Empatía y Corporeidad

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Anthropological Theory
Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications

(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
http://ant.sagepub.com
Vol 8(3): 299–318
10.1177/1463499608093816
Embodiment, emotion
and empathy
A phenomenological approach to
apprenticeship learning
Thorsten Gieser
University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Abstract
In The Perception of the Environment (2000), Ingold has argued that differences in
cultural knowledge are more a matter of variation in embodied skills than in discursive
knowledge. These skills develop through the practitioners’ engagement with their
environment and in situated social relationships. In order to ‘discover’ for themselves
what is taken for granted for experienced practitioners, they have to ‘fine-tune’ their
perception through observation and imitation. But how do observations and
imitations of others’ movements actually transfer into shifts in one’s own
perception? In her book Loving Nature: Towards an Ecology of Emotion (2002), Milton
argued that emotion acts as a learning mechanism to filter attention. I propose that
when one observes and imitates in a process of learning, one enters into an empathic
relationship with a skilled practitioner. Through synchronization of intentions and
movements, emotions spread over and change the practitioners’ perception
accordingly.
Key Words
apprenticeship • embodiment • Emotion • Empathy • knowledge • perception •
phenomenology • senses • skill
INTRODUCTION
How can we learn by observing and imitating knowledgeable others? Tim Ingold (2000)
argues that differences in cultural knowledge are more a matter of variation in skills than
in propositional knowledge, which is transmitted by way of language (see Greenfield
et al., 2003, Rogoff et al., 2003 and Pelissier, 1991 for reviews of different modes of
learning). Skills are ‘incorporated into the modus operandi of the developing human
organism through training and experience in the performance of particular tasks’
(Ingold, 2000: 5). The kinds of task that people are involved in within a larger context
are dependent on their ways of dwelling, for example their mode of subsistence, their
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ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)
mode of travelling or their mode of recreational activity (Ingold, 2000: Ch. 3, 2004;
Ingold and Kurttila, 2001).
Skills, in this perspective, cannot be passed down the generations through a simple
process of transmission. Rather, learners have to ‘discover’ cultural knowledge for them-
selves while being engaged in skilful activities. Ingold compares this mode of learning
to a system of apprenticeship, in which more experienced practitioners show how things
are done to those less experienced. The task of the apprentice is to fine-tune his or her
perception, or in other words, to undergo an education of attention: ‘We could say that
he [the apprentice] acquires such know-how by observation and imitation . . . to observe
is actively to attend to the movements of others; to imitate is to align that attention to
the movement of one’s own practical orientation towards the environment’ (2000: 37).
Guided by verbal command and commentary, ‘novices are instructed to feel this, taste
that, or watch out for the other thing’ (2000: 22).
Enskilment is thus a gradual process of fine-tuning one’s perceptions and actions. In
the process the learner’s perception is educated, enabling him or her to discover much
of what the teacher already knows, and perhaps more besides. But how do learners
imitate their teachers’ actions? How does imitating actions shape perception? It is to
these, so far unresolved questions that I seek answers in this article.1
Although Ingold has not answered these questions yet, he is hopeful that a phenom-
enological approach may offer a solution to the problem of how to develop a model of
enskilment with practitioners-in-their-environment as its focus. But
the problem remains of translating this approach into a programme of research that
would give us a more accurate idea than we presently have of how people routinely
succeed, in their everyday, skilful ‘coping’, in performing with ease actions that are
far beyond the capabilities of any machine yet devised. (Ingold, 2000: 171)
A closer look at phenomenological approaches developed so far reveals that anthro-

pologists working in this field are stuck at the same point as Ingold. For example,
Michael Jackson (1989) describes the learning of embodied knowledge as a practical
mimesis which, ‘based upon a bodily awareness of the other in oneself . . . assists in
bringing into relief a reciprocity of viewpoints’ (1989: 130). Taking a common
phenomenological world of Self and Other as given, and moving one’s own body simi-
larly to another body, results in similar kinaesthetic experiences and therefore in a
similar understanding of the activity (1989: 135). However, what is transmitted by
mimesis is an ‘experiential truth’ that is personal and not cultural. Cultural meaning,
then, is added later by means of language. This stands in contrast to Ingold’s approach
where meaning or knowledge is discovered in the very process of imitating another
person’s movements.
Leaving aside the latter difference from Ingold’s approach, Jackson nevertheless points
in the right direction. Observation and imitation create a ‘reciprocity of viewpoints’ as
well as ‘similar kinaesthetic experiences’. In other words, at the centre of our problem
there are (bodily) movements and something that goes beyond the body, that is, some-
thing that connects the movements of two people. I propose that a phenomenologically
elaborated concept of empathy provides us with a theoretical bridge that covers both
aspects of the learning process.
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GIESER Embodiment, emotion and empathy
In order to conceptualize empathy, the process of entering the perceptual world of

