Courses

In this course, we will explore the long history of “empathy” as an aesthetic and literary concept. We will trace this history from Aristotle’s definition of tragic pathos in his Poetics, through 18th century debates about the “moral education of man” by literary means, to the late-19th century development of psychological theories centered on emotional “self-projection,” and from the subsequent critique of aesthetic empathy in the works of modernist writers like Worringer, Rilke, Benjamin, and Brecht, to the recent humanistic revival of the term in the wake of neuroscientific discoveries about the “empathic brain.” In the process, we will examine the different philosophical, scientific, and political frameworks that have conditioned the concept’s shifting status and functions over time. And we will ask about the methodological relevance that notions of empathy may still hold for our current—and future—understanding of reading, literary analysis, and aesthetic experience.