The Aesthetics of Empathy in Adorno's Aesthetic Theory

Particular lines of thought that inform Adorno's Aesthetic Theory could be read as the closing statement of a particular debate in German aesthetic theory--the debate between abstraction and "Einfühlung," which literally means "in-feeling" but was eventually translated, in 1909 by the psychologist Edward Titchener, with the neologism "empathy." Einfühlung was used to describe the ability to “feel-into” a work of art characteristic of particular values of 18th century Romanticism that would inform the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk and its influence on multimedia spectacle. It would eventually migrate into, around 1900, German aesthetic psychology, and then, around 1930, alongside the importation of German psychophysics, American experimental psychology. It was foundational for psychological studies that sought to explain experimentally why audiences had specific emotional reactions to both works of art and to other people. This aesthetic value was rejected most overtly by Brecht, but its legacy clearly informs much of the writings on art and spectacle by Adorno, Benjamin, and others surrounding the Frankfurt School, such as Krakauer. This talk seeks to demonstrate the legacy of this debate in the claims of Aesthetic Theory. Returning to this debate, along with its development in Aesthetic Theory, provides a needed perspective today, when "empathy" is increasingly held to be an aesthetic and political ideal, legitimating large-scale "immersive" spectacles and subtly informing how authoritarian populism makes use of media. Thus, "Aesthetic Theory" could provide a provocative and necessary alternative to--and reinvention of--the generalized valorization of "empathy" today.