another person (Rogers, 1975: 4), we need first a phenomenological approach to the
body. I will therefore begin the next section with a brief review of the anthropology of
the body. Along with scholars such as Ingold, Jackson and Csordas, I employ ideas from
Merleau-Ponty to reach a view of the body that goes beyond its materiality. Second, I
follow Kay Milton (2002) in her view that emotions play a key part in the process of
learning by practice. However, whereas she builds her approach on a cognitive science
model, I will argue for a phenomenological approach to emotion. Here again I draw on
the ideas of Merleau-Ponty (and Heidegger) to reach a view of emotions that corresponds
with an already developed concept of the phenomenal body. Finally, I will introduce the
concept of empathy to show how the imitation of movements along with their inten-
tions, and especially their emotions, leads to the perception of a merging between two
beings and thus to the ‘discovery’ of cultural knowledge.
EMBODIMENT
In the late 1970s and early 1980s anthropologists shifted their attention away from
symbolic or interpretative anthropology towards practice-oriented approaches (Ortner,
1984). Until then the body had been conceived both as a transmitter and as a ‘receiver’
of cultural knowledge (Lock, 1993: 136). However, the body had been studied more as
a discursive object, that is as a concept, rather than in its own right as a material presence
(see Turner, 1994, for critiques and consequences). The works of Bourdieu (1977, 1992)
inspired a new interest in the social nature of the material body, suggesting that bodily
practices, lodged in the habitus, mediate between the individual person and his or her
society. In the decades that followed these first steps in the study of embodiment, the
field diversified and developed into more specific sub-fields with their own foci and
approaches, such as the body in medical systems, the politics of the body, or embodied
forms of knowledge (see Csordas, 1990, 1994; Lock, 1993; Farnell, 1999, for detailed
reviews).
The latter field is the most interesting for a re-evaluation of the body from a phenom-
enological perspective. Writers in this field have often drawn on the ideas of Merleau-
Ponty; it will therefore be helpful to further examine his view of the body, which owes
much to Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world. What is meant by this phrase is
that ‘the world is always “already there” before reflection begins’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2005:
7) and therefore that we are bound in relation to the world in whatever we do, by our
whole life (including our living body). Heidegger shows this in trying to understand
what it is for someone to be. For that purpose he develops what he calls the a priori
conditions of being (Heidegger, 1993: 31). These conditions comprise most importantly
being-with, being-in, being-there, and finally all together, being-in-the-world.
According to Heidegger, our being is never alone but always ‘with’ other beings. For
example when working, our activity is not self-contained but refers to other people in
the sense that our equipment (i.e. everything we use for work) may come from someone
else and what we produce may go to someone else. We are also necessarily at a particu-
lar place of work, that is, we inhabit a particular position in the world and perceive the
world from this position (being-there). This is closely related to being-in. Adding to our
being-there, being-in makes clear that this position in the world always means an
involvement with the world. It means that we are entangled in a field of relationships.
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Our being is therefore neither located in ourselves as subjects nor in the objects we are
dealing with, but in between, in our relationships with the world. I should emphasize
here that, although ‘being is always the being of an entity’ (Heidegger, 1993: 29), being
is not to be confused with a being. Being cannot be reduced to the subject or to the
material body plus mind. Being is always being-in-the-world in the sense that the world
we live in (i.e. its objects and fellow beings) is as much part of us as are our relationships
with it.
How does this approach change our concept of the body? This is a question that did
not so much appear in the work of Heidegger, but for Merleau-Ponty it was central. He
was concerned with the relationship between body and consciousness, and with how
far this translates into pre-reflective and reflective experiences. For him, all experiences
can be traced back to bodily experiences, which makes the body a prerequisite for
consciousness to develop:
Consciousness is being-towards-the-thing through the intermediary of the body. A

