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Understanding Empathy and Relationships

Empathy, Feeling, and Intentionality

  • Empathy (relating with another person’s situation) aims for greater life and openness, not punishment or defensiveness. It can break down relational barriers and unlock possibilities we didn’t know existed.
  • In-feeling (Einfühlung) denotes an interior life or life-world feeling that accompanies engagement with others. This interiority can be as expansive as the external world if we entertain it seriously.
  • Through feeling with another person in an intentional act, intentionality unites cognition and emotion: feeling is not separate from thought, but already includes cognitive aspects when we choose to feel with someone. This answers the question of how much feeling enters cognition: it is present in the act of intending.
  • Theological reflection across readings (biblical) invites us to move from personal frustration to shared, expansive possibility through empathetic engagement.

Interplay of Philosophy, Experience, and Theology

  • Phenomenology and intentionality: beginning again, re-engaging with experience through new perspectives.
  • Natality (Hannah Arendt): the importance of birth/new beginnings alongside mortality; emphasis on political philosophy of starting anew. Natality is the capacity for new beginnings in human life and politics.
  • The diverse religious perspectives discussed (Catholic, Jewish, Protestant) are seen as lenses through which to understand justice, dignity, and human relationships. The Catholic perspective emphasizes justice, human dignity, and the social teaching derived from encyclicals.

Catholic Social Teaching and Justice

  • Catholic social teaching centers on the inherent dignity of every person; every human counts regardless of poverty or wealth.
  • The teachings move from individual dignity to addressing systemic oppression and the structures that sustain injustice.
  • Health care as a justice issue: access, wait times, and affordability vary by country; examples include comparisons between the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The discussion highlights that care should be accessible and responsibly managed, informed by global perspectives (global health, or GLOCA).
  • Local action informed by global awareness: act locally to meet needs while understanding their global context and implications.
  • The interplay between personal responsibility and social responsibility in justice work, including the role of communities (e.g., a university community) in advancing justice.

Local and Global Health Care: Practical Implications

  • Access to health care can be a barrier (costs, wait times, insurance coverage). Examples from different countries illustrate how systemic structures affect health outcomes.
  • The need for informed action that respects both local needs and global implications to achieve better health outcomes for all.

Jewish-Christian Relationship: Historical Perspective

  • Judaism and Christianity share roots in covenantal relationships (Abrahamic, Sinai, Davidic). Teshuvah means return or repentance, returning to God when the covenant is strained.
  • Key terms:
    • Zakor (memory): memory invoked in Jewish liturgy.
    • Anamnesis (remembrance): memory in Catholic liturgy, especially in the Eucharist; central to Catholic practice.
  • Jesus movement emerged within Jewish context, evolving into a distinct Christian tradition over several centuries.
  • The relationship between Judaism and Christianity includes historical tensions, violence, pogroms, and wars of religion, but also acknowledges Jewish roots of Christian faith (a process that has taken centuries within the church).
  • Constantine and the establishment of Christianity as a state religion impacted church-state dynamics and historical development.
  • The Catholic, Protestant, and broader Christian landscape developed diverse interpretations and practices, including liturgical differences (e.g., liturgy, Eucharist, presence) and ecclesial authority.

Scriptural Traditions: Jewish and Christian Readings

  • The Hebrew Bible is divided into three parts: Torah (Law), Nevi'im (Prophets), Ketuvim (Writings).
  • Poetry and writings within Ketuvim require literary readings and contextual considerations.
  • In Catholic tradition, Scripture is read within the framework of Scripture and Tradition; tradition provides biblical commentary and guidance alongside the text.
  • Different levels of interpretation include literal/plain reading and deeper exegesis and hermeneutics, which consider historical, linguistic, and theological contexts.
  • The text emphasizes that interpretation matters for political and social understanding, including justice issues.

