On Historical Empathy
In the study of history, as in the living of life, it is imperative that a skill set be developed in order to obtain proficiency. Paramount amongst the many skills to be developed throughout the course of life is empathy, whether it be (1) cognitive empathy or (2) affective empathy, which is to say, respectively: (a) that form of empathy which allows one to understand another person’s experiences by way of reason and shared experience — logos — or (b) that form of empathy which allows one to feel the same emotions that another is feeling — pathos — . Similarly, paramount amongst the many skills to be developed as one studies history is a particular form of empathy which (1) mixes together both cognitive and affective empathy and (2) is directed towards those people of the past: historical empathy.¹
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¹ Note: historical empathy may well be interchangeable with the term, “historical perspective.”
E.g., I used historical empathy when analyzing an essay about the Salem Witch Trials, I think this example would be best understood as being juxtaposed against a hypothetical example in which I did not use historical empathy.
Hypothetical Analysis in Which Historical Empathy was Not Used:
“In my reading of the Salem Witch Trials, it became obvious that most of the people involved were credulous, barbaric, and dumb! How could they do such things as choose to burn and drown witches based upon their inane and insane assumptions of magic? Nobody today would think such a thing, I can scarcely believe this ever happened.”
In the above example, Hypothetical Me did not engage in any sort of empathy whatsoever, rather, Hypothetical Me based his entire analysis of the Salem Witch Trials upon value judgements which are based upon his understanding as it is in the timeline and context in which he exists.
Actual Analysis in Which Historical Empathy was Used:
In a discussion concerning an essay on the Salem Witch Trials, I responded to the question, “How did colonists’ belief in magic interact with their belief in providence? Why did colonists believe in magic, and how did it direct their everyday lives?”, not in saying something along the lines of, “It interacted with their belief in providence in weird and dumb ways because they were uneducated and dumb peasants who didn’t know better and therefore possessed insane beliefs.” Rather, I said, “The colonists’ belief in magic interacted with their belief in Providence in that magic functioned as something which could be juxtaposed against Providence, namely as something which was directly antithetical to Providence. To them, magic came from Satan, and Providence was the manifestation of God’s goodness in phenomenal world.” I then went on to say that, “I, personally, would say that they believed in magic because they were in touch with a way of being and an order of things which most of us moderns can not appreciate, namely: a way of being which pretty much views most phenomena as a clash between good and evil.”
In the above analysis, I used historical empathy, which is to say I explained the ethos, the logos of their reason, and the pathos of some of the people involved in the Salem Witch Trials in a dispassionate and unbiased way, I explained it in terms that the people themselves would’ve probably used. I stepped into their shoes, so to speak.
In the study of history, as in life, it is oftentimes more edifying to step into the shoes of other people, rather than not.
