Herder on Empathy and Sympathy: Einfuhlung und Sympathie im Denken Herders

The English-German collection Herder on Empathy and Sympathy: Einfuhlung und Sympathie im Denken Herders considers the meaning and role of the concepts of empathy and sympathy in Herder’s thought. Herder invokes sympathy in a number of disciplinary domains ranging from metaphysics, biology, anthropology, epistemology, psychology, morality, politics, history, aesthetics to homiletics. While Herder is shown as belonging to a long line of thinkers who view sympathy as a metaphysical principle contributing to the interconnectedness of all parts of nature, he also offers new insights about intra-/inter-species sympathetic communication and distinctively human varieties of sympathy for which he reserves the term sich einfuhlen . Acknowledging the limits of the natural capacity for sich einfuhlen , Herder nonetheless calls for its reflective cultivation in various domains.