movement is learned when the body has understood it, that is, when it has incorpor-
ated it into its ‘world’, and to move one’s body is to aim at things through it; it is to
allow oneself to respond to their call . . . Motility, then, is not, as it were, a handmaid
of consciousness, transporting the body to that point in space of which we have
formed a representation beforehand. In order that we may be able to move our body
towards an object, the object must first exist for it. (Merleau-Ponty, 2005: 159–61)
As shown in the first sentence of this passage, consciousness needs the body to work.
There is a close synergy of body and consciousness, which can only be understood as a
whole. In Merleau-Ponty’s view, then, consciousness is projecting itself through the body
into the environment.
Our consciousness introduces a differentiated world to us, as basically expressed in
the subject/object distinction. However, even in a state of consciousness the unity of
the world is present in our experience. For example, we never perceive just an object.
An object is always perceived within a horizon or field of perception (analogously, see
the intuitional background in Husserl’s terminology or the equipmental totality in
Heidegger’s). In other words, we never perceive only the pure object but always the
object located in the world, surrounded by other objects, objects invested with meanings
which link them to one another. The latter point is exemplified in Merleau-Ponty’s
critique of empiricism: ‘empiricism excludes from perception the anger or the pain
which I nevertheless read in a face, the religion whose essence I seize in some hesitation
or reticence, the city whose temper I recognize in the attitude of a policeman or the style
of a public building’ (2005: 27). It follows that perception includes meaning from the
very beginning by grasping an object’s being-in-the-world (which includes the object in
its horizon) in relation to the perceiver’s being-in-the-world.
This perspective carries important consequences for the conceptualization of the
body. The body can be separated neither from consciousness nor from the world.
Consciousness is always understood as a consciousness-of-something; it is directed
towards the world through the intention of our thoughts and through our body, or in
other words, there is a harmony between intention and performance. This focus on
the being-in-the-world of lived experience is phenomenology’s contribution to the
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anthropology of the body and to the study of embodied knowledge. It redirects our
attention towards bodily perceptions of the world and their role in learning processes.
Phenomenology thereby offers us a theoretical framework for studying the organism-in-
its-environment (Ingold, 2000), not from a systemic point of view but from a perspec-
tive that has the being at its centre.
So where are we now? In reaction to early critiques many anthropologists have turned
to the study of the material body rather than the body as a discursive object. However,
as phenomenology shows us, the notion of the material body is too narrow as it
separates the body from the mind and from the world. I prefer to follow the phenom-
enological anthropologists in suggesting that embodied knowledge is knowledge
incorporated not just by the material body but by a being comprising mind, body and
environment.
This is exemplified by Jacquetta Hill’s and David Plath’s study of Japanese shellfish
divers. Plath (1998: 347) argues that the total immersion in the underwater environ-
ment ‘is not just an encumbrance but a state of being in the world’. The divers’ knowl-
edge is largely learned and acted out through the body moving through the water:
Out in the tidewater . . . [b]uoyancy pulls against gravitation so that the diver must
exert herself just to remain submerged and continue her mission. Ambient water
pressure increases with depth . . . she must be attentive to tissue rupture. She would
prefer to work upright, or at least horizontal, but much of the time she will be
working in a head-down mode . . . She is immersed in a brine that pickles the skin
and that is in motion continuously, often erratically. (Plath, 1998: 347)
Admittedly, this is an unusual example as the divers here are ‘immersed’ in a literal sense.
The reason for presenting the example, however, is that it gives a tangible form to what
‘being-in-the-world’ means. In a similar vein, Tim Ingold (2007) has recently argued
that western science promotes a view of human beings living on the surface of the earth,
contrary to many native understandings of people being immersed in the ‘manifold of
earth, sky, wind, and weather’, that is, as ‘inhabitants of the weather-world’ (2007: S35).
This ‘being-in’ of the apprentice is, of course, not confined to an immersion in the
natural environment but extends to their involvement in ‘communities of practice’ (Lave
and Wenger, 1991) or in their respective workplace (good examples for both involve-
ments are Keller and Keller’s 2003 study of blacksmithing or Hutchins’ 2003 study of
quartermaster apprentices in the US Navy).
Looking back on our initial problem of learning by shared experience, we are now in
a position to argue that imitation must obviously be more than a matter of the mind’s
taking a perspective and translating it to a body that executes its orders. Imitation must
also be more than one body copying the movements of another separate body. As appren-
tice and teacher are both to be understood as being-in-the-world and, hence, who are
related to each other, imitation can be seen as a complex intersubjective process compris-
ing minds, bodies, and (social and natural) environments. Instead of asking for locations
of processes (and hence focusing on just the mind or the body), my proposed approach
positions learners and teachers as nodes within their respective fields of relationships
(Bateson, 1972, 1980; Ingold, 2000).
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EMOTION
The study of the body used to be polarized at least until the 1970s. Whereas biologists
focused on the material basis of the body, social scientists were concerned primarily with
the body as a cultural symbol. Correspondingly, emotion was to be studied by social
scientists only as a cultural concept, in its forms of expression, its relation to concepts
of the person or the self, and its use in rituals or as a characteristic of symbols. Since
interest in emotion began to flourish at the end of the 1970s, anthropologists tried to
integrate both sides and to establish a more holistic approach.
Some writings in this genre seemed to be close to adopting a phenomenological
perspective that situates people in the world. Yet phenomenological authors are seldom
cited and a closer look reveals important differences from this perspective. These
differences may be rendered in terms of Ingold’s distinction between a complementarity
and an obviation approach (1998). The former ‘regards every aspect as a distinct,
substantive component of being. It admits that the study of each component is bound
to yield only a partial account, but promises that by putting these accounts together it
should be possible to produce a synthetic account of the whole’ (1998: 23). In contrast,
from an obviation point of view, a human being is ‘a singular locus of creative growth
within a continually unfolding field of relationships’ (1998: 23; see also the definition
of dwelling approach at the beginning of this essay).
Anthropologists of emotion often take a complementarity approach, subdividing
emotion into, for example, inner feelings, bodily (observable) expressions, cultural
interpretations, or emotion words, and dealing separately with each. In general,
emotions were either seen as purely inner and private phenomena or as public, cultural
phenomena (see Leavitt, 1996: 515). Alternatively, feelings were separated from
meaning, thus setting up visceral emotions in opposition to cultural reason (1996; see
also Lutz and White, 1986 for a review of further divisions of mind/body).
By contrast, anthropologists like Michelle Rosaldo (1984) took the first steps in a
more phenomenological direction, though without saying so: ‘Emotions are thoughts
somehow felt in flushes, pulses, “movements” of our livers, minds, hearts, stomachs, skin.
They are embodied thoughts’ (Rosaldo, 1984: 143). Analogously, a phenomenological
(and an obviation/dwelling) approach conceives emotions, and the understanding of
emotions, as developing through an interplay of various aspects of the world:
