Sympathetic Imagination Research Articles

Civic Friendship, Capabilities and Affiliation

Abstract In The New Religious Intolerance, Martha Nussbaum addresses rising intolerance and fear of difference in contemporary societies. She suggests overcoming these issues through ethical consistency, equality, and the cultivation of sympathetic imagination. Nussbaum views this imaginative engagement as a form of civic friendship essential for societal transformation. However, we argue that her concept of civic friendship is problematic. First, Nussbaum's criteria do not suffice to define friendship. Second, this thin concept of civic friendship is unlikely to achieve the societal transformation Nussbaum envisions. We propose developing a more substantive account of civic friendship. This paper aims to create an Aristotelian account of civic friendship within a capabilitarian framework compatible with contemporary, plural societies.

How NGOs May Promote a Shared Society in Conflict-Affected Areas

Abstract This article comparatively examines the results of a qualitative study of how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) may promote a shared society in the conflict-affected areas of Israel and Cyprus. The authors have chosen to set their research in these two contexts, where the complex relationships between the majority and the minority communities have led to persistent conflicts that seem rather ‘intractable’ and ‘frozen’. Three thematic categories emerge from this analysis: (a) empowering citizens to enact intercultural initiatives; (b) enhancing youth’s agency; and (c) collaborating with the state and other actors. The authors discuss their findings under the framework of interculturalism and intercultural change. Their argument is that for peacebuilding to flourish in both countries, civil society organizations (CSOs) should cultivate sympathetic imagination by enabling people from the communities in conflict to firstly imagine and then pursue alternatives to the current status quo.

CSOs working for peace through education in conflict‐affected areas: The case of Cyprus

AbstractThis article discusses the results of a qualitative study examining the ways civil society organisations (CSOs) may better support grass‐roots initiatives for everyday peacebuilding via education in conflict‐affected societies, where official state processes have failed. Our research is set in the Cyprus context, where the conflict between the Greek‐Cypriot and Turkish‐Cypriot communities that has led to the division of the island seems rather ‘intractable’ and ‘frozen’. From the process of the analysis, three thematic categories emerged: (a) cultivating citizen empowerment and civil initiatives; (b) enhancing children's and youth's voices; and (c) launching partnerships with state and societal actors. We discuss our findings under the framework of intercultural education and change. It is argued that for peacebuilding to flourish, CSOs should use education to cultivate social and sympathetic imagination by enabling people from both communities to imagine other, more socially just, but also socio‐economically better, alternatives to the current status quo, through everyday peace and education initiatives.

윤리적 폭력을 너머 상생을 위한 공감으로

This study aims to analyse the vision of sympathy in George Eliot's Middlemarch, reflecting on the singularity of others and common vulnerability in human life discussed in Judith Butler's Precarious life, Giving an Account of Oneself. Middlemarch is set in the fictional provincial village, Middlemarch in England during the early 1830s, the age of English reform. Middlemarch reveals the roots of the precarious lives of Dorothea Brooke and other characters. In other words, it surfaces the process of overcoming ethical violence, which is structured in an imperfect social environment, through sympathy toward others. Further, it focuses on the interdependence and interconnectedness of society and individuals as well as among individuals. Eliot emphasizes sympathy as a medium for emerging from institutionalized ethical violence in society. Eliot resonates with Butler in that the novel explores and urges ways to practice reconciliation and a harmonious life for the coexistence of 'I,' 'you,' and 'us.' For Eliot and Butler, the relationship for a livable life begins with sympathetic imagination that draws attention to the sufferings and losses of others, and common vulnerability of human beings.

