Sympathy and Compassion in the Prism of the Long Eighteenth Century

This special issue brings together contributions that, while tracing the interdisciplinary paths through which sympathy undergoes a process of conceptual fraying, also restore the complex interplay between sympathy and compassion throughout the Long Eighteenth Century—an age that functions as a prism, refracting the search for natural forms of social connection across disciplines, practices, and traditions. In doing so, it places into dialogue diverse forms of knowledge and expression—medicine, philosophy, rhetoric, psychology, natural theology, physics, literature, art, and political theory—thereby contributing to the blurring of established disciplinary boundaries. Keywords: Sympathy, Long 18th century, Interdisciplinary history of ideas, Compassion, Social connection