If I try to study love or hate from inner observation, I will find very little to describe:
a few pangs, a few heart throbs – in short, trite agitations which do not reveal the
essence of love or hate . . . We must reject the prejudice which makes ‘inner realities’
out of love, hate or anger, leaving them accessible to one single witness: the person
who feels them. Anger, shame, hate and love are not psychic facts hidden at the
bottom of another’s consciousness: they are types of behaviour or styles of conduct
which are visible from the outside. They exist on this face or in those gestures, not
hidden behind them. (Merleau-Ponty, 1964: 52–3)
Inner feelings cannot therefore account for the meaning of emotion. Neither can bodily
expressions or cultural expressions alone. An emotion can only be understood by taking
into account the whole being-in-the-world of a person.
Similar to Merleau-Ponty’s ideas on emotion are Heidegger’s elaborations on the
concept of mood. According to Heidegger (1993: 173), we always have some mood. We
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cannot escape having a mood, as we are always being-with, that is, we affect and are
affected by others in each moment of our being-in-the-world. By the same token a mood
is not a purely psychic, inner state. Rather it has a ‘context of involvements’ (Heidegger,
1993: 179). The experience of fear, for example, comprises not only the person who feels
it but also ‘(1) that in face of which we fear, (2) fearing [i.e. the state of fear as such],
and (3) that about which we fear’ (1993: 179). This explains why we experience moods
as states into which we are thrown (Betroffenwerden). He concludes that fear arises not
from within us but from this context of involvements. When we feel fear there must be
something in the world capable of inducing such a mood in us. This is why a mood is
often felt as an ‘atmosphere’ one can enter.
It is in this sense that I understand emotions as moods or as emotions-in-the-world.
For example when I am angry, the fast beating of my heart is as much my emotion as is
kicking the stone lying in my way, as are my words cursing the cause of my anger, as are
people who try not to come too close to me, as is an approaching storm which I recog-
nize to be as angry as I am. Looking at emotions in this way is, for me, in line with the
phenomenological view of the body-in-the-world that I have described as going beyond
the delineated, material body.
Having elaborated on a phenomenological understanding of emotion, it is now
necessary to link emotion with perception in order to explain the importance of
emotions for the learning process. As I mentioned before, Ingold already points to the
importance of the education of attention as the key process in learning by observation
and imitation. However, while pointing in the right direction, he does not further
examine the properties of attention, or how it mediates between what is sensed and
what is perceived. So the question that now concerns us is: how does attention work
and how can we educate our attention through imitation? At least to the first question
we can find an answer in Kay Milton’s book Loving Nature (2002). Through a
thorough discussion of psychological, anthropological, sociological and philosophical
literature, she shows that emotions are integral to perception. Not only do the presence
and intensity of emotions in the process of perception lead to better retention of the
knowledge gained thereby (see Izard, 1991), but attention itself can also be described
in terms of emotions like ‘interest’ (Izard, 1991) or ‘anticipation’ (Neisser, 1976). For
example, we may learn what to fear, love, enjoy or hate by perceiving these emotions
in others (Milton, 2002: 68). However, most promising seems to be Milton’s integra-
tion of the neurobiologist Antonio Damasio’s work on emotion into the discussion of
perception.
Following Damasio, Milton proposes to see emotions as learning mechanisms. In this
view, emotions trigger attention. Incoming sensations from environmental stimuli
trigger neural patterns related to the sensed, together with an associated emotion pattern.
This so-called neural map then induces minor changes in the bodily state (the emotion).
Again, these inner changes can be perceived (in a similar way as environmental stimuli)
and trigger a corresponding feeling, that is to say, a somatosensory image of an emotion.
As almost all perceptions undergo this process (Damasio, 1999: 58), we learn to associ-
ate environmental features or situations with emotions by repeated experience (Damasio,
1999: 57). This can happen in either of two ways. First, a stimulus might be linked to
negative emotions, which causes the organism to withdraw from the stimulus. Or
second, a stimulus might be linked to positive emotions which causes organisms ‘to open
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themselves up and out towards the environment, approaching it, searching it’ (Damasio,
1999: 78).
This argument opens up a new perspective on our initial question. To recapitulate,
we are still looking for answers to the questions of how attention works and how we can
educate our attention by imitation. Drawing on Milton and Damasio, we may now say
that the education of attention means to ‘condition’ someone to associate the same (or
similar) emotions with certain kinds of environmental stimuli in order to draw atten-
tion to them. Thus the apprentice learns to ‘read’ the bodily changes induced by an
emotion of his or her teacher and learns to link this emotional response to a particular
environmental stimulus by repeated practice.
The literature on apprenticeship learning clearly shows that emotions are integral to
the learning process and are usually described in the context of novice-teacher relation-
ships. Novices do often tend to have feelings of shame, insecurity, nervousness, fear of
failure, or pride and happiness. Teachers are often known for their displayed feelings of
displeasure, sometimes even hostility, anger, or pride and happiness. This emotional
relationship is highlighted, for example, in the following account of Trevor Marchand
who worked with minaret builders in Yemen and, among many other things, learned
how to carve a brick:
I was slightly nervous during my first attempt, and wanted to make a good
impression in fear that I might not otherwise be considered for subsequent tasks of
making. I held the brick as he had demonstrated and carefully placed the blade of
the adze on the corner to visually set-up the forty-five degree cut in my mind. I
drew back my arm keeping an eye on the imaginary cut-line where the blade had
been, then issued a blow followed by a staccato delivery of several others. Majid
silently watched . . . My final product was examined by my teacher, and without
speaking, he directed my attention back to the brick and slightly modified my cuts
with his own adze. Again he handed it back to me so that I could study his amend-
ments, before giving me another brick for trial number two. I shaped my next
‘Madame’ more confidently, but was told that my incisions were too wide with
playful references to a host of ‘Mesdames’ of various nationalities. My third attempt
clearly pleased Majid, and he held it up for the others to see, proclaiming with a
broad grin that I ‘couldn’t be Canadian, but must be Yemeni!’ (Marchand, 2001:
160, my emphases).
We can see in this scene how Marchand’s attempts were either encouraged or discour-
aged by his teacher either through the display of pleasure or the lack of pleasure or
emotional reaction (he just silently watched). As in many other examples throughout
the literature, though, this emotional exchange has only been studied in the context of
the novice–teacher relationship. Yet I hope this example shows that emotions have direct
impact on the actual process of demonstration-observation-imitation as well. Emotions
are used at several stages throughout the task to check whether one is making progress
in the right direction, in other words, towards successfully completing the task. In a
review of recent research in the cognitive sciences, the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus
(2005) argues that non-representationalist models of skill learning, like simulated neural
networks, seem to back up Merleau-Ponty’s approach. One such model, which explains
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the importance of emotions in skill learning, is ‘actor-critic reinforcement learning’.

