Empathy

How can we understand another person's feelings, thoughts, words or behaviour? Through empathy, it is hoped, we might use our imaginations to shift our perspective into another person's, thereby grasping their thoughts and emotions. In this insightful new book, Derek Matravers negotiates the evolution of this fascinating concept. He explores the roots of the term in the work of David Hume and Adam Smith, its re-emergence in a new form in nineteenth-century German philosophy, and its resurgence as something different again in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. In doing so, he explores the important role empathy, in all its forms, has played in the study of the mind, the emotions and aesthetics, and in ethics. Empathy is an ideal introduction to one of the most absorbing contemporary philosophical debates.

Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction: Some Historical Preliminaries 1 2 Some Conceptual Preliminaries 15 3 Empathy as Simulation 25 4 A Priori and A Posteriori Empathy 42 5 Re-enacting the Thoughts of Others 62 6 Empathy and the Emotions 75 7 Empathy and Ethics 104 8 Empathy and Aesthetics 124 9 Afterword 145 Notes 152 Bibliography 156 Index 164