Phenomenology of Empathy via the Enaction of Radiology Imaging: Static-Depictive Similarity or Dynamic-Embodied Synchronization?

Abstract

This article explores the fundamental experience of empathy, combining the theoretical perspectives of phenomenology and enactivism with exemplary cases from radiology praxis. It is shown that the phenomenological tradition includes different conceptualisations of empathy. The problem of empathy in phenomenology can no longer be viewed only from Husserl’s perspective, and further developments must be introduced. However, the analysis of Husserl’s scattered work on biological phenomena clears the way to apply insights on Image consciousness, categorial intuition, and other projects in order to grasp the specific causality at play in the nexus of biological processes beyond anthropomorphism and the principle of similarity. This in turn reveals the transcendental status of the self-organizing and sense-making capacities of biological systems and presents them as affordances for skillful diagnostic action. Hence, we demonstrate how life-regulation processes generate forms of meaning or sense-making that underlie and motivate human conceptual cognition.