Immer mit Liebe: empathic violence in Nazi euthanasia

Empathy is commonly linked to positive emotions, toward the ‘Other;’ it is a form of inner observation, wherein the observer takes a leap into another person’s feelings, understandings, fears and wishes. However, there is little research that has explored the violent possibilities that an empathic discourse can hold, prompt and generate. Typically, academic analysis accepted the warm and comfortable image the linguistic sphere of empathy creates. This research rethinks empathy as a normative value in the field of medical ethics. It will be accomplished by offering several conceptual modules of empathic violence, showing how these grotesque forms of empathic violence were utilized by euthanasia perpetrators during the Nazi era. Despite the repeated argument invoked by these caregivers for their motivation to kill as simply being an empathic act of redeeming their patients and releasing them from pain and misery, academic research, that has focused its scope on motives, generally perceives empathic reasoning of perpetrators as cynical lip service. This paper provides four examples wherein empathic reasoning became a key factor in the rhetoric maintained by Nazi medical staff. In each case, a different conceptual model of empathic reasoning is articulated in order to conceptualize the murders according to liberal empathy, medical empathy, national empathy and the empathy of execution. My basic argument is that empathy was not a post event rationalization, but rather a fundamental element in enabling the merging of Nazi genocidal discourse with traditional medical ethics.