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ESSAY II: EMPATHETIC OBJECTIVITY
IN THE DESCRIPTIVE REPRESENTATION OF RELIGIOUS PHENOMENA
Misunderstanding, prejudice, and bigotry often characterize encounters between persons of different religious faiths for two reasons. First, religion as such has to do with what for many people are their deepest feelings and convictions, which are matters that are not easy to think about clearly. Moreover, these feelings and convictions often refer to the differing beliefs and practices of other people. The consequence is that many of the ideas people have about beliefs and practices that differ from their own -- ideas in which they have invested great feeling and conviction -- often fail to correspond to what those other people actually do believe and practice as seen from their own point of view. Second, as the words 'misunderstanding,' 'prejudice,' and 'bigotry' themselves suggest, people often make quick judgments without making effort to understand first on its own terms what it is they are inclined to judge. For these reasons, as much as any other area of study, objectivity is needed in the study of religion. Nowhere else is there a greater need to overcome ethno-centrism and ego-centrism, to get one's own biases out of the way, so as to allow the phenomenon in question (the thing being studied) to be understood for what it is on its own.
Often objectivity is thought to be attained by means of focusing exclusively upon factual detail in a cold and impersonal manner. But objectivity in the study of religion surely cannot mean that matters of emotion and deep feeling are to be left out of account, else we will be studying not religion itself, but at best its external trappings. Rather, what is needed here is a type of objectivity appropriate to the subject matter, an objectivity appropriate to understanding human subjectivity: an empathetic objectivity.
Why empathetic? Because matters of human subjectivity such as religion are not capable of being fully grasped within a single perspective, such as the one you are presently taking for granted. "Insiders" insist that their experience cannot be grasped except from within, while "outsiders" insist that the inside view doesn't take into account what can be seen from without. Clearly, full understanding must somehow take account of what can be seen and understood from whatever different perspectives may be found to be relevant to understanding the phenomenon being studied. Consequently, any description of an understanding that is to be judged faithful to the phenomenon itself must present it "in the round," so to speak, showing why it gives rise to such different views. In other words, an objectivity appropriate to the subject mater of religion must recognize, appreciate, and acknowledge the perspectival nature of religion. For that to be made effective, the person who wishes to understand religion must develop her or his capacity for empathy. EMPATHY is the imaginative capacity to suspend one's identification with his present actual perspective and, for the moment, cross over and enter the perspective of the other person, the 'insider,' in order to apprehend and appreciate what it is that can be seen from there.
Such imaginative "crossing over" is, of course, a different thing from actually taking up such a perspective -- a difference essentially akin to that between a role assumed in a dramatic portrayal of some historical action and the historical action itself. Understanding a religion empathetically is clearly a different thing from believing it, as Frederick Streng [Understanding Religious Life, second edition (Encino, CA: Dickinson, 1976), p. 13] writes: "Some people hold that religions are closed systems of propositions, which a person either accepts or rejects. But there is a difference between 'understanding' and 'believing;' a person can understand another religious form [to a lesser or greater extent] without believing it and thus [actually] 'entering' it. 'To believe' means to accept certain presuppositions about life and to live according to them. Understanding a religious claim or act calls for the same sort of effort as understanding any human claim or act. It may not be easy to listen to another person expound a religious view different from one's own. [Empathetic] Understanding requires a conscious attempt to identify [in one's imagination] with the thought patterns and emotional tone of another person's convictions" -- to imagine what it would be like if they were one's own. To understand empathetically is neither to believe nor to disbelieve; it is to "suspend one's disbelief," to use a phrase coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and vividly imagine what it is like to live and think in accordance with them well enough to merit the recognition of insiders. The aim is to do justice to the insider's perspective.
There is an old American Indian saying, I am told, that runs something like this: "Never judge a man until you have walked at least a mile in his moccasins." This applies to the study of religions particularly well -- for in few other areas do feelings about other persons and the differences they represent run so strong and so deep. It captures well the essence of empathetic objectivity.
The moccasin metaphor is appropriate in a further respect. One may well wonder how it is possible to identify from without what it is that makes up an insider's perspective. The moccasins or shoes into which one would have to step empathetically to understand the insider's perspective are the very things which define and delimit it for the insider himself. They are the same ones anyone growing up within that tradition or converting to that tradition have to put on to get in touch with the deeper realities that that tradition purports to render accessible. They are such things as special stories, holy books, rituals of prayer and worship, special gestures, clothing, and objects, sacred images (or absence of images), times, and proprieties to be observed, a distinctive moral code, a particular vocabulary for referring to what is taken to be the ultimate reality, etc. Such "shoes" may in general be called its SYMBOLS (though usually the word symbol has a much narrower scope). While they articulate and give expression to its beliefs, they also are the shoes with which a tradition's members walk through life. As a whole, a religious tradition more or less consists in the way these specific symbols come to be employed in relation of one another in practice; they are the primary thing that makes one tradition different from another. In this regard, a religious tradition may be regarded as A SYSTEM OF SYMBOLS.
Among a tradition's symbols are what an outsider finds strange, even alien about the tradition. They are the things on which the outsider's attention usually remains fixed and which he finds fascinating and/or repulsive, like the hieroglyphs of some unknown language. His awareness of them is of a focal nature. But the insider's attention, to the contrary, is not directed at these symbols at all; often she is oblivious of them because they are so familiar, so much a part of her. Her awareness of them is primarily of a subsidiary nature, for she is attending from them to the horizons of meaning and living they open up as one comes to dwell in them.
