Images and empathy
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This document discusses empathy and morality. It examines definitions of empathy and whether empathy is necessary for morality. The document also analyzes the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, discussing how it used images and empathy to manipulate ideas and masses. Specifically, it explores the concept of "völkish" which was central to Nazi ideology. The conclusion agrees that empathy could awaken vicarious emotions but that connoisseurs of catastrophes of events like the Holocaust should agree with views that empathy is dangerous for moral judgments.
Images and empathy
- 1. Vera Lucia dos Santos Nojima, PhD. Professor of the Postgraduate Program in Design Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio Adriana Barbosa Ribeiro, PhD. Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio A Few Words on Images and Empathy
- 2. Manipulation of Nazi ideas through the imagetic discourse present in sequences of the film Triumph of the Will. Manipulation of Nazi ideas through the imagetic discourse present in sequences of the film Triumph of the Will by the German filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl. Our topic
- 3. A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a party of committed nationalist militants composed masses, working in collaboration with effective elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues, with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints, internal cleansing and external expansion”. (PAXTON, 2010) What is Fascism?
- 4. What is Empathy? “an other‐oriented emotional response congruent with the perceived welfare of another person”. (BATSON, 1990) “discover yourself with feelings for an object and discover yourself with feelings-name-of an object”. (DARWALL, 1998) Prinz rejects both of this definitions…
- 5. Is Empathy Necessary for Morality? Agreeing with Prinz, on our understanding, empathy doesn't necessarily presupposes a concern, or even a concern with the well-being of others, but rather, empathy assumes an emotion of identity being directed outward, projected onto others.
- 6. Paul Slovic introduces a question about numbness of feelings and what he called the collapse of compassion towards multiple victims wondering why the same good people who are moved to help “a person”, become indifferent when someone is “one of many” and part of a bigger issue. According to Slovic, this response would help answer an analogous question; why good people ignore mass murder and genocide?
- 7. Frames of the film Triumph of the Will . The concept of völkish is centered in the native qualities of the Germanic man.
- 8. The concept of völkish or völkische Bewegung (völkish movement) is centered in the native qualities of the Germanic man. The concept is fundamental in the development of a discursive unit about the Nazi ideology and ethnic unity to the Germans, and may even be understood as a constituent of racism and Nazi anti-Semitism. In this way… Prinz seems to be correct when he says, “If you're an outsider or is leased in a distant land, my degree of empathy can be reduced correspondingly”. The corner stone at the ideological foundation of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
- 9. Frames of the film Triumph of the Will . The concept of völkish is centered in the native qualities of the Germanic man.
- 10. Frames of the film Triumph of the Will. The film is about the return of Germany as a great power, everything about this sequence reflects this intention.
- 11. Conclusion The manipulation of fascist and masses imagery possibly awoke this vicarious emotion that empathy seems to be built from. Thus, connoisseurs of catastrophic consequences of these events for humanity, we can agree with Prinz on the dangers of empathy for formulating moral judgments.
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