KINAESTHETIC EMPATHY.

The paper discusses kinaesthetic empathy based on the German philosopher Edith Stein's theory of empathy. Applying Stein's study of empathy, the paper examines empathy as a particular form of the act of knowing. Instead of a mere emotion, empathy entails a re-living or a placing of ourselves 'inside' the another's experience. We may grasp another's living, moving body as another center orientation of the world through our own kinaesthetic sense and body topography. Kinaesthetic empathy seems to have a partial capacity to make sense of others' experiential movements and reciprocally our own bodily movements. It makes it possible to understand the non-verbal kinetic experiences through which we may acquire knowledge of the other's bodily movements on the basis of our own body topography. There is recognition that we can never reach the other's primordial movement experience.