Biblical Criticism: Major Approaches

  • Textual criticism: studies manuscript age and variants (e.g., Dead Sea Scrolls); question: what are the oldest manuscripts and how many exist for a given book?
  • Source criticism: investigates possible sources (oral vs written, group vs individual) used to construct biblical books.
  • Form criticism: analyzes underlying forms and genres to reach deeper meanings beyond the surface text.
  • Redaction criticism: studies editorial activity and final form of the text; questions about redactors and their purposes.
  • Tradition criticism: examines how communities transmitted and interpreted traditions over time.
  • Liberation theology and liberation critique: reads Scripture from the perspective of the oppressed; highlights how God reveals himself among the marginalized (e.g., Exodus, social justice themes).
  • Catholic social teaching interacts with these critiques, especially in focusing on the poor and marginalized.
  • Feminist critique and other voices continue to shape interpretation, including Jewish rabbinic perspectives and women’s commentary.

Contextual vs Literal Readings

  • Contextual approach: considers historical, literary, and theological contexts; recognizes authorship, audience, cultural background, and the social conditions of the text’s production; overlapping factors influence interpretation.
  • Literal/plain reading: focuses on the surface meaning, using dictionaries/lexicons to determine word meanings; often insufficient alone for understanding impact.
  • Exegesis and hermeneutics: interpretive methods that explain and justify meanings within particular theological frameworks; important for understanding how different denominations approach text.
  • The tripartite structure (Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim) requires different reading strategies, especially for poetry and writings.

The Exodus Narrative and Liberation as Universal Metaphor

  • The Exodus story (Israelites’ liberation from Egypt) is a central liberation narrative; celebrated in Passover (Pesach).
  • Liberation is a universal motif: parallels drawn with enslavement in different contexts (e.g., slavery in the United States; modern forced labor, sweatshops, human trafficking, and other forms of exploitation).
  • Narrative helps individuals reflect on personal and communal enslaved conditions and what liberation would require (e.g., structural changes, personal courage, collective action).
  • Students are encouraged to think about real-world forms of enslavement today and to imagine pathways to liberation for someone they know or a broader group.

Narrative and Personal Reflection Exercise

  • Students are invited to tell a brief personal or observed story of enslavement and what liberation would entail.
  • The exercise aims to connect biblical liberation with contemporary social justice concerns and personal ethics.
  • Emphasis on careful, respectful, and imaginative storytelling that honors real-world experiences without revealing or sensationalizing private details.

Practical and Ethical Implications for Action

  • Empathy and intentionality require humility and ongoing reflection; we should be willing to begin again when needed (phenomenology and natality).
  • Justice requires both recognizing individual dignity and addressing systemic oppression through informed communal action.
  • Interreligious literacy (Judaism and Christianity) helps contextualize contemporary ethics and fosters dialogue that can advance justice.
  • Education and civic life (e.g., university settings) should integrate local action with global awareness, informed by theological, philosophical, and critical methods.
  • Health care is a practical site where ethical commitments to justice, access, and responsibility intersect with public policy and personal morality.

Quick Glossary and Key Themes

  • Einfühlung (in-feeling): interior life that accompanies understanding another’s experience.
  • Intentionality: the act of intending includes cognitive and emotional dimensions.
  • Natality: the capacity for new beginnings; a central idea in Arendt’s political philosophy.
  • Teshuvah: return to God; repentance within Jewish tradition.
  • Zakor: memory in Jewish liturgy.
  • Anamnesis: remembrance in Catholic liturgy (Eucharist).
  • Covenant: the relational bond between God and the Jewish people (Abrahamic, Sinai, Davidic covenants).
  • Liberation theology: reads Scripture with an emphasis on liberation of the oppressed (e.g., Gustavo Gutierrez).
  • Scripture and Tradition: Catholic approach that reads Scripture within the community’s living tradition.
  • Textual, Source, Form, Redaction, and Tradition criticism: scholarly methods for analyzing biblical texts.
  • GLOC A: global health perspective integrated into local practice; health care as a justice issue.

Notes on Sources and Context

  • The content connects theory (phenomenology, natality) with religious traditions (Catholic, Jewish, Protestant) and with real-world issues (justice, health care access, systemic oppression).
  • It emphasizes the importance of historical development, cross-cultural dialogue, and critical scholarship for understanding Scripture and for guiding ethical action in the world.
  • The session ends with an invitation to engage in narrative about liberation, linking biblical themes to contemporary concerns and personal experiences.

Note: The transcript includes some off-topic, highly personal excerpts and casual conversation that are not directly relevant to the academic themes above. These portions have been paraphrased or omitted to preserve focus on the core concepts and educational objectives.