상상력과 사랑

This paper reads P. B. Shelley’s unfinished poem The Triumph of Life (1822), which recounts the poet’s visionary experience of beholding the triumphal procession of Life, in relation to his claims about imagination and love in A Defence of Poetry (1821). For Shelley, imaginative faculty forms the basis of a feeling of sympathy for others, which develops into love. This notion of sympathetic imagination appears to be the key to understanding the poem, especially the significance of Rousseau who guides the narrator through the apocalyptic vision. The principal purpose of this article is to elucidate the role of Rousseau in the Triumph, whom Shelley considers to be essentially a poet, i.e. a man of imagination. To Shelley’s way of thinking, Rosseau is proven highly imaginative in developing radical political ideas which had their roots in his fervent desire to remedy the ills of the world, and which profoundly impacted the outbreak of the French Revolution. However, Rousseau’s encounter with the vision of the “shape all light,” a malevolent spirit who offers him the cup of nepenthe, blots out his memories of the past, hence trampling the spark of imagination in his mind. For his ability to imagine ideal conditions for human existence is based upon his criticism of the harsh realities of the world—criticism being an act of remembering the past. However, Rousseau’s liberation from the chariot of Life is attained by his unswerving loyalty to democratic ideals, which holds true for Shelley.

Beginnings in Jonathan Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Alia Yunis’ The Night Counter

Drawing on Edward Said’s “Beginnings theory,” which is the central thesis in his book Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975), several post- 9/11 narratives reflect means for perceiving how these various accounts foreshadow a new era in both literature and political discourse. These accounts constitute a “beginning,” to use a Saidian term, heralding a new vision of the Islamic (Arab)/Western representation; a shift from a “historical pattern.” In this study, the tension created by turning a “historical aboriginality” into personal representations is reevaluated from a Saidian perspective. Such post- 9/11 narratives lend themselves to manifesting how the interrelation between an “obligation” for narration and a “sympathetic imagination” create beginnings. To achieve this end, the study will examine two narratives: Jonathan Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005) and Alia Yunis’ The Counter Night (2009). By advancing and investigating these narratives, the study aims at reaching new ideas about the representation of a major event in political history, namely: 9/11.

Intolerance and Fear: A Critical Analysis of Cases of Religious Intolerance in Indonesia Based on a Study by Martha Nussbaum

Cases of religious intolerance in Indonesia are still quite high today. Government regulations on freedom of religion and laws that will ensnare perpetrators of intolerance seem incomplete to resolve the issue, so a more personal approach is needed to complete the process of handling cases of religious intolerance in Indonesia. Therefore, the purpose of this writing is to analyze and present additional dishes by borrowing Martha Nussbaum's menu in her book The New Religious Intolerance, using a qualitative method approach and collecting research data from books and journals, as well as other digital data related to the topic. The result, according to Nussbaum, is that religious intolerance arises because it is caused by a fear of others, therefore, offers three important offerings to solve the problem of religious intolerance. First, respect each other and build the principle of equality. Second, be self-aware and be fair. Third, respect for fellow human beings and foster a participatory and sympathetic imagination. These three combinations will be analyzed with the help of other supporting theories so that they can be presented as an effort to resolve religious intolerance in Indonesia.

Nature aesthetics

AbstractNature aesthetics is concerned with four core questions: What is a natural environment? What is relevant, psychologically speaking, to the aesthetic appreciation of natural environments? How ought we to aesthetically appreciate natural environments? What is the relationship between nature aesthetics and environmental ethics? In this essay, I first address in Section 2 whether theorizing about nature aesthetics is possible by challenging the non‐aesthetics view, according to which aesthetic appreciation of nature is not possible, and the relativity view, according to which aesthetic appreciation of nature is possible, but it is an anything goes affair. In Section 3, I outline the core arguments for scientific cognitivism and provide objections to those arguments, making room for alternative views. In Section 4, I outline the distinction between cognitivism and non‐cognitivism and discuss the benefits of the engagement view. In Section 5, I outline the sympathetic imagination view of nature aesthetics. In Section 6, I discuss the emotions view. In Section 7, after summarizing the lessons learned from these debates, I argue for a new view— Enacting Nature's Value— which proposes that we need to rethink nature aesthetics in terms of an enactivist account of aesthetic agency according to which the aesthetic appreciation of nature is a skilled action. In Section 8, I close by considering four future directions for nature aesthetics in the second generation of inquiry.