Dreyfus summarizes the basic question underlying this theory as follows:
Normally, the learner has to make a series of decisions that lead to a reward in the
future. How is it possible to learn to make the right decision at an early stage without
immediate feedback as to whether that decision increases or decreases the chance of
a future reward many steps later?
The answer is that, in addition to learning about the final aim of one’s task, we need
feedback as to whether our current actions increase or decrease the chance to successfully
complete the task. As we practice and use many slightly different variations of movements
to do our task, we develop a feeling for which movements bring us closer to success and
which do not. Following this model, I argue that the emotional feedback from a teacher
can assist this process by providing the essential cues to how well we are doing.
Having elaborated on the reasons why emotions should be regarded as an essential
learning tool, what is still missing, though, is an interpretation of the role of emotions
in a phenomenological approach to skill learning. Until now, the learner has usually been
conceived as separate from the teacher. The learner first observes the (from him)
detached teacher and then copies his or her emotional response with no further
reference to the teacher. From a phenomenological perspective, however, both are-
in-the-world and, in this learning situation, their being is intertwined, as are their
emotions-in-the-world. We therefore need to understand how far emotions can become
intertwined and how this can actually educate attention. To do so, we need to introduce
a new concept, that of empathy.
EMPATHY
The concept of empathy has a long tradition in anthropology. It has denoted the process,
entailed in fieldwork, of establishing rapport with local people in order to gain a deeper
understanding of their lives and culture (see Beatty, 2005a, 2005b; Capper, 2003;
Jackson, 1998; Ridler, 1996; Wikan, 1992). For example, Wikan (1992) – reflecting on
her fieldwork in Bali – proposes to ‘go beyond the words’, looking for meaning not
only in what people say but in how they utter it and in what context. She understands
this form of Verstehen as a resonance or empathy with the participants, developed
through shared experiences: ‘an effort at feeling-thought; a willingness to engage with
another world, life, or idea; an ability to use one’s experience . . . to try to grasp . . .
meanings that reside neither in words, “facts”, nor text but are evoked in the meeting of
one experiencing subject with another’ (Wikan, 1992: 463).
However, in this context I use empathy not as a method of ethnographic research but
as a theoretical concept, employed to shed some light on the process of imitation in
learning skills (see Willerslev, 2004). I will therefore begin with a short review of the
history of the term and how it has been used. Next, I will elaborate the concept from a
phenomenological perspective, while supporting it with ideas from psychological
research. Finally, I will seek to show to what extent imitation, within the context of
learning, can be understood as an empathic process.
The term empathy is the translation of the German word Einfühlung (‘feeling-into’).
Titchener (1909) created the word from the Greek en pathos (‘in suffering/passion’) by
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analogy with the word sympathy (see Wispé, 1986 and 1991 for elaborations on the
sympathy/empathy distinction). The concept of Einfühlung was first used by psycholo-
gists within the field of aesthetics and form-perception in the last quarter of the 19th
century. They understood that aesthetic appreciation demands a projection of the self
into the object of beauty (Wispé, 1990: 18). At the beginning of the 20th century the
concept was transferred from the context of subject–object relationships to that of
subject–subject relationships, in other words, to the question of how we know others
(e.g. Lipps, 1903, 1905). According to Lipps, we can feel into the emotions of others by
seeing shame in the blushing, anger in the clenched fist or joy in the radiant smile (Stein,
1964: 70). It was in this sense that the concept of empathy was subsequently employed
in various psychological sub-fields like psychoanalysis, personality theory, social psychol-
ogy and developmental psychology (see Duan and Hill, 1996; Eisenberg and Strayer,
1990 for reviews).
The definitions employed to date describe empathy in various related ways that may
be translated as sympathizing with someone, feeling with/for someone, responding to
someone, understanding, participating, being sensitive to someone, or taking the role of
the other. Carl Rogers’ definition of empathy, reproduced in the following extract, serves
to give a livelier picture of what this concept implies and how it may be related to our
problem. For Rogers, empathy involves
entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in
it. It involves being sensitive . . . to the changing felt meanings which flow in this
other person . . . It means temporarily living in his/her life . . . It means frequently
checking with him/her as to the accuracy of your sensings, and being guided by the
responses you receive . . . To be with another in this way means that for the time being
you lay aside the views and values you hold for yourself in order to enter another
world without prejudice. (Rogers, 1975: 4, my emphases)
As will be shown in the following pages, this definition can be just the start of an
exploration of this concept. More recently, empathy has been understood as a complex
multidimensional phenomenon that includes both cognitive and affective components
and control systems, and that varies in degree with personality factors, relational factors
and situational context (see Vreeke and van der Mark, 2003 or Preston and de Waal,
2002 for recent elaborations). It is not my intention here, however, to analyse empathy
in all of its aspects in any detail. My concern is rather with a phenomenological interpret-
ation of empathy, backed up by psychological findings.
I shall therefore return to the historical origin of the concept of empathy since one
of the psychologists involved, Franz Brentano, was the teacher of Edmund Husserl, the
founder of 20th-century phenomenology. Empathy, for Husserl, is grounded in the
perception of the body. Whereas for Merleau-Ponty the body can never become an
object, Husserl believed that the body could be at least apperceived as a material thing.
By apperception he meant a ‘perceiving-in-addition-to’ (Smith, 2003: 72) the ‘normal’
perception that depends on our position in relation to an object, or rather, our particu-
lar perspective at a particular point of time. As we usually perceive objects from various
perspectives during the course of our life, we always think we know how the whole
object looks. This background knowledge is always added to any perspective we
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embody at a singular moment so that we see ‘whole’ objects despite our particular
perspective.
Now, for Husserl, to apperceive meant that features of an object are ‘hypothesized but
sensibly absent’ (Kelly, 2005: 79); in other words, what is apperceived is ‘filled in’ from
memory. This is a view that Merleau-Ponty challenged and his reformulation of apper-
ception is crucial for understanding the communicative dimension of empathy. In
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, apperceptions have a ‘positive presence’ (Kelly, 2005:
79) in perception; they are neither ‘associations’ nor ‘projections of memory’, ‘because
in order to fill out perception, memories need to have been made possible by the physio-
gnomic character of the data. Before any contribution by memory, what is seen must at
the present moment so organize itself as to present a picture to me in which I can recog-
nize my former experience’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2005: 22–3). To make it clearer: when
perception triggers a particular memory it is so because I notice a resemblance or conti-
guity between my current perception and a past perception. More precisely, a currently
perceived ‘thing’ reminds me of a similar perceived ‘thing’ from the past. In order for
there to be a ‘thing’, however, I must have identified it first: what – from the vast visual
input of perception – does belong to the ‘thing’, what does not. As this first meaning-
ful ‘grouping’ – inherent in perception as such – triggers a memory, memory cannot
cause it in the first place. The apperception involved in empathy does thus not rely on
a projection of myself (my thoughts, intentions, hopes or fears) into the other, but
instead relies on something that is already ‘out there’, in the sensible.
However, the perception of one’s own body is a bit different from the perception of
an object. Merleau-Ponty argued that the body cannot be an object for us because objects
can be approached from different angles and can possibly vanish from sight. Husserl
faced a similar problem when he stated that we could never perceive our whole body.
For example, we cannot see our own backs. But we nevertheless apperceive our body as
a whole and this is because we can perceive the similar bodies of our fellow human
beings. This is his first presupposition of empathy (Kern, 1973: 660).
The problem here is how to perceive another body not just as object (Körper) but also
as sensuous or feeling body (Leib). This is made possible by a ‘transfer of sense’ from ego
to alter ego. At the beginning, there is the perception of another person’s Körper, similar
to my own. In this I do not pay much attention to the other, taking no notice of his
thoughts, feelings or emotions. Then, as awareness and directedness towards the other
increase, there is the apperception of another person’s Körper as this person’s Leib. As the
