RELIGION

and the ARTS

Religion and the Arts 12 (2008) 102117

www.brill.nl/rart

Empathy and Inter-religious Imagination

Catherine Cornille
Boston College

Abstract
Even though empathy plays a central role in inter-religious imagination, the notion of
empathy has become all but anathema in the study of religions, associated as it is with
Romantic hermeneutics and with the early phenomenology of religion. This article revisits
some of the early phenomenological approaches to the problem of empathy in order to
explore their continuing import for the question of the possibility of entering imaginatively
into the religious worldview and experience of another tradition and understanding it from
within. Even though the religious experience of the other always remains beyond the purview of someone not belonging to that tradition, the notion of empathy continues to
emphasize the epistemic priority of that experience in the process of inter-religious dialogue, thus stretching the imagination to resonate with new and possibly enriching forms
of religious life.
Keywords
empathy, experience, life-entering, participation, sympathy, transposition

The comparison of religions is only possible, in some measure,

through the miraculous virtue of sympathy. We can know men to a
certain extent if, at the same time as we observe them from outside,
we manage by sympathy to transport our own soul into theirs for a
time. In the same way, the study of dierent religions does not lead to
a real knowledge of them unless we transport ourselves for a time by
faith to the very center of whichever one we are studying.
Simone Weil, Waiting for God 11819

lthough Simone Weils words may ring perfectly true, the role and
status of empathy in inter-religious imagination and understanding
has been subject to considerable debate. Very few scholars of religion have
in fact ventured into systematic reection on the role of empathy in the
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008

DOI: 10.1163/156852908X270944

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study of other religions. The term has generally been associated with the
bygone days of romantic hermeneutics and with pretences to understanding the religious other better than this other understands itself. However,
every attempt to go beyond the purely descriptive account of the religious
life of the other and to understand the meaning of symbols, beliefs, and
rituals involves some capacity to resonate with the aective dimension of
another tradition and to grasp the experiential import of a particular teaching, ritual, or symbol. Just as a purely historical discussion of the Christian
devotion to the Sacred Heart can only begin to oer insight into its meaning for Christians, a purely external description of the ritual motions of a
Ganesha puja allows little or no access to the meaning of such gestures in
the life of a Hindu. Any attempt to enter imaginatively into the religious
life of another thus requires some degree of empathy. And empathy itself,
in turn, presupposes considerable religious imagination. Though empathy
remains an elusive capacity, dicult to fully grasp, verify, or control, I wish
to oer some reections on the nature of empathy and its role in interreligious imagination.

Empathy as Transposition

The term empathy (einfhlung) emerged in the late nineteenth century from
a conuence of romantic hermeneutics and philosophical aesthetics. It was
rst used as a psychological category by Theodore Lipps who described
empathy as a form of inner imitation, or as a complete identication with
the object of aesthetic enjoyment (376, 380). In empathy, the feelings and
experiences associated with this imitation are projected onto the other as
their source. When used in a strictly interpersonal context, empathy came to
be understood as a process of transposition (Diltheys Transposition, Hineinversetzen) into the life world of the other in order to grasp the intentions and
the mindset of the other. The ultimate nature and goal of empathy is then,
as Edith Stein puts it, the experience of foreign consciousnesses (11) or
the comprehension of mental persons (83). In his Idees II, a text which is
believed to have been inuenced by Stein, Husserl describes the process of
transposition in some detail:
I put myself in the place of another subject, and by empathy I grasp
what motivates him and how strongly it does so, with what power.
And I learn to understand inwardly how he behaves, and how he would

