抄録
The modern era is known as the age of empathy. In recent years, empathy theory has been subject to criticism from rationalists. If empathy is the “other of reason,” a kind of tendency, then we should not judge according to it. The tradition of autonomism influences this response from rationalism. Autonomy is the giving of law to oneself; heteronomy is that by others. However, can we completely distinguish between the self and the other? The nature of the relationship between the self and the other is what is truly at issue in autonomy.
The 19th century German philosopher Nietzsche is generally regarded as an irrationalist or immoral philosopher who aimed at restoring the body and emotions against the dominance of reason. However, owing to his emphasis on autonomy and self-mastery, he is sometimes treated as a rationalist.
This paper emphasizes that Nietzsche’s theory of self-mastery and self-control necessarily presupposes a relationship between self and others. Previous studies take Nietzsche’s autonomy as self-relational. However, Nietzsche insisted that autonomy is only possible when it is based on relationships with others. For Nietzsche, autonomy is closely linked to the prohibition of one’s own sympathy for others. In other words, it can be argued that for Nietzsche, autonomy is opposed to sympathy, and the former could only be discussed in the context of the critique of the latter.
This study ensures one point of critique of contemporary theories of empathy. Nietzsche criticizes that when empathy means a one-sided empathy for the suffering of others, the otherness of the other could be erased. And, against the anti-empathy argument, it can be argued that autonomy may presuppose a relationship with the other.
