A few words on how images build empathy and moral judgment.

1. Vera Lucia dos Santos Nojima, PhD.
Professor of the Postgraduate Program in Design
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio
Adriana Barbosa Ribeiro, PhD.
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio
A Few Words
on Images
and Empathy

2. Manipulation of Nazi ideas through the
imagetic discourse present in sequences of
the film Triumph of the Will.
Manipulation of Nazi ideas through the
imagetic discourse present in sequences of
the film Triumph of the Will by the
German filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl.
Our topic

3. A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation
with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by
compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a party of
committed nationalist militants composed masses, working in
collaboration with effective elites, abandons democratic liberties
and pursues, with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal
restraints, internal cleansing and external expansion”. (PAXTON,
2010)
What is
Fascism?

4. What is Empathy?
“an other‐oriented emotional response congruent with the
perceived welfare of another person”. (BATSON, 1990)
“discover yourself with feelings for an object and discover
yourself with feelings-name-of an object”.
(DARWALL, 1998)
Prinz rejects both of this definitions…

5. Is Empathy Necessary
for Morality?
Agreeing with Prinz, on our understanding,
empathy doesn't necessarily presupposes a concern,
or even a concern with the well-being of others,
but rather, empathy assumes an emotion of identity
being directed outward, projected onto others.

6. Paul Slovic introduces a question about numbness of
feelings and what he called the collapse of compassion
towards multiple victims wondering why the same good
people who are moved to help “a person”, become
indifferent when someone is “one of many” and part of a
bigger issue. According to Slovic, this response would help
answer an analogous question; why good people ignore
mass murder and genocide?

7. Frames of the film Triumph of the Will .
The concept of völkish is centered in the native qualities of the Germanic man.

8. The concept of völkish or völkische Bewegung (völkish
movement) is centered in the native qualities of the Germanic
man.
The concept is fundamental in the development of a discursive
unit about the Nazi ideology and ethnic unity to the Germans,
and may even be understood as a constituent of racism and
Nazi anti-Semitism. In this way…
Prinz seems to be correct when he says, “If
you're an outsider or is leased in a distant
land, my degree of empathy can be reduced
correspondingly”.
The corner stone at the ideological foundation
of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

9. Frames of the film Triumph of the Will .
The concept of völkish is centered in the native qualities of the Germanic man.

10. Frames of the film Triumph of the Will.
The film is about the return of Germany as a great power,
everything about this sequence reflects this intention.

11. Conclusion
The manipulation of fascist and masses imagery
possibly awoke this vicarious emotion that empathy
seems to be built from. Thus, connoisseurs of
catastrophic consequences of these events for
humanity, we can agree with Prinz on the
dangers of empathy for formulating moral judgments.

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Available in: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1569098
Vera Lucia dos Santos Nojima, PhD.
Professor of the Postgraduate Program in Design
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio
Adriana Barbosa Ribeiro, PhD.
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio
References