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behave, under the inuence of such and such motives, determining

him with such and such force, i.e. I grasp what he is capable of and
what is beyond him. I can understand many inner correlations, having
fathomed him so. It is in this way that I grasp his Ego, for it is precisely
the identical Ego of these motivations, ones that have this direction
and this power. I secure these motivations by placing myself in his situation, his level of education, his development as a youth, etc., and to
do so I must needs share in that situation; I not only empathize with his
thinking, his feeling and his action, but I must also follow him in them,
his motives becoming my quasi-motives, ones which, however, motivate with insight in the mode of intuitively fullling empathy. (287)
This account of the process of empathy as transposition raises certain
points of interest for a discussion of inter-religious empathy. First, it is
clear that for Husserl, empathy consists mainly in identifying with the
particular motives or intentions underlying particular actions. In the case
of empathic understanding of individuals belonging to other religions, it is
not the religious experience itself but the motivation behind the religious
action which is the focus of empathic understanding. In contemplating a
person oering puja to the elephant god Ganesha, for example, empathy
involves identifying with the intention which lies at the origin of an action,
whether this be success in exams or bliss in marriage, relief from physical
suering or from obstacles to spiritual growth. These religious motivations
may be seen to represent a common ground through which individuals
from dierent religions may come to understand one another. While the
religious images and symbols of another religion are often alien and alienating, a search for the more universal religious desires and impulses (happiness, health, fertility, success, longevity, wisdom, knowledge, etc.) and
sentiments (love, peace, detachment, equanimity, ecstasy, solidarity, possession, etc.) oers a greater chance of empathy. In order to enter into the
particularity of the religious life of the other, empathy then requires, as
Husserl points out, that one assume the whole social, cultural, religious
and educational context of the other. This would include identication
with the concrete religious worldview and beliefs of the other, or some
measure of conversion to the religion of the other.
When the Dutch phenomenologist of religion, Gerardus van der Leeuw,
describes the process of empathic understanding of the other, he speaks
not only of transposing oneself into the religious life of the other butin
a reverse movementof transposing the life and experience of the other

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into ones own. In some passages, he refers to the importance of transposing oneself into the object and re-experiencing it or of entering into a
coherent stream of consciousness (Some Recent Achievements 401).
But in describing the various stages of the phenomenological method, he
also speaks of the interpolation of the phenomenon into our own lives
(Religion in Essence 674). In the process of empathy, the distinction between
putting oneself into the experience of the other and bringing the experience of the other into ones own life is often vague and uid. Even though
the religious life of the other remains the goal of empathy, ones own life
experience typically forms the basis and source from which one may come
to identify with the other.
It must be pointed out that neither Husserl, Stein, nor van der Leeuw
believed in the possibility of reliving the experience of the other. Husserl
emphasizes the dierence between the primordial and the non-primordial
event, and the fact that all empathic understanding of the motivations of
others always lack the spontaneity of the original event. Van der Leeuw, for
example, points out that the immediate is never and nowhere given, and
that the primal experience upon which our experiences are grounded, has
always passed irrevocably away by the time our attention is directed to it.
That being the case, however, he also believed that it was in principle not
more dicult for him to understand the experience of an Egyptian scribe
who wrote his note on papyrus four thousand years ago than it was to
understand the experience of having himself written some lines in a school
essay thirty years ago. That he was another than myself he states, makes
no dierence whatever, since the boy who prepared the school work thirty
years ago is also, to my own contemplation another, and I must objectify
myself in my experience of those bygone days. All empathic understanding of the other thus involves a process of reconstruction or reconstitution
of that experience. Quoting Terrentius Afers famous maxim homo sum,
humani nil a me alienum puto (I am human and nothing human can be
alien to me) van der Leeuw states that this is no key to the deepest comprehension of the remotest experience, but is nevertheless the triumphant
assertion that the essentially human always remains essentially human, and
is, as such, comprehensible.1

1)

Religion in Essence and Manifestation 675. Van der Leeuw was also strongly inspired by
Eduard Sprangers notion of universal mental structures developed in Types of Men.

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In the second half of the twentieth century, the idea of empathy as

