C h a r a c t e r7 7convenient for those in power. Empathy elevated sentiment
over critical reason. As a Marxist, Brecht also believed that social
existence was made up of contradictions, and that these contradic-
tions went to the heart of people’s identities. To show men and
women as they really are is to show them as changeable, incon-
sistent and self- divided. The idea of character as unified and
coherent struck Brecht as an illusion. It repressed the conflicts
within the self which might make for social change. In one of his
short stories, Herr Keuner, who has been absent from his village
for many years, returns home, and is cheerfully informed by his
neighbours that he hasn’t changed a bit. ‘Herr Keuner,’ Brecht
writes, ‘turned white.’ Behind Scott or Balzac’s conception of
character lies one kind of politics; behind Brecht’s lies another. He
was the only man in history who was banned from the Danish
communist party before he had applied to join.
If imaginative sympathy is only one way of approaching char-
acter, it also has some more general limitations. The phrase ‘the
creative imagination’ is one which almost everyone on the planet
seems to find unequivocally positive, like ‘We’re off to Marrakesh
tomorrow’ or ‘Have another Guinness’. But the imagination is by
no means unambiguously positive. Serial killing requires a fair
amount of imagination. The imagination is able to project all kinds
of dark, diseased scenarios as well as a great many affirmative ones.
Every lethal weapon ever invented was the result of an act of imagi-
nation. The imagination is thought to be among the noblest of
human faculties, but it is also unnervingly akin to fantasy, which is
generally ranked among the lowest.
In any case, trying to feel what you are feeling will not neces-
sarily improve my moral character. A sadist likes to know what his
victim is feeling. Someone may need to know how you are feeling