Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives

by Amy Coplan (Editor), Peter Goldie (Editor)

Empathy has for a long time, at least since the eighteenth century, been seen as centrally important in relation to our capacity to gain a grasp of the content of other people's minds, and predict and explain what they will think, feel, and do; and in relation to our capacity to respond to others ethically. In addition, empathy is seen as having a central role in aesthetics, in the understanding of our engagement with works of art and with fictional characters. A fuller understanding of empathy is now offered by the interaction of research in science and the humanities. Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives draws together nineteen original chapters by leading researchers across several disciplines, together with an extensive Introduction by the editors. The individual chapters reveal how important it is, in a wide range of fields of enquiry, to bring to bear an understanding of the role of empathy in its various guises. This volume offers the ideal starting-point
for the exploration of this intriguing aspect of human life.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology

431 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 2011

Reviews

[Nachi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing, despite the variety of authors feeling like a rollercoaster...

I really, really loved some chapters, which I found insightful and even life-changing:
1 - Understanding Empathy: Its Features and Effects (Coplan)
5 - Empathy, Imitation, and the Social Brain (Decety and Meltzoff)
14 - Empathy, Justicen, and the Law (Hoffman)
18 - Empathy for the Devil (Morton)

Others were pretty good:
4 - Within Each Other: Neural Mechanisms for Empathy in the Primate Brain (Iacoboni)
7 - Empathy, Expansionism, and the Extended Mind (Smith)
15 - Empathy and Trauma Culture: Imaging Catastrophe (Kaplan)
16 - Is Empathy a Virtue? (Battaly)

Others were so so.

And then a few, I particularly disliked, either because of weak scholarship, absurd unsubstantiated claims, or terrible readability:
2 - Empathy as a Route to Knowledge (Matravers)
8 - An Empathic Eye (Lopes)
9 - Infectious Music: Music-Listener Emotional Contagion (Davies)
11 - On Some Affective Relations between Audiences and the Characters (Carroll)

And special mention to the worst academic garbage I've ever read in my life, by FAR:
13 - Is Empathy Necessary for Morality? (Prinz)

In summary, the book is quite a journey, and due to the good chapters I highly recommend it.

[Duncan Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best chapters (for me): Currie's "Empathy for Objects" was top notch; Iacoboni's "Within each Other," an excellent summary by a pioneer in mirror neuron research; and finally Matravers' piece on "Empathy as a Route to Knowledge."

A very fine collection, certainly to be compared most favorably against Einfühlung. Zu Geschichte und Gegenwart eines ästhetischen Konzepts. I'm waiting to receive a copy of a Suhrkamp anthology dedicated to the same subject, Kulturen Der Empathie, so there will be even more to discuss when the three are all taken as a ensemble and reviewed accordingly.

[Pranav Narayan · Rating 3 out of 5]

i read this to get one question answered, and it was answered, though in a lot of words.