The Evolution of Sympathy in the Long Eighteenth Century (The Enlightenment World)

This work represents a concise history of sympathy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, considering the phenomenon of shared feeling from five related angles: charity, the market, global exploration, theatre and torture. Sympathy, the sudden and spontaneous entry of one person's feelings into those of another, made it possible for people to share sentiments so vividly that neither reason nor self-interest could limit the degree to which individuals might care for others, or act involuntarily on their behalf. The progress of sympathy is intertwined with the period of global exploration evidenced by Cook's voyages and the rise of the sentimental novel before being met by growing suspicion in the works of radicals such as Wollstonecraft and Godwin. The history of sympathy seems to involve a dialectic of immediacy and artifice in which the knowledge of what it is like to be someone else is alternately the product of involuntary passion and of conscious manipulation. The question of social virtue, where it comes from, how it is aroused and in what direction it tends is perpetually being interrogated with no definite answer ever emerging. "This work represents a concise history of sympathy in the 18th and early 19th centuries, considering the phenomenon of shared feeling from five related angles: charity, the market, global exploration, theatre and torture. Sympathy ... made it possible for people to share sentiments so vividly that neither reason nor self-interest could limit the degree to which individuals might care for others, or act involuntarily on their behalf ... The history of sympathy seems to involve a dialectic to immediacy and artifice in which the knowledge of what it is like to be someone else is alternately the product of involuntary passion and of conscious manipulation. The question of social virtue, where it comes from, how it is aroused and in what direction it tends is perpetually being interrogated with no definite answer ever emerging."--Page 4 of cover This Work Represents A Concise History Of Sympathy In The Eighteenth And Early Nineteenth Centuries, Considering The Phenomenon Of Shared Feeling From Five Related Angles: Charity, The Market, Global Exploration, Theatre And Torture. Introduction; 1. Passion And Power; 2. Four Kinds Of Sympathy; 3. Sympathy And Persons; 4. Horrid Sympathy; 5. Sympathy For The Dead; Conclusion; Notes; Works Cited; Index. By Jonathan Lamb. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Contents ......Page 8 Introduction......Page 10 1. Passion and Power......Page 22 2. Four Kinds of Sympathy......Page 50 3. Sympathy and Persons......Page 86 4. Horrid Sympathy......Page 114 5. Sympathy for the Dead......Page 138 Conclusion......Page 150 Notes......Page 160 Works Cited......Page 176 Index......Page 184