Promises, limits and ambiguities of the term “empathy”

The term empathy appeared in the 19th century as an attempt to account for the capacity of the human being to project some of his or her mental contents as much on animate beings as on inanimate objects. Its content was then progressively circumscribed along the use of the term made by various authors. The more recent crazes for compassion, then for resonance, have again further restricted its meaning to narrow it down to a mere emotional encounter. But, beyond the squabbles over words that hardly conceal power struggles, what this illustrates is nothing new, ie. to steer stakes away from the collective into the individual.