Empathy

Abstract

There is no one empathy theory, but rather an archipelago of authors and concepts organized around a center that seems to escape a rigorous definition, but has nonetheless inspired many conceptions in the humanities (in metaphysics and aesthetics, religion and ethics, psychology and psychoanalysis, sociology and anthropology), as well as in biology and zoology. Under the entry empatheia in Liddell-Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon we read: physical affection, passion. Its etymology is a compound of én (in) and a derived form of pathos (affection). The German term Einfühlung repeats the Greek compound: Ein is a prefix meaning “in” and a movement of penetration, immersion, or introduction from the outside to the inside (hinein)—although it can also allude to “one,” unity, unification, or fusion of two in one—and Fühlung, from fühlen, to feel, means feeling.