Reply to Critics

Reply to Critics

Animal dignity and sympathetic imagination: Martha Nussbaum and an analysis of the treatment of non-human animals

In this paper, I analyse Martha Nussbaum?s view of how we should treat non-human animals, which she links to her capabilities approach. This approach offers a conception of justice or, as Nussbaum puts it, a collection of fundamental rights that specify some of the necessary elements for a just society. In addition to justice for human beings, this approach includes animal rights. The basis for the discussion consists of two elements that justify the claim that every animal deserves to live a life that is characteristic of a member of its species. The first element is dignity, and the second is sympathetic imagination. The intention of Nussbaum?s approach is to represent an improvement on the social contract tradition (in particular, in the Rawlsian version), by offering a more encompassing theory of justice. In her view, the capabilities approach, contrary to the theories of social contract, has principled resources that allow it to include, among else, non-human-animals in the domain of justice. However, the contribution of my paper consists in showing the problems I observe in Nussbaum?s theory. These problems are related to the insufficient definition of basic concepts and to the fact that in Nussbaum?s theory, non-human animals remain, across various situations, only a means of serving human needs. The consequence is that non-human animals are not included in the domain of justice which, after all, is Nussbaum?s fundamental ambition.

거울 뉴런과 문학 2: 쿳시의 『엘리자베스 코스텔로』에 나타난 공감의 인지신경과학과 그 윤리적 함의

For all ages, sympathy has been emphasized as the source of human morality, sociality, and culture. The science of sympathy made a breakthrough when the Giacomo Rizzolatti team in Italy revealed that humans have mirror neuron system, a neural mechanism that enables us to read other people’s minds and feel sympathy. Through neuroscientific research on “mirror neuron,” which is a neural basis of sympathy, and cognitive scientific research that explains the work of the mind as “embodied” cognition, this paper aims to examine the principles of sympathy and its ethical implications in J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello (2003). Costello, the main character in this work, suggests “sympathetic imagination” as the source of our ethical behavior and asserts that there are no limits to it. However, the fact that (the silenced or animal) others do not have (human) languages symbolizes in itself an absolute limit to sympathetic imagination. This limitation suggests the limitation in rational reasoning. It reflects a cognitive neuroscientific perspective: Human beings’ autonomous ability of reasoning, which western classical philosophy emphasized as an element that distinguishes humans from animals, has, in fact, developed as a form of animalistic reason based on physical ability-in other words, the reason is something generated and refined through sensory and motor systems of the human brain and body. In this work, Costello can only sympathize with the pains of others through “embodied” language and “embodied” experience. In short, Elizabeth Costello proved the possibility and usefulness of cognitive neuroscience in literary interpretation by manifesting the leap of sympathetic imagination through an unconscious pathway called mirror neuron and its ethical potential.

Resonance and the Photographing of Medieval Architecture

In this essay I aim to convey in text and photographs what it might mean to experience medieval architecture with some degree of connectivity or what Wittgenstein calls, poetically, “resonance.” I provide examples of personal experiences of medieval architecture, and argue for the importance of historical knowledge, sensuous acquaintance, and a sympathetic imagination in gaining a resonant affiliation. Photography, I want to show, is a way of engaging aesthetically with medieval architecture that can, on occasion, lead to the making of images that serve as authentic reminders of the original experience.

“Terrible intimacy:” Modernist destruction and recreation in Williams’s poetics

Perhaps in keeping with Ezra Pound’s dictum, “Make it new,” the modernist poetics of William Carlos Williams thrives on the dialectics of destruction and recreation, descent and reemergence, isolation and contact—a poetics that reflects the doctor-poet’s views on natural and social processes. Stripped of conventional and sentimental associations in contact with the poet’s isolated but sympathetic imagination, each particular thing must reemerge in its vivid and authentic presence. But are all “things,” all objects of poetry, on equal footing in the dynamics of poetic destruction and recreation—objects, words, social entities, individuals? On the one hand, the poet’s humanism combines with curiosity and sensual fascination as he gently delivers the human subject from obliterated social constructs, in rebirth. On the other, he inclines more toward destruction in his treatment of the “intimate” woman, who somehow channels social constructs back into his imagination, thereby threatening his creative equanimity and becoming an impossible poetic object herself. Often missed in literary criticism is the fact that it is the figure of the intimate woman—rather than the distant woman—that brings out the ruthless poet-god in Williams. Disintegrating the intimate woman into a thingly physicality in an unfulfilled and ambivalent project of remaking, the poet in fact both celebrates and regrets his destructiveness in intimacy and its poeticization. The intimate woman in Williams’s poems problematizes what we mean when we talk about “destruction and recreation” in modernist aesthetics.

