By DONALD DeMARCO
There are certain memories, no matter how ancient, that persist. I was in a laundromat long ago, waiting for the wash cycle to run its course. A young woman with two toddlers in a stroller entered, with some difficulty. The man sitting next to me said to his friend who was sitting beside him, pointing to the young mother, “She recently lost her husband.” The friend’s acid remark remains ever fresh in my memory bank: “That’s no skin off my nose.”
We are creatures who are made to love one another. How can we become so alienated from our own nature that the plight of another does not affect us? If the sight of a young widow faced with the problem of raising two children does not arouse a strong feeling, what does?
René Descartes is regarded as the Father of Modern Philosophy. Ironically, he steered philosophy off its proper track. “I think therefore I am,” is his signature immortal phrase. By so saying, he confirmed his own existence as a thinker. But from this narrow vantage point, he could not confirm the existence of anyone or anything else. “I think therefore I am” is inseparable from “I cannot think for you, therefore, I cannot confirm your existence.”
Descartes’ real genius was for mathematics, a science that is devoid of feeling. His philosophy suffers from a complete absence of feeling.
“Pathos” is the Greek word for feeling. It is present in the words “antipathy,” “apathy,” “sympathy,” and “empathy.” The first word implies a strong feeling of dislike. “Apathy” refers to the absence of feeling. “Sympathy” is sensitive to the other’s feelings. A person has “empathy” for another when he understands and shares the feelings of another.
The French philosopher Simone Weil, who was also a mystic and a social activist, was particularly noted for her empathy. In 1943, she was diagnosed as having tuberculosis. Although she was instructed to eat well, she limited her food intake to what she believed residents of the German-occupied France ate. Her condition quickly deteriorated, and she was moved to a sanatorium where she passed away. In that same year at the age of 34. She died, some say, because of her “the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed.”
Simone Weil’s empathy was marred by a lack of self-love. Empathy should not be self-destructive. General Charles de Gaulle thought Weil to be “insane,” although he was influenced by her and repeated some of her phrases years after her death.
Edith Stein (1891-1942), now known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, wrote her Ph.D. on the theme, “The Problem with Empathy.” Like Simone Weil, she was thinking about empathy during a time when war was raging. Stein’s treatment of empathy was intellectual. Weil’s experience of empathy was personal, although misdirected.
In her dissertation, Stein states that empathy is an immediate and structural part of being human. We do not need to be told when we are confronted with a person who is suffering, that such a person is suffering. We know this by direct perception. Stein’s word for what we encounter in the other is “spirit.”
Empathy can humanize us. It puts us in touch with ourselves as empathizing beings and, at the same time, puts us touch with our neighbor as one who can be revealed through empathy. Empathy helps us to illuminate both who we are as individual persons and who the other is.
Empathy presupposes a certain humility. C. S. Lewis phrased it best when he said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less”. We are not less for being humble. The humble person is very much in control of his abilities and gifts. But what characterizes the humble person is that he can forget himself in order to perceive the spirit of the other person. Preoccupation with the self can block the needed openness for a person to have empathy for another. Humility, which provides the possibility for empathy is twice blessed. It blesses the humble person for honoring his own abilities and the other for being known in his “spirit.”
Empathy, though an innate capacity in the human being, is greatly needed in our society where individualism and alienation hold sway. It is the virtue that can truly bring people together to work for peace.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is one of six patron saints of Europe, including Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena. She was beatified on May 1, 1987 by Pope John Paul II, and then canonized by him eleven years later on October 11, 1948.
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