Narration: empathy and understanding

An approach to the importance of testimony from the philosophy of Hannah Arendt

Abstract

This text deals with the subject of understanding from the philosophy of Hannah Arendt. The article is divided into four sections. In the first, Arendt´s conception of imagination is shown to share characteristics with the capacity for empathy. In the second, the testimony is presented as a source of imagination and empathy insofar as it favors perspective taking, understood as the representation of a phenomenon from the particular position of the narrator. In the third, it is proposed that the narrated stories and, in particular, the testimony, are a means for understanding past affairs. In the fourth and last section, the importance of the publicity of the testimonies is claimed as a guarantee of a common sense based on the factual truth.