The Eighteenth-Century Context of Sympathy from Spinoza to Kant (2024)

Sympathy: A History

Eric Schliesser (ed.)

Published:

2015

Online ISBN:

9780190247195

Print ISBN:

9780199928873

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Sympathy: A History

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Ryan Patrick Hanley

Ryan Patrick Hanley

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Oxford Academic

Pages

171–198

  • Published:

    September 2015

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Hanley, Ryan Patrick, 'The Eighteenth-Century Context of Sympathy from Spinoza to Kant', in Eric Schliesser (ed.), Sympathy: A History, OXFORD PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS (New York, 2015; online edn, Oxford Academic, 17 Sept. 2015), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199928873.003.0010, accessed 16 Apr. 2024.

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Abstract

Sympathy’s ubiquity in the eighteenth century is best traced to its unique status as a sophisticated philosophical response to the practical challenges of a shift from traditional and more intimate forms of community to new forms of social organization; sympathy in this sense emerged as a new and creative philosophical response to the practical problem of human connectedness in an increasingly disorienting world. In particular, sympathy emerged as an other-directed sentiment capable of sustaining the minimal social bonds needed to realize the new social order, and capable of so doing without requiring acceptance of the theistic foundations of Christian conceptions of love. The eighteenth-century theorists of sympathy not only cemented its shift from a principle primarily dedicated to explaining connections between substances to a principle dedicated to explaining connections between human individuals, but also gave birth to a novel concept intended to serve as a substitute for love.

Keywords: sympathy, love, compassion, passion, affect, egoism, eighteenth century, Enlightenment

Subject

History of Western Philosophy

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

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