Sympathy across Eighteenth-Century Worlds: Proximity against Global Vision

ABSTRACT Taking as its starting point eighteenth-century sympathy’s inclination towards local and familiar social relations, this chapter explores how the discourse on sympathy engages with and is transformed by imagining scenes well beyond the domain of proximity. The discursive negotiation of sympathy by Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, by Adam Smith in particular, displays a complex dynamic of relying on proximity and intersubjective presence on the one hand and reaching out by an act of the imagination on the other, thus bringing in a movement of spatial expansion and global vision. Smith’s version of ‘concentric circles’ (Forman-Barzilai) represents a potential global extension of his ethics as well as the limits of sympathy’s affective bonding. Contemporary literary reader-response poetics (Lord Kames) co-opts the Smithian concept of sympathetic imagination for fictional encounters with life beyond the reader’s own sphere: the sympathetic imagination serves to approximate vicarious experience. Rather than bring the world closer to home by such acts of the imagination, however, the popular literary writings on sympathy by Samuel Jackson Pratt are shown to thrive on sympathy’s geographical outward expansion, ultimately reinventing the operations of sympathy in terms of a pre-Enlightenment cosmological harmony with clear overtones of imperialism.

<제인 에어>에 나타난 돌봄 관계의 양상과 공감적 상상력

<제인 에어>에 나타난 돌봄 관계의 양상과 공감적 상상력

Art for Animals: Visual Culture and Animal Advocacy, 1870–1914 by J. Keri Cronin

Reviewed by: Art for Animals: Visual Culture and Animal Advocacy, 1870–1914 by J. Keri Cronin Catherine Paulin Cronin, J. Keri – Art for Animals: Visual Culture and Animal Advocacy, 1870–1914. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. Pp. 247. Art historian J. Keri Cronin exposes the ways that animals, history and, culture were interconnected by exploring the visuals used by animal advocacy groups in Britain and North America between 1870 and 1914. Her work is interdisciplinary, combining methods and theories from visual culture as well as critical animal studies. The focus of the book is on the later half of the nineteenth century, when the author argues that iconography was an integral, and even expected, part of animal advocacy (p. 16). Her research is based on the premise that all art, high as well as low, worked in conjunction to create a context where it was possible to discuss the role of non-human animals. The main objective is not to explore the imagery used by advocates exhaustively, nor to present an analysis of only one category of art, but rather to bring to light how different meanings could be understood from these visuals depending on the context (time and space), the individual examining the art, and the presentation medium. The author suggests that examining the visual culture that was employed by animal advocacy groups in the United States, Canada, and Britain is a good way of revisiting the issues prevalent in human-animal relations, today but also in historical contexts. Cronin also submits that it can lead to new ways of understanding the functioning of these early groups and further reveals the importance of visual culture to animal advocates. The book includes an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. It contains a list of the many beautiful illustrations found within the book at the beginning, as well as an index at the end. The first chapter, "Educate Them Artistically," serves as a background to the following sections: it presents the use and importance of pictures and visual culture by animal advocates. The second chapter brings forward the importance of "bearing witness" in animal advocacy when "many people chose to look away, to avoid eye contact, and not visually engage with a difficult sight" (p. 71). Cronin reminds us of the importance of knowing the context of creation and exhibition for documentary-type visuals and discusses the "politics of sight" (or who is allowed to see what) (pp. 80–83, 92–94). She demonstrates how advocates aimed to stop the "cultural invisibility" of certain activities by using new technologies such as increasingly accessible photography (pp. 85–92). The third chapter is not concerned with the "truth-telling" inspired by documentary images but rather by the "sympathetic imagination": the creation of meaning and the discussions brought about by the [End Page 479] diffusion of animal autobiographies as well as drawings, cartoons. and paintings of animals using various artistic techniques (pp. 100–129). The fourth chapter reflects on advocacy in public space. Public art such as the monument to the "Brown Dog" used in vivisection experiments, the involvement of public figures, campaigns, public protests, and exhibits all drew attention to animal advocacy groups and the animals they aimed to protect and defend, making them increasingly visible. The author therefore reminds us that "the proper treatment of nonhuman animals in the modern world was negotiated in very public sites" (p. 166). The use of visuals in public space was of the utmost importance to help make visible what was otherwise imperceptible to others. However, advocacy could also take place inside of the home; a point which is explored by the author in chapter 5. Decorating the drawing room to the taste of activist owners was a statement to visitors, but the context of the home led to certain visuals feeling less intimidating and could therefore allow for a reduction of meaning (p. 189). The homes used as spaces for animal advocacy were also dominated by the middle class: links are drawn by the author between proper family values, domesticity, motherhood, civility, and animal advocacy (p. 189). Through this first look at how visual culture is historically deployed by animal advocacy...

