is formed in relation to the conflict, not in
that are in your task. Here the second time of empathy. sympathy for our own mirrors. The figure depicted on the
Put yourself in the other’s point of view, yes, but later screen, probably a person who suffered from deforming
separated from him, put him as an enigma, realizing that osteitis represents the most inhuman in each of us, the
he himself doesn’t understand your point of view, nor the loss of our appearances. But the mere information about
look of one who lurks in your privacy. There is a conflict that pictures a preexisting conditions seems to be enough
between the geometry of the other and what escapes, to change our ethical sentiment with the character. Those
his unconscious, your animality, all that he ignores and who want a cheap empathy, made of tastes that I want to
that we,put at his point of view, think we know. pay, they let our kids safe from sex and brutality are those
The third movement of empathy refers to the return of who want to create lambs without conflicts. Sheeps for
non identification traces, or the inhuman traces or not which the empathy will be impossible. This, incidentally,
perceived by the subject himself. Here empathy is conflict is one of the most interesting aspects of the theory of
and indeterminacy. Here is the relationship with this Judith Butler, namely, the idea that far there are only
other that Lacan called the unconscious. The Other as a two genders there are many that were indistinguishable,
place where we receive our own message in an inverted genders that were historically treated as abject.
way, and so don’t recognize. This retroactive on the Those who burn witches in our time, making use of
spectator producing distance or approach, involving a Christianity to chase strange or surprising forms. Those
first phase of what could be shared. That’s what you’ll who see pedophilia in any nudity, or those who judges a
see on the screens that make the landscape a strategy painting by it’s theme, are destroying the most extense
of rapprochement between the characters. experience of empathy. With this, they refrain of a key