Empathy, Imaginative Resistance, and Fragmentary Understanding

Abstract Extremists are, ultimately, ordinary people who, like you and me, act for reasons. Gaining an explanatory understanding of their actions thus requires grasping those reasons. This chapter explores the central epistemic role that empathic re-enactment plays in gaining an explanatory understanding of rational agency and its intricate interaction with the narrative and theoretical modes of understanding. It also shows why there are significant limitations in utilizing our empathic capacities to understand certain cases of extremism, leading to what is called a more fragmentary form of understanding. The chapter illustrates these claims by discussing various attempts to make sense of the behavior of Holocaust perpetrators.