Historical Empathy

Historical empathy is the effort historians give to try to move closer to the thinking of individuals of past societies. To do this historians must consider an enormous number of different contextual considerations. Context within the time period being deliberated is central to this idea. Morals, beliefs, periods of change or movements, and interpersonal relationships can only be viewed within the framing of the time. In the framing of 1850BCE in Babylon, the citizens under the Code of Hammurabi can be expected to hold different values than Wisconsinites following from 2021. Defining the prices to be paid for stolen water-wheels may hold a contextual intrinsic reason beyond the instrumental value the water-wheel holds in the way of grinding grain for Babylonians. Just as we hold intrinsic values in knowing the laws for driving. Passing a drivers test opens to intrinsic values of personal freedom, self-sufficiency, and maturity. Within the context of the importance of the automobile to Wisconsinites in 2021, driving laws (and therefore tests about those laws) are valued within larger contextual themes. Viewing with historical empathy looks to complete as many of these implicit thoughts and beliefs in other times. It differs from emotional empathy as emotional empathy requires I, the car driving Wisconsinite with all my personal experiences, view Babylonia. If one is only projecting their own beliefs, morality, or values, then the empathy is emotional. The emotions are the projections of the researcher, and not the subject’s emotions. The attention no longer lies upon the subject. Historical empathy is desirable, but never completely obtainable. Historical empathy is desirable, because it brings us closer to understand past perspectives more completely. Emotional empathy would say that it is relatively easy to find someone in the Babylonian market selling 10 gur of corn. Historical empathy would attempt to weight all the decisions and work necessary to have productive farming land, invest time in irrigation, patiently wait to reap, glean, and process the kernels into 10 gur. For everyone of these single concepts involves endless pursuits towards historical empathy. Did local farmers select the area for the rich silt and soil? What value does the soil hold for the farmers? Is the value of the soil only instrumental? What generationally collected attitudes Babylonian society had gained about the soil that may have influenced the farmers feelings toward the soil? Exponential growth of individual decisions, experiences, knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes makes perfect historical empathy for another’s experience impossible… It does not mean that historians should not try to answer all the questions to reveal the subject’s perspective to build a more complete picture of events.