우리는 어떻게 타인에게 공감하는가? -코플랜과 골디의 논의 분석

초록

The main goal of this article is to propose necessary conditions for empathy by analyzing philosophical discussions about how we empathize with other people. To achieve this goal, I analyze the arguments of Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie. The arguments of Coplan and Goldie are briefly summarized as follows: Coplan adopts empathetic perspective-shifting as one of the conditions of empathy (maintaining the other person’s perspective). On the other hand, Goldie adopts in-his-shoes perspective- shifting (maintaining my perspective). As a result, I argue that if we take Goldie’s side, we can identify three necessary conditions of empathy. First, we share a person’s feelings. Second, we understand the person’s thoughts and feelings by keeping our deliberative mechanism (in-his-shoes perspective-shifting). Third, there is a consciousness of distinctness between me and the person. In conclusion, these are necessary conditions for empathy, and the second condition is a prerequisite for the first condition. This means that the fundamental condition of empathy is the second one. To satisfy the second condition, we should take ‘in-his-shoes perspective-taking’. If we empathize with the person, we understand them and share their feelings by maintaining our perspective. According to the conclusion, this article has the following significance: The general point of view, which suggests that empathizing with a person requires entering into another’s feelings, can lead to an anti-empathetic result. Also, the conditions of empathy allow us to propose empathy as a meaningful solution for settling conflicts.

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