Loving Fathers and Deferential Sons: Hermeneutic Respect and the Controversies of Empathy in Nepal

Abstract

ABSTRACT Because of a dream, my elderly friend Laxmi Narayan was convinced that his son Prithivi was the reincarnation of his late father. Their apparent contentment in not knowing the other’s ‘inner state’ challenges the assumption that coexistence is achieved through empathic approximations. Rather than strive to bridge the gap through a quasi-first-person perspective, this story suggests that Selves and Others can readily do without empathy in their encounters. Both ‘empathy’ and ‘sympathy’ envisage a very specific way of approaching the other, one which requires otherness to disappear, albeit in different ways. However, the respectful relationships of otherness described in these pages suggest that being-of-the-same-kind is not an essential precondition for being-with-others. This insight undergirds the theorisation of a form of hermeneutic respect crucial to appreciate the articulation of inter-personal and inter-generational relationships in the rapidly changing context of contemporary Nepal.