transposition into the life and experience of others has been questioned
from various perspectives. The postmodern emphasis on particularity and
dierence has rendered suspect the very suggestion that one might be able
to resonate with the experience of others, let alone across cultural and religious boundaries. And the hermeneutical tradition has challenged the very
notion of separate egos, implied in the idea of transposition. This is
reected in Paul Ricoeurs strong claim that otherness is not added on to
selfhood from the outside, as though to prevent its solipsistic drift, but
belongs instead to the tenor of meaning and to the ontological constitution of selfhood (317). This dissolution of the radical distinction between
self and other thus questions the very utility or authenticity of empathy as
a concept since, as Heidegger already suggested, only those who cut the I
o from the Other must latch onto empathy as that act that is supposed
to instate the initially absent bond between the I and the other (124).
From a hermeneutical perspective, the understanding of the experiential
life of others came to be regarded not so much as a matter of transposition
into the reied experiences or motivations of others but rather as an endless process of becoming understood.
Even though the idea of transposition into the religious experience of
the other has thus become obsolete, the notion of empathy may still point
to the epistemic priority of the experience of the other in inter-religious
understanding. While this experience may always remain beyond the purview of anyone not belonging to that tradition, it is by attempting to enter
into the religious universe of the other that ones own religious imagination may be expanded and enriched. We shall now turn to a discussion of
certain factors which may stimulate, or otherwise obstruct the process of
empathy.

II

Empathy and Sympathy

One of the rst requirements for advancing ones understanding of the

religious life of the other is a positive disposition toward the other, generally called sympathy. The terms empathy and sympathy were in fact
originally used interchangeably, until in the early twentieth century empathy came to be used as the cognitive counterpart of sympathy. Max Scheler
thus refers to sympathy as fellow-feeling while empathy came to denote
all such attitudes as merely contribute to our apprehending, understanding,

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and in general reproducing (emotionally) the experiences of others, including their states of feeling (8). Both terms, however, remain closely related
as empathy requires sympathy and sympathy builds upon empathy. Sympathy is here understood not merely as the aective quality of personal
warmth and concern for the other but also as the attitude of generosity
with regard to the intelligibility and the meaningfulness of the religious life
of the other. Any a priori rejection of the presence of truth and coherence
in the other religion will generally restrict empathic understanding, if only
by diminishing any desire to enter into the experiences of the other.
In the context of the relationship between religions or between believers, the attitude of sympathy (or antipathy) for the religious other is generally grounded in religious or theological attitudes toward the religious
other. It is not surprising that growth and deepening of understanding of
other religions in the West has developed in consonance with a growing
theological openness toward the presence of truth in other religions. This
is of course not to deny the possibility of attaining a certain empathic
understanding of the other in a climate of religious exclusivism and intolerance, as the many insightful accounts of other religions by traditional
missionaries bear out. It is also not to suggest that empathy must necessarily involve a positive valuation of the religious symbols, teachings and
practices of other religions. One may indeed come to a profound experiential understanding of the meaning of a particular teaching while rejecting
its validity or truth. But the more religious openness toward other religions, the greater the energy and desire to immerse oneself in their symbols, teachings and practices and to understand their meaning and role in
the life of believers. Such openness removes taboos about entering the
places of worship of other religions and contemplating its images or objects
of worship. For centuries, the worship of Hindu Gods was considered rote
idolatry and Christians were forbidden from even glancing at Hindu deities. Within such a theological atmosphere, an empathic understanding of
the meaning of Krishna in the lives of Hindu believers would be virtually
unimaginable. Empathy thus presupposes an absence of fear and a relative
freedom of religious conscience, which from a Christian point of view is a
relatively recent achievement.
Even though sympathy for the beliefs and practices of other religions
may no longer be inhibited by theological strictures, one still cannot but
wonder to which extent rm commitment to the truth of one religion
impedes the religious imagination, or the empathic understanding of the
meaning of particular symbols and rituals in the life of another religion.

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After all, the truth claims of dierent religions remain to various degrees
mutually exclusive, and feelings of sympathy for the religious beliefs of the
other may be experienced as a betrayal of ones own faith and commitment.
Commitment to ones own tradition may thus naturally temper ones sympathy for the contradictory or irreconcilable beliefs of the other. If, for
example, ones own religious life is permeated by faith in the unique and full
revelation of God in Jesus Christ, ones sympathy for a gure like Krishna
might be somewhat hampered. Within the context of inter-religious imagination, sympathy thus involves more than mere tolerance, and may constitute an important challenge for empathic understanding of the other.
While too little sympathy may impede empathy, too much of it may
also distort proper understanding. In compensation for the negative attitudes of the past, some may come to develop an exaggerated sympathy for
beliefs and practices of other religions. This may lead to a well-willing tendency to downplay elements which might clash with ones own religious
and cultural values and orientations, or to project ones own personal experience and meaning upon the other, as the critiques of Orientalism clearly
reveal. The attitude of sympathy required for empathy thus involves a willingness to be touched by the other, without outspoken negative or positive
presuppositions, and with permanent attention to the self-understanding
of the other.

