“The Very Unrecognizability of the Other”: Edith Stein, Judith Butler, and the Pedagogical Challenge of Empathy

There is no standard definition of empathy, but the concept is assumed to be innately pro-social and teachable regardless of factors such as power dynamics or other manifestations of social injustice within a society. Such assumptions in discursive practices, whether academic, popular, or pedagogical, obscure the emergence of two important questions: What does it mean when we cannot empathize with another? And could it be that we may gain greater insight from the examination of empathy’s limits and failures than the hopes we have for its success? Through an exploration of some of Edith Stein’s and Judith Butler’s work on the subject, I propose that discussions of empathy, particularly in education, must be grounded in social context. Once this is done, assumptions about empathy must be continually troubled if one is to have a cogent conversation—whether as a philosopher, social theorist, educator, or policy maker—about what empathy is (or is not) and what it does (or does not) make possible

Empathy in Education: A Narrative Study into Practicing Teachers’ Experiences

This dissertation interweaves a study of how empathy is understood and talked about with an account of practicing teachers’ experiences. While empathy has long been proposed by educational thinkers as the remedy to social conflicts and divisions, it is also understood in myriad, and at times contradictory, ways. The ambiguity of the term does not seem to lessen empathy’s discursive cachet, however. And since the lack of clear or widely accepted conceptualization is no obstacle to empathy’s flourishing as an educational ideal, I propose that what empathy does (or what educators think it does) is much more important than what empathy is. Thinking of what empathy “does” – of what we are hoping for when we invoke it – frames empathy’s operation as a set of promises. Pedagogies of empathy and their interpretation by teachers thus become sites of examination for issues of systemic injustice in the education system. In fact, I suggest that behind most invocations of empathy are pressing systemic issues, unaddressed. I propose that while an uncomplicated “one-size-fits-all” model of decontextualized, prosocial, and teachable empathy is unlikely to be effective for students and teachers, neither is a model based primarily on teachers’ individual emotional responses to their students.Ph.D.2021-11-13 00:00:0

Locating the Liminal: Discursive Practice and the Challenge of Empathy

Few authors agree on a standard definition of empathy, yet empathy is widely assumed to be easily accessible and innately pro-social regardless of factors such as power dynamics or other manifestations of social injustice within a society. Such assumptions in dominant discursive practices, both academic and popular, obscure the emergence of two important questions: what does it mean when we cannot empathize with another? And could it be that we may gain greater insight from the examination of empathy's limits and failures than the hopes we have for its success? I propose that discussions of empathy must be grounded in social context and that assumptions must be continually troubled if one is to have a cogent conversation, whether as a philosopher, psychologist, social theorist, educator, or policy maker, about what empathy is (or is not) and what it does (or does not) make possible.M.A