Empathy -- Reflections on the History of Ethnology in Pre-Facist Germany: Herder, Creuzer, Bastian, Bachofen, and Frobenius

The notion of empathy was characteristic of the romantic & neoromantic tradition in German ethnology. In Johann Gottfried von Herder's philosophy of culture & history, empathy was based in aesthetics, & involved an inner correspondence among humans, in both the plastic arts, & f...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Dialectical anthropology 1985-06, Vol.9 (1-4), p.337-347
Main Author: Kramer, Fritz W
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic Disciplines
Empathy
Ethnology
Germany
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The notion of empathy was characteristic of the romantic & neoromantic tradition in German ethnology. In Johann Gottfried von Herder's philosophy of culture & history, empathy was based in aesthetics, & involved an inner correspondence among humans, in both the plastic arts, & feeling in general. In 1810 at Heidelberg, Friedrich Creuzer developed a rather esoteric notion of empathy as an innate capability of priests & mythologists. This concept of symbols reappeared later in Adolf Bastian's notion of elementary ideas. In a similar vein, Johann Jacob Bachofen wrote of the triumph of the Apollonian principle, using Creuzer's idea of empathy between the modern mythologist & archaic symbols. For Leo Frobenius, the privileged object of empathy was the "Divine King" & his followers. This methodological tradition is linked to the counter-enlightenment & to the history of nationalism. AA
ISSN:0304-4092