Overview
- Addresses the epistemic problems in empathy research resulting from its divers and cross-disciplinary cultural and conceptual history
- Discusses how the Mirror Neuron System is connected with emotions
- Examines empathy in relation to interpersonal and social behaviour such as altruism or care giving
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology (PSTHP)
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About this book
This book digs into the complex archaeology of empathy illuminating controversies, epistemic problems and unanswered questions encapsulated within its cross-disciplinary history.
The authors ask how a neutral innate capacity to directly understand the actions and feelings of others becomes charged with emotion and moral values associated with altruism or caregiving. They explore how the discovery of the mirror neuron system and its interpretation as the neurobiological basis of empathy has stimulated such an enormous body of research and how in a number of these studies, the moral values and social attitudes underlying empathy in human perception and action are conceptualized as universal traits. It is argued that in the humanities the historical, cultural and scientific genealogies of empathy and its forerunners, such as Einfühlung, have been shown to depend on historical preconditions, cultural procedures, and symbolic systems of production.
The multiple semantics of empathy and related concepts are discussed in the context of their cultural and historical foundations, raising questions about these cross-disciplinary constellations. This volume will be of interest to scholars of psychology, art history, cultural research, history of science, literary studies, neuroscience, philosophy and psychoanalysis.
The authors ask how a neutral innate capacity to directly understand the actions and feelings of others becomes charged with emotion and moral values associated with altruism or caregiving. They explore how the discovery of the mirror neuron system and its interpretation as the neurobiological basis of empathy has stimulated such an enormous body of research and how in a number of these studies, the moral values and social attitudes underlying empathy in human perception and action are conceptualized as universal traits. It is argued that in the humanities the historical, cultural and scientific genealogies of empathy and its forerunners, such as Einfühlung, have been shown to depend on historical preconditions, cultural procedures, and symbolic systems of production.
The multiple semantics of empathy and related concepts are discussed in the context of their cultural and historical foundations, raising questions about these cross-disciplinary constellations. This volume will be of interest to scholars of psychology, art history, cultural research, history of science, literary studies, neuroscience, philosophy and psychoanalysis.
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Keywords
Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Epistemic Interventions
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Front Matter
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Debated History
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Vanessa Lux is a research fellow at the Faculty of Psychology at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. From 2011 to 2015, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin in research projects on epigenetics and neuropsychoanalysis. She is a member of the International Society for Theoretical Psychology.
Sigrid Weigel is a research scholar and former Director of the interdisciplinary Center for Literary and Culture Research in Berlin, an expert of Benjamin, Warburg, Heine, Freud, Arendt, Scholem et al. and has published on the cultural history of knowledge, images and European cultural history.
Sigrid Weigel is a research scholar and former Director of the interdisciplinary Center for Literary and Culture Research in Berlin, an expert of Benjamin, Warburg, Heine, Freud, Arendt, Scholem et al. and has published on the cultural history of knowledge, images and European cultural history.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Empathy
Book Subtitle: Epistemic Problems and Cultural-Historical Perspectives of a Cross-Disciplinary Concept
Editors: Vanessa Lux, Sigrid Weigel
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51299-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and Psychology, Behavioral Science and Psychology (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-51298-7Published: 02 October 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-70268-8Published: 15 April 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-51299-4Published: 14 September 2017
Series ISSN: 2946-2452
Series E-ISSN: 2946-2460
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 325
Number of Illustrations: 10 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Psychology Research, Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology