Empathy

In phenomenology, empathy refers to the experience of another human body as another subjectivity: You see another body, but you immediately perceive another subject. In Husserl's original account, this was done by apperception built on the experiences of your own lived-body which you experience in a dual way, both as object (you can touch your own hand) and as your own subjectivity (you are being touched). This experience of your own body as your own subjectivity is then applied to the experience of another's body, which, through apperception, is constituted as another subjectivity. This experience of empathy is important in the phenomenological account of intersubjectivity.