SYMPATHY OPC P

Our modern-day word for sympathy is derived from the classical Greek word for fellow-feeling. Both in the vernacular as well as in the various specialist literatures within philosophy psychology neuroscience economics and history sympathy and empathy are routinely conflated. In practice they are also used to refer to a large variety of complex all-too-familiar social phenomena: for example simultaneous yawning or the giggles. Moreover sympathy is invoked to address problems associated with social dislocation and political conflict. It is then turned into a vehicle toward generating harmony among otherwise isolated individuals and a way for them to fit into a larger whole be it society and the universe. This volume offers a historical overview of some of the most significant attempts to come to grips with sympathy in Western thought from Plato to experimental economics. The contributors are leading scholars in philosophy classics history economics comparative literature and political science. Sympathy is originally developed in Stoic thought. It was also taken up by Plotinus and Galen. There are original contributed chapters on each of these historical moments. Use for the concept was re-discovered in the Renaissance. And the volume has original chapters not just on medical and philosophical Renaissance interest in sympathy but also on the role of antipathy in Shakespeare and the significance of sympathy in music theory. Inspired by the influence of Spinoza sympathy plays a central role in the great moral psychologies of say Anne Conway Leibniz Hume Adam Smith and Sophie De Grouchy during the eighteenth century. The volume should offers an introduction to key background concept that is often overlooked in many of the most important philosophies of the early modern period. About a century ago the idea of Einfühlung (or empathy) was developed in theoretical philosophy then applied in practical philosophy and the newly emerging scientific disciplines of psychology. Moreover recent economists have rediscovered sympathy in part experimentally and in part by careful re-reading of the classics of the field.Salient FeaturesThis is a highly interdisciplinary volume with contributions by philosophers economists classicists literature scholars historians and political scientists The essays introduce new research on a vital concept that has been previously ignored in scholarship Sympathy is a concept that plays a key role in a wide variety of disciplines and has an incredibly rich relatively little studied history