1 Stadler, J. “Empathy and Film.” Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy. Ed. Heidi L. Maibom. New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2016. Empathy in Film Jane Stadler Keywords: cinematic empathy, embodied cognition, intersubjectivity, intercorporeality, imaginative simulation, phenomenology, cognitive film theory, neurocinema The concept of empathy has special significance for the study of cinema as a narrative art form because, from its inception, empathy has been seen as an integral aspect of how people engage with art and come to understand the inner life and emotions of others. Deriving from the German word “Einfühlung,” the term “empathy” dates back to the aesthetic criticism of art historian Robert Vischer in 1873. It was later taken up by psychologist Theodor Lipps (1903) and others in the hermeneutic and phenomenological traditions to refer to “feeling into” an aesthetic object, a natural vista, or another person’s subjective experience in order to develop an experiential understanding of other minds and works of art (see “The Aesthetic History of Empathy”). The epistemological function of empathy is an enduring focal point for research about empathy’s role in understanding both art and human experience. In contemporary film criticism there is little consensus regarding how to differentiate empathy from related terms including sympathy, the vicarious experience and embodied and imaginative simulation that cinematic narratives facilitate, the involuntary sharing of affective states via emotional contagion, the ethical deliberation often involved in perspective taking, or moral emotions such as compassion. This chapter begins with an understanding of cinematic empathy as an emotional process that occurs when audience members perceive, imagine, or hear about a film character’s affective and mental state and, in so doing, vicariously experience a shared or congruent state. Philosopher Dan Zahavi’s account of the phenomenology of empathy provides a particularly useful starting point for thinking about empathy in film: “empathy is the experience of the embodied mind of the