THE POLITICAL DISINTEGRATION OF THE SELF: MODAL WORLDS, EMPATHY, AND THE RESTORATION OF AGENCY

Contemporary democracies fragment the self through fear, value induction, and collective victimization, producing subjects who inhabit incompatible modal worlds and lose the capacity for coherent moral agency. Against this fragmentation, empathy rooted in Schopenhauer’s recognition of universal suffering enables the creation of organic communities where integrity of the self can be restored. Maintaining moral responsibility requires a conscious philosophy of life as a practice of critical self-awareness, empathetic connection, and resistance to political instrumentalization.