III

Empathy and Experience

The role of personal experience in the empathic understanding of others has

been subject to some debate. Most theories of empathy acknowledge the
instrumental function of ones own past experience in the process of understanding the experience of others. Empathy has generally been regarded as
a form of inference by analogy, or of pairing the experiences and expressions
of the other with ones own. When I see a person prostrate in front of a
religious image, I intuitively recall my own feelings of devotion and surrender to my own object of faith. Discussing the role of previous experience, Dilthey suggests that empathy is only possible if the context which
exists in ones own experience and has been encountered in innumerable
ways is alwaysand with all the potentialities contained in itpresent and
ready (226). Within the context of religious and inter-religious imagination, this would suggest that the richer and more diverse ones own religious
life, the more chance one may have of understanding that of others, or that

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the capacity for empathy with religious others depends on the nature and
degree of intensity of ones own religious life. As such, individuals with little
or no experience of or tendency toward religious enthusiasm may nd it
dicult to empathize with the religious life of Hare Krishna members, just
as person inclined toward a devotional relation to the divine may nd a
non-theistic experience of ultimate reality unimaginable or inaccessible.
For the inter-religious imagination, this raises the question whether
empathic understanding of the religious other is limited to those experiences which are already part of ones own religious repertoire, thus allowing for little or no genuinely new experiences. In spite of Lippss early
conception of empathy as inference by analogy, most discussions of empathy suggest the possibility of empathizing with experiences which are not
already part of ones own life experiences. Dilthey himself, who emphasizes
the importance of past experience, recognizes the possibility of being lifted
beyond that experience when, in reading the letters of Luther, he states:
The possibilities of experiencing religious states in ones own life is narrowly limited for me as for most contemporaries. But when I read
through the letters and writings of Luther . . . I experience a religious
process, in which life and death are at issue, of such eruptive power and
energy as is beyond the possibility of direct experience for a man of our
time. (227)
These lines thus clearly suggest the possibility of resonating with experiences which are beyond ones own, at least in intensity and depth. Max
Scheler is very explicit in arguing for the possibility of empathy with mental states and experiences which have not been encountered before. Whereas
he admits that empathy with sensory or physical experiences of pain or
pleasure may require prior experience of the same, he believes that the
more purely internal, or, as he puts it, the more vital the experience, the
higher our innate capacity for empathy without prior experience. He states
that we can have a lively and immediate participation in joy or sorrow,
can share with others their appreciation of value, and can even enter into
another commiseration for a third party, without ever having sampled that
particular quality of experience before. A person who has never felt mortal
danger can still understand and envisage it, just as he can also share in it.
Scheler uses the example of Jesus experience of despair in the garden of
Gethsemane, suggesting that for every candid heart which steeps itself in
that desolation it operates not as a reminder or revival of personal suerings,

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but as the revelation of a new and greater suering hitherto undreamed of

(47). Going beyond the more familiar territory of Christianity, he also
points to the example of the Buddhas encounter with suering as accessible, not only intellectually but also experientially to individuals for whom
it is not part of ones immediate experience.
Whereas Dilthey and Scheler merely suggest the possibility of empathic
understanding of new or foreign experiences, Edith Stein oers some theoretical discussion of the process and the limits of such empathy. For her, ones
own basic set of mental and emotional dispositions remain the basic structure from which empathy, or the lack thereof, evolves. As she puts it:
All foreign experience permitting itself to be derived from my own
structure can be fullled, even if this structure has not yet actually
unfolded. I can experience values empathically and discover correlative
levels of my own person, even though my primordial experience has not
yet presented an opportunity for their exposure. He who has never
looked danger in the face himself can still experience himself as brave or
cowardly in the empathic representation of anothers situation. (104)
Her account of this capacity of entering into new experiential territory
appeals to what phenomenologists call fullling intuition: it is by lling
out the elements not yet present within ones own life experience that one
gains empathic understanding of the other. Here again, the importance of
past experience is unmistakable, for it is only insofar as one has some
familiarity with or propensity toward devotion that one may achieve some
intuition of forms of devotion which dier from ones own in kind and
intensity. Thus, while Christians may generally be unfamiliar with ecstatic
forms of devotion, their own personal contact with more moderate forms
of devotion may permit them to achieve a certain intuitive understanding
of the experiences of bliss experienced during the more ecstatic forms of
worship typical of Hare Krishna services.
As for experiences and dispositions that are radically discontinuous with
or opposed to ones own, Stein states that they present themselves in the
manner of empty presentation or unfullled intuition. Here, she oers
the example of a skeptic trying to empathize with a person who oers all
his earthly goods to his faith:
I see him behave in this way and empathize a value experiencing as the
motive for his conduct. The correlate of this is not accessible to me,

