Overview

Empathy is widely acknowledged as a central, if not necessary, mechanism for understanding works of art, and even as the mode of engagement that mediates art’s edifying effects. Bringing together 15 essays by established scholars, this volume probes the character and role of empathy in our engagement with different forms of art, but also the value of such engagement for cognition, our emotive life, and our moral stance. Opening with a historical reconstruction of the origins of the concept of empathy, the volume develops in four parts that explore in turn our empathic engagement with fictional characters, the cognitive value of such engagement, its relevance for moral agency, as well as the thorny issue of empathic engagement with the inanimate in art, focusing on music and architecture. With an interest in both aesthetics and philosophy of mind, the volume provides an in-depth discussion of these themes, giving careful attention to historical, systematic, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dr Katerina Bantinaki (University of Crete, Greece) ,  Dr Efi Kyprianidou (Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus) ,  Dr Fotini Vassiliou (Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN:  

9781350409521

ISBN 10:   1350409529
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   24 July 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Katerina Bantinaki, Efi Kyprianidou and Fotini Vassiliou 1. What is Aesthetic Empathy? A Historical Approach, Thomas Petraschka (University of Regensburg, Germany) Part I. Faces of Empathy with Fictional Others 2. Empathetic Engagement with Fictional Characters, Noël Carroll (Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA) 3. Appreciating the Acting and Empathizing with Theatrical Characters: Anti-theatricality in Theatrical Performance, Maria José Alcaraz León (University of Murcia, Spain) 4. Videogames, Empathy, and the Paradox of Serious Games, Christopher Bartel (Charles Sturt University, Australia) 5. Empathy and the Paradox of Negative Emotions, Eva-Maria Konrad (Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany) Part II. Empathy for the Inanimate 6. The Moving Image and Empathetic Alignment: Vitality and Inertness / The Living and the Dead, Robin Curtis (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany) 7. Musical Emotion: Perception, Empathy, Movement, Joel Smith (University of Manchester, UK) 8. The Experience of Empathy in the Context of Music Listening, Jonna K. Vuoskoski (University of Oslo, Norway) 9. Empathy and Sustainability in Architecture, Sarah Robinson (Aalborg University, Denmark) Part III. Empathy and Aesthetic Cognitivism 10. Empathy, Imagination, and the Epistemic Value of Fiction, Amy Kind (Claremont McKenna College, USA) 11. Empathy, Imagination, and Emotional Understanding in Fictional Immersion, Cain Todd (Lancaster University, UK) 12. Empathy and the Experiential View of Aesthetic Cognitivism. How Empathic Imaginings Provide Knowledge of What an Emotion is Like, Ingrid Vendrell Ferran (University of Frankfurt, Germany) Part IV. Empathy and the Moral Stance 13. Empathy, Evil, and Imaginative Quarantine, Jonathan Gilmore (Graduate Center and Baruch College, CUNY, USA) 14. The Rhetoric of Empathy in Narrative Film, Carl Plantinga (Calvin University, USA) 15. Aesthetic Identification and Social Critique in the Age of Reality Television: A Reading of Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask, Tzachi Zamir (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) Index

Reviews

By bringing together some of the best thinkers in philosophical aesthetics, this volume offers a valuable pluralistic understanding of the value of empathy across a diverse range of artforms from literature to videogames to music to architecture. An important read for anyone grappling with issues of perspective-taking, character engagement or the imagination. * Karen Simecek, Associate Professor, University of Warwick, UK *

Author Information

Katerina Bantinaki is Assistant Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of Crete, Greece. Efi Kyprianidou is Assistant Professor in Aesthetics, Philosophy and Theory of Arts at Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus. Fotini Vassiliou is Assistant Professor in Phenomenology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

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