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Empathy and Emerging Worldviews

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_200024-1

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E
Empathy and Emerging Worldviews
El-Sayed El-Aswad
Department of Sociology, United Arab Emirates
University, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates
Taking empathy as an aspect of social life, this
inquiry examines how far empathy impacts peo-
ples’ relationships and how far these relationships
generate certain religious and nonreligious world-
views and practices.
People’s perceptions of themselves and of the
worlds in which they live have been given less
attention than their economic activities and polit-
ical ideologies. However, this does not negate that
“individual worldviews are socially embedded
and controlled by large-scale social and economic
forces” (Schlitz et al. 2010, 24). It is a matter of
worldviews and religious orientation that give
social, private, economic, and political domains
themselves a subordinate position within the
larger whole. The main concern here is not merely
with the intellectual aspects of the worldview but
also with the social, emotional, and subjective
domains in which individuals understand the
“other” as well as themselves in their relations to
others.
Empathy is not just a part of the worldviews
but also contributes in making up certain core
elements of these worldviews. Empathy is defined
by Mariam-Webster Dictionary as “the action of
understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to,
# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2017
D.A. Leeming (ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_200024-1
and vicariously experiencing the feelings,
thoughts, and experience of another of either the
past or present without having the feelings,
thoughts, and experience fully communicated in
an objectively explicit manner.” According to
Carl Rogers (1957, 99), empathy is a process
through which one is able to “sense the client's
private world as if it were your own, but without
ever losing the ‘as if’ quality.” Empathy is the
ability to understand thoughts and feelings of
another person. Empathy has long been associated
with prosocial behaviors such as altruism, philan-
thropy, and generosity.
The differentiation between the self and the
other or nonself, a basic component of “world-
view” (Redfield 1962, 95), is created not only
through daily social interactions but particularly
through empathy that helps the “self” understand
the “other.” Empathy helps people to become
aware of themselves and of “others” as well as
of events that occur in their lives. Further, empa-
thy has been viewed as a core component to
delivering compassionate care to patients. Psy-
chological and cross-cultural studies indicate that
both cognitive and affective elements are present
in empathy (Kohl 2008, 177).
Carl Jung (1954, 120) points out that world-
view, embedded in an individual’s psychology, is
unconscious and culturally transmitted. It consti-
tutes an important element that impacts the per-
ceptions and choices of a person. Worldviews,
contingent on personal experiences and cultural
traditions, are clusters of ideas, beliefs, feelings,
2 Empathy and Emerging Worldviews

shared meanings, or understandings and practices
that render social life possible (El-Aswad 2012).
Individuals construct and alter worldviews, but
worldviews also shape and impact individuals.
For Carl Jung, worldviews, like religious doc-
trines, are emotional experiences. They “are an
integral part of each individual’s psychological
makeup and greatly influence volition, affect,
cognition, and behavior. Worldviews act outside
of consciousness and are part of the warp and
woof of personality, rather than being deliberate
intellectual constructions” (Koltko-Rivera 2004, 9).
The possession of a worldview is inevitable as a
condition of human life. Both the therapist and the
patient have to come to grips with the issues raised
by conflicting worldviews.
and changing world has been a nexus of current
debates in humanities and social studies. Religion
encompasses organizations, institutions, creeds,
doctrine, beliefs, or sanctified worldviews and
community. Religion and spirituality are
interconnected as they both refer to seeking the
sacred (Giordano et al. 2014, 55). A recent study
conducted in the USA concludes that there is a
positive relationship between empathy and reli-
gion, spirituality, intrinsic religiosity, and theolog-
ical pluralism. When a worldview is sanctified, it
becomes as real as the natural world. Within this
context, sanctified worldview helps people cope
with social problems as well as with personal
suffering by providing explanations and solu-
tions, real or imaginary, which make life
comprehensible.

