Narratives of Empathy: Encounters between Animals and Humans in Philosophy, Science and Literature 1850-2010

与强调人与动物之间不可逾越的鸿沟的理性主义立场相反，最近关于动物-人-关系的研究强调了尽管物种差异，理解对方的同理心能力。从这一建议出发，该项目将从历时和系统的角度分析19世纪和20世纪的同理心叙事。目前，人们对移情这一概念的关注很多，而这一术语的历史可以追溯到18世纪初，在这一背景下很少有人注意到。设想的研究的基本假设之一是，从19世纪中叶开始，对非人类的他者的移情方法在理论和实践中日益发展，反对理性主义话语，后者断言动物和人类之间存在明显的分界线。这个比较项目将追溯从19世纪中叶到现在的哲学、科学和文学文本中关于同理心的叙述，这些文本侧重于人和动物之间的遭遇。该项目将首先询问同理心的叙述如何与认识论理论和人类学上人类与动物之间的界限相抗衡。这里将提出的问题是，人类-动物-动物关系的特定叙事阶段是否会改变物种的边界；此外，与理性主义差异模式的打破是否会揭示思维的替代实践和可能性。其次，阶段性的共情情感知识应与当代动物学知识相联系，并分别置于那个时期的动物器官中。第三，最后的问题是，在人与动物关系中的移情概念方面，可以看出哪些历时的变化，以及这些变化如何与分析文本的特定叙事结构和诗歌形式相联系。

Contrary to rationalist positions which emphasize the unbridgeable hiatus between humans and animals, recent studies on animal-human-relationships accentuate the capacity of empathy for understanding the other in spite of species differences. Starting from this suggestion the project will analyze from a diachronic and systematic perspective narratives of empathy in the 19th and 20th century. Currently a lot of attention is paid to the concept of empathy, whereas the history of the term, which reaches back to the early 18th century, is hardly noticed in this context. One of the basic assumptions of the envisaged study is that from the middle of the 19th century empathic approaches toward the non-human other are increasingly developed in theory and praxis against a rationalist discourse, which asserts a distinct line of demarcation between animals and humans. The comparative project will trace narratives of empathy from the middle of the 19th century up to the present in philosophical, scientific, and literary texts which focus on the encounter between humans and animals. The project will first ask how narratives of empathy contest epistemological theories and anthropological demarcations between humanity and animality. Here the question will be posed whether the species boundaries are shifted by the specific narrative staging of empathic human-animal-relations; and further, whether the breakage with a rationalist model of difference will disclose alternative practices and possibilities of thinking. Secondly the staged empathic emotional knowledge shall be put in relation to the contemporary zoological knowledge, and be located in the animal apparatus of the period, respectively. Thirdly, the final questions will be which diachronic alterations can be discerned, regarding the concept of empathy in human-animal-relations, and in which way they relate to the specific narrative structure and poetic form of the analyzed texts.