other person has a similar Körper to me, and as I experience my own Körper as a Leib, I
perceive this other Körper as a Leib too. Both bodies then constitute a ‘pair of things’
(Kern, 1973: 15). In Husserl’s words, this pairing is an awakening (Weckung) and a
covering (Deckung) from one Leib to the other. However, what I experience at this stage
is just the Leib of another person. I do not experience the Leib as experienced by this
subject. Nevertheless, in my directedness towards another person I ‘make present’ for
me (vergegenwärtigen) the world from that point of view and I can try to perceive alike.
Thereby my perception is modified.
In order for this Vergegenwärtigung to work there has to be a world that is more than
the subjective perception of it. In Husserl’s words, there has to be an ‘environment-for-
everyone’ (Umweltlichkeit für jedermann). It is only when there is a world accessible for
everyone that I can begin to perceive through the eyes of another person.
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At the next stage of increased directedness towards another person, I try to ‘feel into’
the Leib of the other, try to experience the world from this new position. This is the
stage at which you are ‘entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming
thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive . . . to the changing felt meanings
which flow in this other person’, as Rogers (1975: 4) remarks in the passage cited earlier.
However, this attention directed towards the other person is just an intermediary stage
in learning situations. In order for learning about the world to take place, attention must
be refocused from the person-person-relationship (primary intersubjectivity) towards a
person-person-object-relationship (secondary intersubjectivity). So, being aware of the
other person’s perceptions, I begin to switch my focus to the objects of these percep-
tions. I expand my being to include the other’s being just as blind persons use their canes
in order ‘to see’. Merleau-Ponty (2005: 165–6) assumes that the stick of a blind person
is not perceived as an object when he or she perceives the world with it. It is more like
an extension of his or her perception and the person comes in contact with the world,
or feels the world, with the stick that becomes incorporated into the body. Similarly, ‘if
I am in the habit of driving a car, I enter a narrow opening and see that I can ‘get through’
without comparing the width of the opening with that of the wings, just as I go through
a doorway without checking the width of the doorway against that of my body’
(Merleau-Ponty, 2005: 165). In other words, translated into a learning situation of
demonstration-observation-imitation, I hypothesize that we encounter here an
expanded being of the observer which includes the being of the demonstrator within the
latter’s own field of sensitivity. The demonstrator has become like the stick for the blind
person. The observer perceives the environment not directly but via the demonstrator
while experiencing himself and the other as one phenomenological unity.
Let me bring one final example for this state of empathy, one that bridges the gap
between these philosophical statements and ‘real’ ethnographic case studies. In one of
his last lectures, Merleau-Ponty (2003) explored the phenomenon of duplicité, or the
‘doubleness’ of the experience of our own body that is expressed in our capability to
‘touch and be touched’:
There is a sort of identity of touching and touched, in that the hand that touches
finds in the other its similar, that is, it senses that this could in its turn become the
active hand, and itself the passive hand . . . At the moment when the touched hand
becomes the touching, it ceases to be touched. (2003: 223)
As we are able to perceive an identity between our left and right hand – that live ‘at a
distance from the other’ (2003: 225) – so we may ‘couple’ the perceptions between our
own hands and the hands of another person which are also similar to and at a distance
from ours.
In apprenticeship learning, such a situation may arise whenever ‘scaffolding tech-
niques’ (Childs and Greenfield, 1980) are used that require bodily proximity between
novice and teacher. For example, Greenfield (2004) discusses a typical example where
Maya girls of Chiapas, Mexico, learn to weave with a ‘play loom’. In several pictures,
one can see a girl leaning back into the backstrap of her loom with her arms at her
side, hovering over the loom but barely touching it, while her mother’s hands can be
seen next to hers helping her out. The girl’s gaze is fixed on her loom and on the four
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hands on it. This type of scaffolding is used throughout the learning process, starting
from a very early age of perhaps three or four years old up to late teenage years (although
the scaffolding is gradually retracted). Likewise, these techniques are used in all other
kinds of learning in everyday life. I suppose that similar scaffolding techniques are in
use everywhere in the world, in all kinds of apprenticeships. Unfortunately, despite
Greenfield’s exceptional attention to detail in her study, she did not include any accounts
of how the girls experienced these situations. Thus, we can only infer that a form of
empathic coupling had taken place. Notwithstanding this lack of data, this example
highlights the types of situations in which ethnographers might encounter empathy;
situations in which someone else’s hands might be experienced like my own, as if they
were my own.
However, the state of unity reached at this stage is one between tool and user. The
teacher’s Leib ceases to be interesting for the learner; the focus is now primarily on the
perception of the environment (or the loom, in the case mentioned earlier). Yet I suppose
that there is another way of engaging in an empathic learning process that is concerned
with both the perception of the environment and the experience of the teacher. The
phenomenological unity described earlier is no longer, then, one between tool and user
but between two beings. It is a ‘fusing of two perceptions to the functional community
of one perception’ (Smith, 2003: 228). Two beings begin to merge at this stage and this
can even be enhanced when the perceived similarities are not only of outer appearances
but also of behaviour (Kern, 1973: 284). In discussing this issue, Husserl draws
connections to the proto-communicative behaviour of infants with their mothers (Kern,
1973: 604–8). The importance of attunement and reciprocity in movements in this
kind of pre-verbal communication highlights the intersubjectivity of empathy. The
temporal sequencing of the partner’s action in these situations facilitates communi-
cation. And as psychological literature suggests (e.g. Trevarthen and Aitken, 2001), what
is communicated is emotion.
Yet empathy cannot be reduced to the communication of emotion. It is far more
than that. It is an intentional overreaching, ‘a living mutual awakening and an overlay
of each with the object-sense of the other’ (Kern, 1973: 142). In other words, the
intention-in-action of the observed ‘infects’ the intention of the observer and becomes
one with his or hers. On the other hand, knowing that one is being observed and that
one is supposed to show something to someone also affects the intention of the
observed to bring himself into line with the intention of the observer. So the inten-
tional overreaching usually depends on both participants and is therefore a mutual,
interpersonal process. It is important to notice here that intentions are an integral part
of empathy and of imitation. Phenomenological anthropologists often seem to focus
too much on motor mimicry, seeing the attribution of intention and meaning to
actions as a separate process (e.g. Jackson, 1989: 133). But this is not the case as the
phenomenological understanding of intention is an intention-in-action rather than the
intention to do something, which one has prior to the action (see Searle, 1983 for an
elaboration of this distinction).
This is what Merleau-Ponty meant by explaining how infants learn complex move-
ments with their arms and hands: ‘in their first attempts at grasping, children look, not
at their hand, but at the object: the various parts of the body are known to us through
their functional value only [the intention of the action], and their co-ordination is not
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learnt’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2005: 172). In this sense, intention and action form one unity.
This assumption is supported by further research on imitation skills in infants. For
example, Meltzoff (1995) found that 18-month-old children imitate not primarily the
exact body movements of an adult but the intended actions of the adult (see Kuczynski
et al., 1987 for a similar study). This union of motor action and intention also seems to
be confirmed by the Japanese ‘kata’-learning technique in which the apprentice spends
years on mastering precise practice exercise forms. One of the first accounts of a
westerner’s kata training stems from the German philosophy professor Eugen Herrigel
who described his Zen archery apprenticeship. In his book Zen in the Art of Archery
(1953), Herrigel reports how he – after years of practice – finally experienced a ‘direct
transference of the spirit’ from his master. In other words, he ‘discovered’ for himself,
through the repetitive practice of a movement form, the intention underlying the
motion of drawing a bow.
If we accept this unity of motor action and intention, then what Husserl called inten-
tional overreaching establishes the possibility of a new way of looking at the process of
demonstration or having things shown to us. As Ingold (2000: 21–2) has put it:
Our knowledgeability consists . . . in the capacity to situate . . . information, and