A Study on the Change of Perception of North Korean Defectors in Korean Christianity: Focused on Sympathetic Imagination

A Study on the Change of Perception of North Korean Defectors in Korean Christianity: Focused on Sympathetic Imagination

Dissenting Cosmopolitanism and Helen Maria Williams’s Prison Verse

ABSTRACTHelen Maria Williams’s ability to engage in various forms of cosmopolitan conversation – both embodied and imagined – arose from her connections to diverse religious communities. A socially conscious Presbyterian Dissenter, of Scottish and Welsh background, Williams expressed convictions regarding what we would now recognize as human rights. Through her early verse, she advocated for the autonomy of indigenous South Americans and for Africans held in slavery. Once she turned her attention to the French Revolution, she was attracted to its ideas regarding abolitionism, women’s participation in the public sphere, and forms of festivity uniting Protestants and Catholics. When imprisoned along with other British citizens, essentially held hostage at a time of war, she maintained her faith in revolutionary principles through forms of cosmopolitan creativity. Such activity, which included listening to and transcribing a collaboratively composed French hymn, reflected her identity as a religious dissenter. Twenty-first century theories of cosmopolitanism which focus on sociability – such as Kwame Anthony Appiah’s definition of cosmopolitan conversation as imaginative encounter and Elijah Anderson’s attention to cosmopolitan canopies – can help frame Williams’s collaboratively creative activities within her prison cell. Her hospitality, transcription, translation, and poetic composition arose from acts of sympathetic imagination rooted in her Dissenting cosmopolitanism.

Wolf Hall and moral personhood

Abstract Can a good man do evil things? This paper offers a moral philosophical reading of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the bodies, focusing on Mantel’s fictional portrayal of Thomas Cromwell as a good person, in spite of his growing involvement in the dirty work of Henry VIII. The narrative resists interpretations of Cromwell as someone corrupted by power. It also thwarts attempts to read his deeds as results of a deficient capacity for sympathetic imagination, which has been a focalized moral flaw in contemporary moral philosophical discussions of literature. By thus resisting moralized readings of his character, the novels invite intensified attention to the complex dynamics of character and circumstance.

‘Woman Seems to Be Given Her Proper Place’: Western Women’s Encounter with Sikh Women 1809–2012

Over a period of two centuries, western women—travellers, army wives, administrators’ wives, missionaries, teachers, artists and novelists—have been portraying their Sikh counterparts. Commentary by over eighty European and north American ‘lay’ women on Sikh religion and society complements—and in most cases predates—publications on Sikhs by twentieth and twenty-first century academics, but this literature has not been discussed in the field of Sikh studies. This article looks at the women’s ‘wide spectrum of gazes’ encompassing Sikh women’s appearance, their status and, in a few cases, their character, and including their reactions to the ‘social evils’ of suttee and female infanticide. Key questions are, firstly, whether race outweighs gender in the western women’s account of their Sikh counterparts and, secondly, whether 1947 is a pivotal date in their changing attitudes. The women’s words illustrate their curious gaze as well as their varying judgements on the status of Sikh women and some women’s exercise of sympathetic imagination. They characterise Sikh women as, variously, helpless, deferential, courageous, resourceful and adaptive, as well as (in one case) ‘ambitious’ and ‘unprincipled’. Their commentary entails both implicit and explicit comparisons. In their range of social relationships with Sikh women, it appears that social class, Christian commitment, political stance and national origin tend to outweigh gender. At the same time, however, it is women’s gender that allows access to Sikh women and makes befriending—and ultimately friendship—possible.