Integrating continental and Anglo-American traditions, the author exposes empathy as the foundation of the being-with-one-another of human beings. The interpretation of empathy is applied to story telling, literature, and self psychology, rescuing empathy from the margins and revealing its role in the understanding of the other and human community.
'[Agosta] succeeds in convincing the reader that empathy is indeed a topic which is worthy of renewed attention as it migrates from 'the periphery of ethics, aesthetics, and theory of the mind to a key place in establishing and maintaining the integrity and emotional equilibrium of dynamic interrelations with other individuals'.' - The Journal of Consciousness Studies