University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Feeling good: rescuing a living tradition of interpersonal, affective ethics from empathy clichés

Friedman, Roman

Content Files
FRIEDMAN-DISSERTATION-2021.pdf

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/110780

Description

Title
Feeling good: rescuing a living tradition of interpersonal, affective ethics from empathy clichés
Author(s)
Friedman, Roman
Issue Date
2021-03-18
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Burbules, Nicholas
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
  • Higgins, Chris
  • Burbules, Nicholas
Committee Member(s)
  • Dhillon, Pradeep
  • Mann, Jay
Department of Study
Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp
Discipline
Educational Policy Studies
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Date of Ingest
2021-09-17T04:03:59Z
Keyword(s)
  • empathy
  • emotion
  • philosophy
  • moral education
  • Charles Taylor
  • Hans-Georg Gadamer
  • education abroad
  • study abroad
  • ethics
  • pedagogy
  • education
  • social studies
Abstract
In this dissertation, I examine the discourse surrounding “empathy” and what it reveals about our moral beliefs, our pedagogy, and the relationship between self and other. I will argue that the language of empathy has devolved into a series of moral platitudes that skirt ethical risk and deny deep engagement with our moral traditions. Education, particularly higher education, “proceduralizes” the self, treating the student as an evolving set of competencies often for the sake of employability. Empathy, as an already rationalized concept, is easily subsumed in this procedural logic. In empathy’s basic form, one first abstracts from the historical self, free from prejudice, to engage with the “other” from a neutral position (often by feeling as them). One then returns in an egoistic fashion, constructing a self-congratulatory identity narrative. The affective act is a type of defining knowledge of both other and self. I draw largely on the philosophical work of Charles Taylor and Hans-Georg Gadamer, as well as the empathy discourses in History Education and Study Abroad, to examine these interrelated dynamics between self, other, and moral pedagogy. I then turn to Gadamer’s hermeneutics to suggest how we might participate in a richer ethical education. Hermeneutics begins with the self as a conditioned being existing in a world with others, with prejudices that ought to be foregrounded. As we encounter others and the world we are “pulled up short.” This, like empathy, is an affective state (confusion, disorientation, fear) but one that demands reconstitution of the self, a change in horizons. To conceive of learning and educational experience as a fundamentally interpretive activity can help reinvigorate an approach to ethics that the conceptualization of empathy has reduced to cliché.
Graduation Semester
2021-05
Type of Resource
Thesis
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/110780
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2021 Roman Friedman

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