Visiting or house-swapping? Arendt and Jaspers on empathy, enlarged mentality and the space between

Bibliographic Data

ID11340276
AuthorsGiunia Gatta (0000-0002-4926-8724, Columbia University, New York, USA, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume40
Issue10
Pages997-1017
Publication date2014-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy & Social Criticism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0191-4537 • E-ISSN: 1461-734X
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0191453714548501
OpenAlexW2100301194
LanguageEN
Citations received8

Hannah Arendt has been one of empathy’s most formidable and influential critics among contemporary political theorists. In this article, I suggest that her argument against empathy is no argument at all. The line she draws between empathy and imagination is arbitrary, and imagination cannot – in and by itself – sustain the work of representative thinking, which Arendt assigns to it. With this critique of Arendt, and the introduction of an alternative view of empathy put forth by Karl Jaspers, Arendt’s mentor and friend, I hope to open the way for a reconsideration of the distrust with which empathy is met among many political theorists

Argument (complex analysis · Distrust · Empathy · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology · Social Psychology

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