universal truths). What about empathy? The connection between empa-
thy and thefirst feature (reduction to emotional conflicts) is reasonably
clear: however empathy works, it’s going to be much easier to feel what
the main character feels if his situation is familiar than if it is different
from my own. I don’t have a clear or intuitive sense of what social, eco-
nomic or theological forces were at work among farm-workers, their wives
and their daughters in seventeenth-century Salem, but I might know
what it feels like to be torn between telling an upsetting truth and sha-
mefully concealing it. So by minimising the former and highlighting the
latter, Arthur Miller can write an emotionally powerful play.^39
One might think, therefore, that the route between empathy (the third
feature) and the presentation of universal truths (the second) would be via
emotional simplification (the first). By simplifying dramatic situations
such that emotional conflicts are at the fore, the playwright can make us
empathise with the characters and also convince us that the situation of
the characters and our own situation just is the human condition and
there’s nothing to be done about it. But Brecht’s writing often suggests a
more intimate connection between empathy and the conclusion that there
arefixed, unalterable human conditions. This more direct connection
between empathy and resignation or inaction in the face of universal
truths is not so clear-cut. After all, empathy is often posited as a force for
good, a spur to helping others. If I see someone hurt and, to some degree,
feel the hurt that she feels, then I may be motivated to try to relieve her
suffering (and my own). One might think that, without empathy, I would
walk on by in blissful ignorance. Feeling someone’s pain needn’t mean
completely and inescapably identifying with her and it might well be a
spur to thinking critically about the situation she is in. In any case, there’s
no obvious reason to think that empathy, in this simple case, would lead to
resignation or to the conclusion that humans suffer and there’s nothing
I can do about it.
One thought in Brecht’s favour might be that, as in the case of Oedipus,
the fate of the main character may be extremely well known; thus, to
empathetically‘become’Oedipus (to identify with him and feel what he
feels) just is to become trapped in a well-known and inescapable fate.
Perhaps I’m more likely to believe that there are unchangeable, universal
facts about man if I have imagined myself into and felt with someone
who is trapped in an unchangeable, fated scenario. It’s certainly true of
Oedipus that there’s nothing he can do to change his fate; perhaps, by
feeling what he feels, I am more likely to imagine that the same is true
about me. More generally: if theatre (particularly tragic theatre) tends to
present people inevitably destroyed, no matter what they do, how good
they are, and no matter what kind of social framework they inhabit, then
perhaps repeated empathetic engagement with such characters would drill
180 From the Stage to the World