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causing me to ascribe to him a personal level I do not myself possess.

In this way I empathically gain the type of homo religious by nature
foreign to me, and I understand it even though what newly confronts
me here will always remain unfullled. (105)
This, of course, also applies the other way around, unless the person was
once a skeptic. In the case of religious persons attempting to enter into the
lived experience of another religion, a considerable arsenal of lived and
potential experiences may be seen to lie at ones disposal. The specicities
of ones own religious tradition may aid in the process of empathic understanding of others, theistic traditions oering a better chance for understanding devotional feelings and attitudes in others, and religions based on
divine laws and commandments for understanding the experience of religious observance in other traditions. Here again, however, the capacity for
empathic identication with the other is often highly personal and variable. Though Christianity on the whole does not cultivate religious possession, some Christians may more easily enter into the reality and power of
the experience of spirit possession, typical of shamanistic traditions, than
others. Or images of other religions which may evoke a powerful resonance in some, may leave others completely cold. All this merely points to
the fact that inter-religious empathy remains a mysterious capacity which
can never be guaranteed or controlled. It can, however, be nourished by
prolonged participation in the other religions and by personal identication
with particular believers.

IV

Empathy and Participation

One of the important mediators of empathy is actual participation in the

daily and religious life of the other tradition. This is why participant observation plays such a crucial role in anthropological research, and why students
of religion are generally encouraged to spend extended periods of time
immersed in the religious life of the tradition they are engaged with. Armchair study of other religions may lead to all sorts of imagined empathic
understanding. But it is only by participating in the religious life of the other
that the full measure of the familiarity and the distinctiveness of the religious
experience of the other reveals itself. This was brought home to me in a powerful way when I visited a Ganesha temple in South India after years of
studying Hinduism. Having gained a solid intellectual understanding of the

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tradition and the mythology associated with Ganesha, I felt quite at home in
the temple, recognizing much of what I had been taughtuntil my attention was caught by a woman oering owers to the god with the elephant
head. At once, my illusion of understanding devotional Hinduism was shattered, and I became powerfully aware of the distance separating my own
religious life from that of the other. While I might be able to identify with
the abstract feelings of adoration, or with the particular human and religious
needs motivating any particular instance of worship, the concrete object of
worshipthat which for the devotee is arguably the most important part of
the experiencewould always remain beyond my empathic understanding,
unless, of course, I became a devotee myself.
Theories of ritual have come to emphasize the performative function of
ritual and the ways in which ritual gestures shape or mold the bodies of
participants according to the dominant values of a particular religion or
culture. Participation in the ritual life of a tradition and imitation of the
ritual gestures may thus also be seen to stimulate awareness of the experiences associated with particular beliefs and practices. While one may know
that surrender to God denes the term Islam, participation in the performance of Muslim prayer or Muslim fast oers a chance for a deeper understanding of the particular meaning and experience of surrender for
Muslims. And whereas the Jewish and Christian understanding of God
may be close, participation in the celebration of Jewish ritual life may give
Christians a greater awareness of the distinctive sense of majesty and holiness characteristic of the Jewish relationship to the divine.
Cultural dierences may at times also play a role in inter-religious empathy. As religious traditions are increasingly moving out of their cultures of
origin, and as even non-universalistic religions are establishing themselves in
dierent parts of the world and adapting to their new environment, these
traditional cultural barriers to inter-religious empathy are slowly decreasing.
Hindus may attend Catholic mass where familiar ritual gestures such as arati
are performed, and American Christians may participate in Zen meditation
seated on chairs and hearing Buddhist sutras chanted in English. While some
may bemoan the dissolution of the distinctive cultural colors of dierent
religions, and while the exotic dimension of the other religion might itself at
times be a point of appeal and fascination, the fading of cultural barriers cannot but facilitate inter-religious empathy and imagination.
Time also plays an important role in the cultivation of inter-religious
imagination and empathy. Symbols and rituals of other religions are by
denition alien and even alienating upon initial encounter. Few Christians