Worldview and Ideology

The Emerging Worldviews
People’s worldviews are treated here not as an
ideological system but as a system of meanings
The notion of empathy and related concepts of
generated and enacted in different courses of pub-
understanding, participation, subjectivity, and
lic and private scenarios. This article develops a
spirituality provides the possibility of the emerg-
distinction between worldview and ideology.
ing worldviews. Worldviews are grounded in peo-
While ideology implies certain economic and
ple’s experiential participation in what is present,
political orientations related particularly to
in what there is. The notion of participation is a
power, worldview indicates belief systems and
central to the emerging worldview. People can
related symbolic actions. Ideology “is essentially
only understand the world as a whole if they are
linked to the process of sustaining asymmetrical
part of it. Experiential knowing can be achieved
relations of power-that is the process of
through direct face-to-face relationship with peo-
maintaining domination” (Thompson 1984, 4).
ple; it is knowing through empathy and is almost
Worldview is an interpretative and integrative
difficult to put into words (Reason 1998, 3).
paradigm encompassing assumptions through
Within a holistic perspective, making whole
which people view the world in which they live
implies participation in other peoples’ world-
and with which they interact. Worldview is com-
views. One important feature of a participative
parable to “Weltanschauung,” “meaning system,”
worldview is that the individual person is restored
“patterns of thought,” “perceptual framework,”
to the circle of community and the human com-
“cognitive orientation” (El-Aswad 1990, 2012),
munity to the context of the wider natural world or
or what Charles Taylor (2004, 249) calls “social
cosmos. Another feature of a participatory world-
imaginary” (El-Aswad 2012, 7-10).
view is that meaning and mystery are connected to
Worldview, embodied in the practices and dis-
human experience in such a way the world is
courses of large groups of ordinary people, reveals
viewed and experienced as a sacred arena
inner meaning systems made of assumptions and
(Reason 1998, 7). Empathy can help create a
images in accordance with which the universe,
shared worldview that then becomes the base for
including the society and person, is constructed.
reaching the person’s or client subjective reality.
The significance of religion and spirituality in a
In this case, participating in and sharing other
materialistically oriented and globally dominant
Empathy and Emerging Worldviews
people’s beliefs and feelings lead to a shared or
emerging worldview (Kohl 2008, 187).
Worldview is a broader paradigm that is
influenced by interactions with people, but it
also provides the holder a belief system within
which to manage perceptions and new experi-
ences within the context of their social and reli-
gious milieus.
The relationship between empathy and emerg-
ing worldviews can be illustrated by the following
examples. Recently, some people combine their
personal experiences, insights, and intuitions with
knowledge and insights of science, as well as of
religion, philosophy, and spirituality. However,
they do not seem to turn away from the worldview
that they inherited but rather cultivated different
ways of understanding life and the world
(Hedlund-de Witt 2014, 204).
The transformation of worldview is facilitated
by engaging in participation and conversation that
pay attention to the perspectives of other persons.
Examples from interpersonal neurobiology show
that the human brain develops through intimate
relationship with other people such as mothers,
fathers, extended family, and members of wider
communities). Another transpersonal psychology
is concerned with experiences that connect people
with a broader sense of self that goes beyond the
individual to involve transcendent or spiritual
beings (Schlitz et al. 2010, 27-30).
The following example relates to the emerging
worldviews of mysticism in Islam. The mystic
worldviews in Islam are manifested in Sufism
(taṣawwuf) and, though differently, in other
forms of esoteric worldviews of the Imamate
Shi‘a (El-Aswad 2012). The focus here will be
on the Shinnawiyya Sufi Order in the city of Tanta
(the Nile Delta, Egypt). Compassion and emo-
tional intimacy are closely related to underlying
values of this Sufi Order. Members consider their
Sufi Order as a kind of communally oriented circle
anchored on a commitment to shared sacred tenets
and values. A member of the Shinnawiyya Sufi
Order recounted, “When a Sufi says, ‘follow your
heart’ or ‘consult your heart’, he is fully aware that
he acts not only as an individual but also as a
3
member who complies with the ethics of his Sufi
order” (El-Aswad 2006). The Order’s identity
becomes part of each adherent’s own individual
identity as being a Sufi belonging to a specific
Order. A new member conforms to the Sufi
Order without losing his individuality. He can
gain knowledge of his real self, learning the desir-
able characteristics to which he aspires and the
defective attributes against which he must protect.
Sufis seek both to suppress the idea of aggres-
sive materialism confined to this transitory world
and to elevate the spiritual quality inherent in
people. This spiritual higher consciousness
enables people to be aware of higher dimensions
of being as well as of the hidden secret that can be
transmitted through faith. In their gatherings,
Sufis feel secure to express and expose, emotion-
ally and spiritually, what they consider as pure and
true. They see themselves on a path of self-
discovery; a path of growth, which they hope
will lead to spiritual empowerment and ability to
love and share. To varying degrees, they see the
possibility of making a better world, starting with
their immediate personal relationships with mem-
bers of the Order, friends, family members, and
others within the broader society (El-Aswad 2012,
170). Implicit worldviews emerge and become
explicit through empathy and people’s discursive
and nondiscursive actions. What is unimaginable,
esoteric or invisible, absent, and incomprehensi-
ble becomes, through empathy, words, recitations,
narratives, rituals, bodily symbolism, and art dis-
plays, imaginable, visible, present, and
comprehensible.
See Also
▶ Cosmology
▶ Ideology
▶ Islam
▶ Islamic Counseling
▶ Psychotherapy
▶ Sanctified Worldview
4 Empathy and Emerging Worldviews
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