understand its meaning, within the context of a direct perceptual engagement with
our environments. And we develop this capacity, I contend, by having things shown
to us . . . To show something to somebody is to cause it to be seen or otherwise
experienced . . . by that other person. It is, as it were, to lift a veil off some aspect or
component of the environment so that it can be apprehended directly. In that way,
truths that are inherent in the world are, bit by bit, revealed or disclosed to the novice.
In following the gaze of another being, or following a finger pointing somewhere, we

are not only following the finger but also the intention in the movement of showing. To
show something is therefore to draw someone’s attention not just to what is but also to
how it is: the features of perception ‘in spontaneous accord with the intentions of the
moment’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2005: 25). It is a statement not just of an object but also of
a relationship between demonstrator and object. To follow someone’s movement is
therefore to become involved in a relationship or, in other words, to feel into this
relationship.
In order to be able to focus simultaneously on another person’s perceptions and on
the environment, it is essential that our body works without our having to pay much
attention to it. As mentioned earlier, Merleau-Ponty demonstrates that we are usually
not conscious of every movement that is involved in an action. This is because we do
not have to reassure ourselves of what our body is doing; we seem somehow to know it.
In the same way, infants (and even newborns) can imitate facial expressions of others,
although they obviously cannot see their own faces imitating (Meltzoff, 1993). Merleau-
Ponty argues that such behaviour shows that we are always with our body. So when
imitating others, we can usually concentrate on the other’s actions and on the environ-
ment his or her actions are directed towards, being sure that our body is with us in our
intentional overreaching and motor mimicry. As our attention is thus with the other
person, as if we were over there, we form the phenomenological unity, perceiving the
world with other eyes.
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It is possible to suggest that ultimately empathy may lead to a state of sympathy,