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will immediately resonate with the meaning of Ganesha or Krishna for

Hindus. My own rst encounter with Hinduism may be seen as a case in
point. I was in my early twenties when I rst heard someone talk about her
love for Krishna. While the enthusiasm of the speaker was infectious, nothing she said made any sense to me. The stories about Krishna seemed fanciful and incoherent and left me merely perplexed. As I went on to study
Hinduism and to encounter Krishna devotees, the foreignness of the other
tradition gradually dissipated and I gained a gradual understanding of the
range of emotions associated with the love of Krishna. As in any form of
religious education, one often absorbs religious feelings through signicant
others. The development of friendships with the devotees of a particular
tradition and prolonged participation in their religious life thus forms a
natural stimulant for empathy.
All this raises certain important ethical or deontological questions
regarding participation in the ritual life of other religions and its limits.
While such participation may be tolerated by both ones own and the host
religion, it may still be regarded as a form of betrayal or hypocrisy. The
feigned or empty performance of ritual gestures in which one participates in a ritual without corresponding conviction may be accompanied by
a sense that it is disrespectful to the religious other. Moreover, most religions actually contain restrictions and regulations regarding ritual participation of non-members. Whereas some aspects of ritual life may be open
to all, the more sacred the ritual place or act, the more limited it becomes
to initiated members, or even to certain select groups among the initiates.
While anyone may participate in the Christian liturgy, the sacrament of
the Eucharist isat least in theorylimited to baptized members. And in
some Hindu temples, the holy of holies remains beyond limits to nonHindus. In addition to this, all rites of passage (initiation, puberty rituals,
etc.) are only accessible to members of a particular religion. As such, various forms of internal and external barriers are often in place to prevent full
participation in the ritual life of other religions. However, some degree of
limited participation still plays an important role as both a catalyst and a
corrective of ones empathic understanding of the other.

Empathy and Imagination

If our capacity for empathy is not restricted to feelings and experiences

which are part of our own past repertoire, then it is the faculty of the

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imagination which frees us from connement to our own immediate

memory of experience and which opens the mind to the world of religious
dierence. The imagination, of course, plays an essential role in all religious life. To begin with the obvious, it allows us to conceive of a reality
beyond the purely immanent and historical. It is the imagination which
allows the human mind to enter into the world of symbolic and mythical
representation and to assimilate the highly complex, and often contradictory meanings embedded in religious symbols. Whereas the religious
imagination is usually shaped by a particular religious tradition, encounter
with other religions may allow the imagination to stretch beyond its established religious boundaries and to conceive of symbolic universes hitherto
unimagined. It is imagination which provides the capacity to move from
our own lived context into that of another, as Dilthey also pointed out:
Imagination can strengthen or diminish the emphasis on attitudes, powers, feelings and ideas contained in our own lives and this enables us to
re-produce the mental life of another person (227).
The power of imagination may be variable and the capacity for entering
into the worldview of another religion unpredictable. But the religious
imagination is by no means limited to the set of symbols and images which
are part of ones own tradition. Certain religious symbols are recurrent
across religious traditions. While the religious meaning of natural symbols
(water, re, the earth, trees, etc.) may dier from one religion to the next,
they may bring about basic empathic resonance across religious traditions.
A more developed empathic understanding of the other tradition then
merely requires penetration into the specic context of the other religion,
and opening of oneself to symbolic connotations which may not have been
explored in ones own tradition.
Inter-religious imagination may also operate on the principle of the
excluded other. While ones religious imagination is shaped by a particular set of symbols and practices, each religious expression may be seen to
also evoke its opposite: belief in a personal God suggesting the possibility
of non-personal representations of ultimate reality, and belief in a male
God, the possibility of feminine expressions of the divine. While the
excluded other may not appeal to ones religious imagination with the
same force as ones familiar set of religious symbols and expressions, it may
still touch latent chords of resonance which may in time grow into a deeper
empathic understanding.
Confrontation with the religious symbols, teachings, and practices of
other religions may also awaken the imagination to forms of being or levels

