requestId:684c3e4f842020.56325806.
Wang Yangming’s “sympathy” with evil people
Author: Huang Yong (Teacher from the Department of Chinese Philosophy in Hong Kong)
Translator: Cui Yaqin (Editor of the School of Political Science and Law in Huadong)
Source: Shanghai Confucian Academy of Sciences of China: “Modern Confucianism.” Chapter 6, Commercial Printing Library, 2020 edition
1. Introduction
Empathy is a relatively popular topic in contemporary moral thinking and moral philosophy. As a phenomenon in human moral career, it is certainly true that it has existed since ancient times. But philosophical discussions on the phenomenon of sympathy are relatively less traditional. From the perspective of philosophical research, Slott, the most important student of empathy, the concept of empathy in Eastern philosophy first appeared in the works of British philosopher Xiu Shu (1711-1766), which was in the eighteenth century. Slott acknowledged that this concept appeared earlier in China. The concept of all things proposed by Cheng Jun (1032-1085) and Wang Yangming (1472-1529) actually express the concept of empathy. In this way, the emergence of the concept of sympathy in Chinese philosophy was seven hundred years earlier than that in Eastern philosophy. Slott once believed that all things from Mencius were reserved for me, and it was also a concept of the sameness. If this concept of the sameness appeared in Chinese philosophy, it would have been even earlier. However, Slot has changed his understanding now, thinking that Mencius only mentioned the phenomenon of empathy, but did not have a corresponding concept of empathy. As for the word empathy, it is even more repulsive in English, probably in the nineteenth century. Although he first expressed empathy, he used the sympathy that we translated tomorrow as sympathy in Chinese. Although the concept of empathy appeared very early in Chinese philosophy, there has never been a corresponding word. When we discuss the concept of empathy in contemporary Oriental Mind and Ethics in Chinese tomorrow, we often find it difficult to find a suitable verb translation. It is a proof. I use the word “sympathy” as an right measure, and the important thing is to prevent it from being confused with sympathy. If sympathy is not used to translate sympathy, I think we can use it to translate empathy in its entirety. As for the term “empathy” used to translate empathy in the aesthetic field, it is obviously not suitable for empathy discussed in ethics. This is because empathy in aesthetics is to emulate the subject of aesthetics to transfer its own emotions to the object of aesthetics. For example, if the aesthetic subject has a very happy mood, she tends to transfer this kind of excited mood to her aesthetic object, and it seems that the aesthetic object has also shown a happy look. But empathy in ethics may express the opposite: the main sense of empathy is infected with what the object is infected with. If one person has trouble, the other person isWithout the same suffering, you can feel the suffering of this person, and this is empathy. Although Slott assessed the history of the concept of sympathy in Eastern philosophy and Chinese philosophy, he believed that the broadness and depth of discussion on the concept of sympathy in contemporary psychology and ethics has far surpassed the exploration of this concept by all philosophers in history. In my opinion, although this view is reasonable in some respects, Confucianism has many major insights into the perception of empathy, and they have attracted much attention in the relevant research and developments of the East. This article focuses on the philosophy of the Ming Confucian Confucian Wang Yangming, discusses the contributions that Confucianism can make on contemporary moral thinking and ethics discussions on the concept of sympathy. In this article, I will discuss this insight from Wang Yangming: we can, and should have the same feeling for those who lack the same feeling, that is, the evil people mentioned in the title of this article. Wang Yangming’s view on this question is a part of his ordinary understanding of empathy, and it should not be understood by himself when he was alone. Therefore, let’s first look at Wang Yangming’s opinion on the common sense of empathy, and therefore, when they cannot make any special contributions to contemporary discussions about empathy, they rushed into her social media and asked her ideal companion. Nothing to see.
2. Wang Yangming’s concept of sympathy
To discuss Wang Yangming’s concept of sympathy and his contribution to the discussion on the concept of sympathy in contemporary moral thinking and moral philosophy, first of all, there is a need to have an understanding of the phenomenon of sympathy. So, what is the same feeling? It’s okay to take a look at several influential definitions of empathy in contemporary literature. Martin Hoffman is one of the most influential psychologists in this field. He believes that empathy is an “affective reaction to another person”. The key need is “to advance such a mental process: to make it feel the relationship with someone else’s situation rather than the situation of oneself” (Hoffman 2000: 29-30); Daniel Batson is another influential psychologist. His main contribution is to altruism through a large number of testimonials. In his opinion, “If someone needs help, we perceive his situation, which leads to the corresponding feelings of others” (Batson 2011:11), and this kind of feelings is the same. It “produces altruistic movements, that is, an action that aims to improve the situation of the object of sympathy” (Batson 2011:59); in contemporary philosophical discussions about sympathy, Michael Slote made the most important contribution, and according to his perception, the feeling of sympathy is “when we see someone in suffering, what we have produced in our hearts… is like never talking about love, not coaxing people, nor being thoughtful. Feelings to others” (Slote2010:15). He did a clear way between sympathy and sympathySection. Suppose a person is suffering, if I also feel the pain of this person, this is the same. If I have some related feelings about this person’s pain, but I am not suffering, such as regret, this is sympathy.
The above definitions about the same feeling are very different. There are several distinct characteristics of this understanding of empathy. First, homosensitivity means that even if the empathic subject is incomplete and equal, the same is true, it is at most similar or compatible, that is, the same subject can be infected by the same object. It’s precisely in this meaning. Hoffmann said below that the feeling of the sympathetic subject is not the situation where the sympathetic subject itself is, but the situation where the object of the sympathy is. For example, when I see a person cutting vegetables without being alert to cutting his fingers and blood flows, I feel pain and sorrow as a person who has the same feeling. But what really corresponds to my pain and sorrow is not my own condition, because my fingers are not cut, but the condition of my sympathetic object, because his fingers are indeed cut. This makes empathy separate from some similar feelings, especially sympathy. A compassionate person will feel difficult for those who are in tragedy, but people in tragedy obviously do not feel difficult for themselves. In this regard, the feelings infected by compassionate people are neither complete, equal or similar, or even incompatible with the feelings infected by their sympathetic objects. Secondly, feeling of compassion is not only about understanding, but also about touching and emotional driving. Therefore, people with empathy can not only understand other people’s designs well and accurately simulate what they think and feel; and they can also distribute what their friends think and feel, and in the event of need and ability, they will take corresponding actions. [2] Assuming that I feel bad on my back, I don’t know what I have on my back, and I will take natural action to relieve this. Similarly, if someone else bears his back, as someone who has the same feeling, I will not only understand the back of others, but also feel the back of his back, so I will naturally take action to help him lift this back. Third, the above definitions of sympathy we see are almost neutral, that is, people with sympathy can feel the infection of what others feel, and they do not say that what others feel is positive feelings (such as happiness) or absolute sympathy (such as pain). Indeed, some people (including Slott and Wang Yangming) believe that the feelings that the subject of sympathy are infected by the same object can be extremely positive (for example, a person with sympathy also feels happy when he sees others’ happiness, that is, he feels happy). However, discussions on the sympathy between mental and philosophical thinking focus on eliminating emotions. This is understandable because assuming that others are happy, we as people who feel the same way, except for their happiness, seem to have no interesting work to do. In factAt the beginning, the root of the words “emppathy” and “sympathy” point to a certain impotence. Although the origin of the English word “emppathy” has nothing to do with our understanding of the concept of empathy in Chinese philosophy, the theme of this article, namely Wang Yangming’s concept of empathy for evil people, is contrary to the perception of empathy for evil people, as we will express above, and what we touch on is the negative feelings of a person with the same feelings.