ABSTRACT
The fields in which empathy has been the subject of recent attention have focused on empathy’s role in knowing others in the here and now. The question naturally arises whether the use of empathy to know and understand people in the present is different from the use of empathy to know and understand people in the past. This chapter addresses that question. In the process, the chapter responds to one of empathy’s most prominent critics, the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. It also considers the role of shared feeling in historical knowledge and understanding, since empathy’s affective dimension appears to play an important role in our everyday interactions. Most historians would probably deny that shared feeling plays much of a role in historical knowledge and understanding; and, certainly, when affective sharing does occur in historical work, historians are only rarely aware that feelings belonging to the past are coming to life in them.
