Abstract
In the eighteenth-century thinking, the concepts of empathy (Einfühlung) and sympathy or compassion (Mitleid) were essential for the formation of a new social body based on a community of equals. However, they also created a link between the new social theory and dramaturgical theory in contemporary theater. The new stage experience that evolved from the middle of the century was based on the idea of arousing the spectator’s empathy or compassion through the protagonists’ actions, mainly in tragedy. It gave the new, inherently abstract social body its own concrete representation through imagination. Thus, Diderot and Lessing with their dramaturgical concerns were no less important than Hume, Smith, and Rousseau in shaping the genuinely modern notion of a society based on equality and, ideally, even universality.
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- 1.
The chapter is based on my work on theater in eighteenth century (see Schneider, 2008).
- 2.
‘Sympathy’ is the more common term, often also in French and English, ‘empathy’ is an English translation of the German Einfühlung from around 1900.
- 3.
I leave here unconsidered the different, not at all insignificant semantic ring of the German terms; in particular, Mitleid evokes a stronger notion of ‘suffering’ since in German there is not a separate word for ‘suffering’ proper, whereas in English and French the Latin root passio distinguishes ‘compassion’ from ‘to suffer’ or ‘souffrir’) (see Hamburger, 1985).
- 4.
In Lessing’s letter exchange on the Trauerspiel with his Berlin friends, the Enlightenment thinkers Friedrich Nicolai and Moses Mendelssohn, he already developed in the mid-fifties his seminal theory of dramaturgical Mitleid, to be published in extended form only later, in 1768/69, in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie (Lessing, 1767–69/1973b).
- 5.
- 6.
This formulation is from the Freimäurergespräche with respect to the Freemasonry organization in Lessing’s idealized interpretation. It indicates that “the feeling of sympathy” can also be thought of independently of the theater.
- 7.
- 8.
“Lorsque tout semble solliciter à l’égoisme, enhardir la cupidité, chérissons les seuls moyens qui peuvent nous persuader que nos compatriotes ne nous sont pas étrangers, que nous pouvons être unis en dépit des mœurs publiques, qui semblent autoriser la scission générale” (Mercier, 1773/1999, p. 1235).
- 9.
“Und dann endlich – welch ein Triumph für dich, Natur […] – wenn Menschen aus allen Zonen und Ständen, abgeworfen jede Fessel der Künstelei und der Mode, herausgerissen aus jedem Drange des Schicksals, durch eine allwebende Sympathie verbrüdert, in ein Geschlecht wieder aufgelöst, ihrer selbst und der Welt vergessen und ihrem himmlischen Ursprung sich nähern. Jeder einzelne genießt die Entzückungen aller, die verstärkt und verschönert aus hundert Augen auf ihn zurückfallen, und seine Brust gibt jetzt nur einer Empfindung Raum – es ist diese: ein Mensch zu sein” (Schiller, 1784/1993, p. 831).
- 10.
Although Hamburger states that Hume based sympathy “totally” on the imagination, for her this only proves Mitleid’s reflexivity – an unnecessarily complicated argument.
References
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Schneider, H.J. (2017). Empathy, Imagination, and Dramaturgy – A Means of Society in Eighteenth-Century Theory. In: Lux, V., Weigel, S. (eds) Empathy. Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51299-4_8
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