that is, to the participation in another person’s life-world. Whereas in empathy the
aim is to understand the other’s experiences, in sympathy the aim is to take part in
the other’s experiences and to make them one’s own (Kern, 1973: 512). At this stage
there is a mutual identification of intentions, emotions, desires, and aims. More than
in empathy, both teacher and learner try to synchronize their actions through an
increase in intersubjective communication, continually fine-tuning their movements
and checking their intentions. When we are usually with our body here we are with
both our own and the other’s body simultaneously. Two individual Is become one Us
that is experienced as the centre of subjective life (see Kern, 1973: 512–13). This
might be the case in the scaffolding example similar to the one presented earlier.
Whereas that example showed a girl who stepped out of the ongoing weaving activity
in order to observe, another form of scaffolding involves exactly the kinds of synchro-
nization and fine-tuning of movements in collaboration just mentioned. Mother and
daughter sit together at the loom, all four hands on the loom, their gazes turned towards
their loom and hands, working together (interestingly, two of these pictures I am refer-
ring to are titled ‘two bodies working as one’ and ‘four hands on the loom’, Greenfield,
2004: 70).
CONCLUSION
So how, finally, can we educate our attention when learning from more skilled practitioners?
In order to summarize the main points of my answer laid out throughout this essay, let
me begin by revising the notion of ‘imitation’. Whereas many anthropologists see imita-
tion as the motor mimicry of particular movements, I showed how perceptions always
have a horizon. Therefore, we usually do not perceive just one particular movement of
just one small part of another’s body but we see this movement together with its horizon
that may comprise movements or postures of other portions of the body, as well as the
environment in which the body lies. What is more, I contended that the body is more
than the material body. So we usually perceive not just movements but actions, that is,
movements with intentions. As psychological research has shown, we even tend to focus
our attention on the imitation of actions rather than on the sequence of movements.
And as actions are carried out in, or manipulate, the environment, imitation necessarily
comprises aspects of body, mind, and environment.
The question now is: when imitation is understood in that way, what exactly are we
imitating when educating our attention? Kay Milton has proposed that emotion is a
learning mechanism central to perception. I have expanded on her idea in arguing that,
in order to educate our attention, we must observe and imitate emotions, but not
emotions as inner feelings or biological processes. We must observe and imitate
emotions-in-the-world and, by doing so, enter an empathic relationship with the more
skilled practitioner. Having described emotions as emotions-in-the-world, I suggested
that it might be possible for other beings to enter an emotion (or to feel into it). Other
beings can actually become part of an emotion if the person who has the emotion allows
the intrusion and if the intruder intends to join. Through the adjustment and synchro-
nization of their intentions (and bodily behaviour), the emotion-in-the-world eventu-
ally spreads over and becomes one with both beings. But not only the emotion merges
with the two beings. The beings themselves merge in either of the ways I sketched earlier.
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Each state facilitates not only the understanding or the perspective of the other, but also
the perception of the other.
My elaborations on the concept of empathy could be seen as an ‘ideal-type’, and in a
certain way this is probably true as it still has to be applied in concrete ethnographic
contexts. I should point out very clearly that I assume people in diverse learning contexts
to employ different stages, and combinations of stages, in order to acquire cultural
knowledge from others. I further assume that the level of attention we pay to either the
teacher and/or the environment shifts continually throughout a task and these shifts
facilitate different forms of empathic relationships. It is therefore not only necessary to
study different ethnographic cases in order to recognize intercultural variations in
empathy. It is also necessary to study these cases within their temporal dimensions. One
such dimension may lie in the sequencing of observation and imitation that must be
continually repeated in order to achieve a fine-tuning of movement. A second one may
concern the creation of rhythm through the reciprocity of movement between appren-
tice and teacher. Thirdly, each task may demand a particular rhythm of interaction with
the social and natural environment. Finally, we need to study how far a task is experi-
enced and understood as a series of smaller tasks, each with its own mode of empathy,
thereby telling us more about ‘the way in which we create significance in the timing of
our actions as they shape and colour the things we do and the things we make, frame
our interpretations of events around us, underlie the way we read evidences of the past,
and act with reference to the future’ (James and Mills, 2005: 5).
Hence the main purpose of this article was not to describe a universal process of
empathy. My aim was to introduce and elaborate on a ‘new’ concept, empathy, and to
show how it is theoretically linked with well-established theories within the broader field.
Furthermore, I wanted to provide a language to describe a hitherto ‘silent’ process of
learning through practical engagement or apprenticeship. As I have shown in the intro-
duction, most anthropologists stopped their descriptions and analyses at a particular
point of this process. I hope to have contributed to an extension of our understanding
of this process, so that both anthropologists and ethnographers can now bring the
concept of empathy to life by studying ‘real’ (inter)subjective experiences of empathy.
The ethnographic examples spread throughout the article give hints about where to find
empathy at work. However, it also became clear that the apprenticeship literature to date
lacks the essential data that are necessary for a deeper analysis. The purpose of my
exploration, thus, was to set the scene for the necessity of ethnographic fieldwork, so
that the important details of lived empathy, which could not be addressed in this article,
can be clarified: How do particular people understand their bodies, their emotions, the
environments they are living in? How far is empathy important for them in the learning
process? And most importantly, how are empathic processes situated within broader
social, cultural and historic processes? To answer these questions we must forsake the
philosopher’s armchair for the ethnographer’s field.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tim Ingold who has read several draft versions of this article and
has given valued critique and suggestions. My discussions with him contributed to the
thoughts developed in this article. I am also grateful to Arnar Árnason who critically
reviewed my arguments. As so often, two anonymous reviewers have given valuable
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critique and suggestion for improving this article, which was very much appreciated.
Finally, I am grateful for Bruce Kapferer’s advice on making more explicit a particular
phenonemenological idea presented in the text.
Note
1 I am aware of the fact that the face-to-face interactions I describe are located within
broader social, cultural and historical processes. Michael Jackson (1989) and Thomas
Csordas (1990, 1994) have both provided examples of how to link the phenomen-
ology of (inter)subjective experiences with its broader contexts and have thereby
contributed to the development of a social phenomenology. Likewise, Pierre Bourdieu
(1977, 1992) has elaborated a theory of practice that integrates the practical engage-
ments of the body within the social world. However, given the limited scope of this
article, my contention is to work on a particular problem of face-to-face interaction.
The elaborations that follow in this article must certainly be viewed against the back-
ground of this literature, although a fuller integration remains for the future.
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THORSTEN GIESER received his MA in Anthropology and Religious Studies from the University of Heidel-
berg (Germany) and is currently finishing his PhD at the University of Aberdeen (UK). His current research
project is a study of perception in the apprenticeship system of a worldwide religious organization, based in
the UK, the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. He has specialized in environmental anthropology, percep-
tion/senses, anthropology of experience, cultural phenomenology, embodiment, imagination, religion, ritual,
magic, and the self/identity. In previous publications he elaborated on ‘dialogical self theory’ by reinterpret-
ing shape-shifting experiences among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone and modern witches in the UK (Culture
& Psychology, Vol. 12, 2006) and the role of empathy and the body in Siberian hunting practices (Studia
Psychologica, Special Issue 2008). Address: Department of Anthropology, School of Social Science, University
of Aberdeen, Edward Wright Building, Dunbar Street, Aberdeen, AB24 3QY, Scotland, UK. [email:
th.gieser@abdn.ac.uk]
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Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)

A closer look at phenomenological approaches developed so far reveals that anthro-

GIESER Embodiment, emotion and empathy

In order to conceptualize empathy, the process of entering the perceptual world of

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)

Consciousness is being-towards-the-thing through the intermediary of the body. A

GIESER Embodiment, emotion and empathy

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)

GIESER Embodiment, emotion and empathy

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)

GIESER Embodiment, emotion and empathy

the importance of emotions in skill learning, is ‘actor-critic reinforcement learning’.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)

GIESER Embodiment, emotion and empathy

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)

GIESER Embodiment, emotion and empathy

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)

Our knowledgeability consists . . . in the capacity to situate . . . information, and

In following the gaze of another being, or following a finger pointing somewhere, we

GIESER Embodiment, emotion and empathy

It is possible to suggest that ultimately empathy may lead to a state of sympathy,

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)

GIESER Embodiment, emotion and empathy

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)

GIESER Embodiment, emotion and empathy

Leavitt, J. (1996) ‘Meaning and Feeling in the Anthropology of Emotions’, American

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(3)

Searle, J. (1983) Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. New York:

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