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The Problems of the Philosophy of History, by Georg Simmel, is credited as an influential book introducing fundamental concepts re-elaborated by Karl Jaspers in his General Psychopathology. This paper focuses on Simmel's possible influence on Jaspers' concept of empathic understanding (Verstehen). Both authors are philosophically indebted to post-Kantian views on the methodology of human sciences, are anti-reductionist, and believe that human beings cannot be known as a totality but studied from several perspectives. Both focus on the concept of life and lived experience, and consider understanding as the proper method to study them. In both, understanding is a mixture of empathic intuition and interpretation (although the emphasis on the empathic transposition of oneself into the other's shoes is more pronounced in Jaspers than in Simmel). Both see understanding as an evident/valid knowledge but with an ideal-typical character (in Weber's sense). Both share with Dilthey the idea that a basic requirement for understanding is human similarity. Both view understanding as a post-hoc reconstruction that does not allow lawlike predictions. Moreover, Simmel is the first talking of understanding the genetic relationship between consecutive phenomena, and this influenced Jaspers' distinction between static and genetic understanding (although another relevant influence came from Moritz Geiger). Finally, Jaspers strictly follows Simmel in differentiating between understanding what has been said and understanding the speaker (respectively, rational and empathic understanding in Jaspers' terms). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the concept of understanding (Verstehen) in the work of Max Weber. Parts of Weber's writings discussing this issue are here selected and reproduced. It is shown that in his use, the concept of understanding is part of a complex approach that tries to complement the specificities of humanistic disciplines with their exigence of a rigorous scientific approach. Weber conceives understanding as explanatory understanding, i.e the causal interpretation of a third person's action. The model he uses is that of the legal imputation of concrete effects to concrete causes (i.e. motives). According to Weber, understanding is always an hypothetical interpretation that must be confirmed by objective verification. Weber also makes a distinction between direct observational understanding [aktuelles Verstehen] and explanatory understanding [erklarendes Verstehen]. The former directly grasps the subjective meaning of a given act as such, while the latter is understanding of motivations, which consists in placing the act in an intelligible context of meaning. Both can be rational or affectively determined. Moreover, Weber distinguishes between subjective (on the level of meaning) and causal adequacy of the explanation of an action, and both must be present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the main contents of Geiger's 1910 lecture on empathy and focuses on its possible influence on Jaspers' General Psychopathology. In particular, some key methodological distinctions traced by Jaspers (explaining vs. understanding, static vs. genetic understanding, understandability vs. non-understandability) are compared to Geiger's similar concepts. Geiger's role in shaping Jaspers' concept of understanding (and non-understandability) is still neglected and it is time to recognize it. In particular, Geiger's distinction between the direct empathy for the other's expressions at one side, and the 'reliving after the event' of the 'inner correlation of the psyche' on the other side had a major role in shaping Jaspers' similar distinction between static and genetic understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fi rst part the human development at several levels of mutual understanding during growth are described, ending in what we commonly call empathy (intended as putting oneself in the other's shoes). In the second part it is shown that empathy in general, and therapeutic empathy in particular, are not just emotional intuitions but they are parts of a more complex hermeneutic process involving both affective and cognitive processes. Finally, therapeutic empathy is described as a complex phenomenon in which several interacting parts can be and should be differentiated. It is stressed that in the technical use of empathy we must be aware of its parts and of how they interplay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]