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of religious consciousness which have no immediate point of connection

with ones own tradition. Though fearful or wrathful deities are scarcely
present in the Christian imagination, Hindu images as that of Kalithe
dark and bloodthirsty goddess, wearing skulls and severed arms and wielding a severed head and a sword dripping with bloodhave triggered the
imagination of a good number of Western and Christian feminists. However, as has become evident in recent studies, the meaning of Kali for Western feminists often diers signicantly from her meaning and use in the
traditional Hindu context.
This brings us back to the importance of empathy in inter-religious
imagination. Just as empathy requires imagination, inter-religious imagination also needs empathy if it is to remain grounded in the experience of
the other. The religious imagination may project meanings onto the images
and symbols of other religions and develop religious resonances which are
in radical discontinuity with the religious tradition bearing these symbols.
This may be considered perfectly legitimate and part of a hermeneutical
process which in turn may enrich the tradition of origin. Moving away
from the traditional understanding of empathy, the Russian philosopher
Mikhail Bakhtin, for example, emphasizes the fact of standing outside and
perceiving the other from a dierent perspective (which has been rendered
as exotopy)2 as the very condition for growth in self-understanding. He
states that
there is an enduring image that is partial, and therefore false, according
to which to better understand a foreign culture one should live in it,
and, forgetting ones own, look at the world through the eyes of its
culture. As I have said, such an image is partial. To be sure, to enter in
some measure into an alien culture and look at the world through its
eyes, is a necessary moment in the process of understanding; but if
understanding were exhausted in this moment, it would have been no
more than a simple duplication, and would have brought nothing new
or enriching. Creative understanding does not renounce its self, its place
in time, its culture; it does not forget anything. The chief matter of
understanding is the exotopy of the one who does the understanding
in time, space and culturein relation to what he wants to understand

2)

The term exotopy is Todorovs translation of Bakhtins Russian coinage vnrnskhodimost,

nding oneself outside (Todorov 99).

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creatively. Even his own external aspect is not really accessible to man,
he cannot interpret it as a whole; mirrors and photographs prove of no
help; a mans real external aspect can be seen and understood only by
other persons, thanks to their spatial exotopy, and thanks to the fact
that they are other. In the realm of culture, exotopy is the most powerful level of understanding. It is only through the eyes of an other culture
that the alien culture reveals itself more completely and more deeply,
but never exhaustively, because there will come other cultures, that will
see and understand even more. (qtd. in Todorov 109)
Bakhtin explicitly moves away from the term empathy, replacing it with the
notion of life-entering, pointing to the more hermeneutical and dynamic
nature of all forms of interpersonal and intercultural understanding.3
While the impossibility of perfect empathic understanding of the other
may thus be regarded as a blessing and a source of growth for all involved
in the dialogue between religions, the notion of empathy continues to
fulll an important critical function in inter-religious imagination. Where
the religious imagination is unbound and free to project any meaning
upon the religious symbols and images of the other, empathy still points to
the experience of the other as the ultimate goal and norm of understanding. It is indeed by remaining focused on the religious universe of the other
that ones own religious imagination may be stretched and deepened, and
put to the service of genuine dialogue between religions.

Works Cited
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Flood, Gavin. Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion. London: Cassell,
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Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: State University of
New York Press, 1966.
Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy II. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.
Lipps, Theodore. Empathy, Inner Imitation, and Sense-Feelings. A Modern Book of Esthetics.
Ed. Melvin Rader. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979. 37482.

3)

For an in-depth discussion of Bakhtins notion of life-entering in contrast with empathy, see Flood 15966.

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