Literary Einfühlung: A Reappraisal of German Theories of Empathy

Abstract

In the following pages, I propose to link some insights and findings the German psychological aesthetics of the late nineteenth century to the neuroscience of empathy. My aim is to reconstruct a genealogy, or perhaps even an archeology of “literarische Einfühlung”, emphasizing that the origins of the German debate on Einfühlung are not limited to visual, optical and spatial concerns, but also encompass distinctly literary phenomena. In particular, I focus on one genre – tragedy – and two key categories: das Tragische and die Tragik. The latter term serves specifically to distinguish the psychological interpretation of Tragedy from the metaphysical one and ultimately from philosophy. This distinction is at the hearth of the controversy between the leading figure of the Einfühlung, Theodor Lipps – who constantly favors Tragik – his “opponent”, Johannes Volkelt one of the principal figures in psychological aesthetics. It is impossible to understand the current debates on empathy without reexamining the original core texts of the 19th century and several other theoretical contributions which, although not explicitly focused on the notion of empathy, explore psychological issues such as psychic congestion, embodied simulation, and the notion of exoneration (Emil Utiz, Vernon Lee, Karl Groos). These texts not only anticipate philosophical and literary critical debates today, but also anticipate neuroscientific discoveries of the last 30 years in uncanny ways.