This difference between attending to them and attending from religious symbols pertains to what might be called a THRESHOLD EFFECT, which is the result of crossing the threshold of this system of symbols. The threshold effect is the change that comes to be experienced as one crosses the threshold, as one comes to attend from the symbols and dwell in them. To cross this threshold is to be granted entry into another world as it were, that is made accessible by the system of symbols in question. While the threshold effect is experienced quite consciously by an adult convert to a religious tradition, the effect often comes to be taken completely for granted by persons for whom these symbols have become second nature, causing them to find it strange that outsiders do not recognize the meanings that seem so obvious to them. For the outsider the meaning of the symbols is puzzling; they appear opaque; one cannot get past their surface appearance, as it were. But for the insider they become (at least from time to time) more or less transparent; they usher one into an experience of what is believed and felt to be the very presence of what they signify. Instead of being mere representations of something absent and elsewhere, they become presentations of it, or at least intimations of its presence.
A person who wishes to "enter" the tradition empathetically must not only realize that such a threshold effect is operative, but must deliberately seek to cross the threshold and experience the "threshold effect" in his imagination. He must allow his imagination to be expanded through coming to attend from the same symbols insiders attend from in order to attend to what it is they come to see and understand there. He must not only become aware of the moccasins, but must go ahead and walk the empathetic mile and come to lend voice to the insider's perspective in its difference from his own perspective.
In order to be objective, a descriptive representation of what the empathetic interpreter explores in this way must aim at introducing its reader/hearer to the meanings there to be found with as little distortion as possible. Ideally, the description should be a transparent window that enables those religious meanings to show themselves, in the very manner in which the interpreter has empathetically found them disclosed, in and through the specific symbols that disclose them. The interpreter's task is thus to usher his reader/hearer in a self-conscious act of empathetic imagination across the symbolic threshold he has had to cross. Failure to insure the reenactment of this threshold crossing and, therewith, the requisite act of empathetic imagination on the part of the reader/hearer will transform the intended window of understanding into a magic mirror. Like the fabled mirror of Snow White's stepmother, the interpreter's understanding will then reflect not the phenomenon, but at best his opinion about it, at worst his bias, and in either case leave undisturbed the complacent pre-conceptions of the reader/hearer. It will not really introduce his reader/hearer to an understanding of the phenomenon itself.
Two tests help to verify whether empathetic objectivity is realized in the descriptive representation of religious phenomena. The first tests how well the act of empathetic imagination has been carried through, how well the interpreter has given expression to meanings lying within the insider's perspective. The second tests how well the interpreter has succeeded in allowing the phenomenon to speak for itself, distinct from his own feelings and convictions, even when the phenomenon should happen to be from his own tradition.
THE TEST OF EMPATHY: Is my descriptive re-presentation of the inner meaning of the phenomenon (belief, practice, experience, etc.) sufficiently faithful to that meaning to merit recognition (at least in principle) from persons fully at home in the tradition in which it is found? (The possibility exists that an empathetic outsider might well help an insider come to appreciate new depths of meaning in his own tradition that he might otherwise overlook.)
THE TEST OF NEUTRALITY: Is my descriptive re-presentation of the phenomenon developed and expressed in such a way that it is free of bias from what my own position on religion may happen to be? I.e., have I allowed the phenomenon to be grasped and understood by others for what it is in a disengaged, neutral manner -- disengaged both from how I might like them to think and feel about it and as well from their having immediately to react and define themselves in relation to it (or in relation to what I have expressed as my attitude toward it)? If so, then no one's perspective is accorded privileged status and all are given equivalent respect.
The reference to "disengagement" pertains to the technique of BRACKETING, which is common in all forms of art, but is not often appreciated in other realms. We meet it in the frame surrounding a picture, in the beginning, ending and stage setting off a drama in time and space, in the inverted commas suspending and setting off a quotation, and in phrases used to attribute a belief under discussion to someone other than the current speaker. Bracketing, combined with empathy, is a means whereby the inward life of persons (whether that of others or of ourselves) may be brought to a faithful and appropriate expression in a manner set off from speaker's own person, and thus at a distance from the normal give and take of human interaction. Bracketing allows it to be grasped, understood, and reflected on as it is unto itself during a moment of understanding separate from our having to make up our minds about it. Bracketed expression thereby allows a variety of perspectives to be taken into account in order to understand and appreciate what otherwise may be missed entirely, glimpsed only superficially, or distorted through our immediate emotional reaction. It enables us to begin to see the phenomenon in the round. It enables mutual recognition between persons of opposing perspective about matters of inwardness, an appropriate objectivity about subjectivity. As one of my students put it: "Bracketing would allow a Buddhist monk to relate the story of Christ's resurrection . . . in a manner that carries the impact, emotional character and ultimate meaning to the Christian of that event, in addition to the basic story line. And to do so without indicating [or requiring] any type of personal belief in the story."
Together these tests are summed up in a statement by Søren Kierkegaard: "The majority of men are subjective towards themselves and objective towards all others, terribly objective some times -- but the real task is to be objective towards oneself and subjective towards all others."
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