ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on empathy as a way of knowing past people by thinking, feeling, and imagining one’s way inside their experience. Although shared feeling can play a role in historical knowledge, the chapter argues that empathy is not contagion or merger. It is not identification either. Indeed, the chapter argues that merger and identification are incompatible with the disciplined use of empathy to know and understand human beings—whether in the past or in the present. Finally, empathy is not sympathy. Although empathy may give rise to sympathy, it does not necessarily lead to a “pro-social attitude” and it can be used for hostile or manipulative purposes. Because empathy is not merger, identification, or sympathy, we can and should try to empathize with perpetrators and other historical subjects we have no wish to resemble.
