Radical Empathy in the Context of Literature (2025)

In this book, Lou Agosta explains, using literary examples, that readers require radical empathy to relate to, process, and overcome bad things happening to good people (for example: moral and physical trauma, double binds, soul murder, and behavior in extreme situations.) A definition of radical empathy in the context of literature emerges: Empathic distress occurs, but one's commitment to the Other is such that one empathizes in the face of empathic distress. One's empathic commitment to the survivor enables the survivor to recover her/his humanness, integrity, and relatedness. This work engages how the impact and cost of empathic distress affect the different aspects of empathic receptivity, empathic understanding, empathic interpretation, and empathic responsiveness, delivering a breakthrough and transformation in relating to the Other. The intersection of literature and empathy is the place in which the literary artwork transfigures the face of trauma, overcoming empathic distress, and allowing radical empathy to enable the fragmented Other to recover her/his integrity. Additionally, the book does not merely tell the reader about radical empathy in the context of the literary art work; it delivers an experience of radical empathy in context in empathy's receptivity, understanding, interpretation and responsiveness.