Lawrence Hatab

This paper ventures an analysis of empathy along the lines of Heidegger’s ecstatic structure of being-in-the-world. Empathy is construed as a mode of attunement disclosing the existential weal and woe of others, and as such it serves a basic ethical function of opening up moral import, interest, and motivation. The following conclusions will be drawn: 1) empathy is a genuine possibility in human experience and should not be understood as a “subjective” phenomenon; 2) empathy is “natural” in a way that can trump psychological egoism and open up alternatives to ethical egoism; 3) the role of empathy shows the limits of rationality in ethics and the structural defects in utilitarian and deontological theories; 4) findings in social psychology reinforce Heidegger’s phenomenology, and the latter can help surmount flawed assumptions in the former; 5) empathy is not sufficient for an ethics but it may be a necessary condition for human moral development.

In this essay I take up Plato’s critique of poetry, which has little to do with epistemology and representational imitation, but rather the powerful effects that poeticperformances can have on audiences, enthralling them with vivid image-worlds and blocking the powers of critical reflection. By focusing on the perceived psychological dangers of poetry in performance and reception, I want to suggest that Plato’s critique was caught up in the larger story of momentous shifts in the Greek world, turning on the rise of literacy and its far-reaching effects in modifying the original and persisting oral character of Greek culture. The story of Plato’s Republic in certain ways suggests something essential for comprehending the development of philosophy in Greece (and in any culture, I would add): that philosophy, as we understand it, would not have been possible apart from the skills and mental transformations stemming from education in reading and writing; and that primary features of oral language and practice were a significant barrier to the development of philosophical rationality (and also a worthy competitor for cultural status and authority). Accordingly, I go on to argue that the critique of writing in the Phaedrus is neither a defense or orality per se, nor a dismissal of writing, but rather a defense of a literate soul over against orality and the indiscriminate exposure of written texts to unworthy readers.