A question of character : analogy and the empathic life of things

In recent debates on empathy in various disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, psychopathology, cognitive sciences, neurophysiology, the discussion has focused on empathic experiences within the intersubjective context, either between two individuals or among groups. But this is only one side of the coin. Since ancient times, subject-object and even object-object relationships were described in a way that cultural anthropology has defined as “animation”, that rhetorics has named “personification”, and that we would today call “empathic”. The chapter aims at exploring these objectual implications of empathy. Pinotti particularly criticizes the projective “hydraulic” model of communicating vessels–from subject to object–which builds the hermeneutical mainstream paradigm of any theorization of such relationships. With recourse to alternative theoretical perspectives, such as Gestalt theory of expression, “realistic” phenomenology, and theory of symbolic forms, the author proposes a newfound characterological approach that engages with acknowledging the originary expressive and pathemic character of things in themselves, and therefore in defending the fundamentum in re of objectual empathy.