Letter to the father: Insights into Kafka’s understanding of empathy

Abstract

Letter to the Father is an intimate and revealing classic masterpiece about the complex relationship between Franz Kafka and his father. In this work, he exposed his feelings and thoughts stemming from his daily family and professional life, rooted in the difficult paternal interactions he experienced. The study of empathy, which involves both emotional and cognitive dimensions, can be analyzed through this narrative. The aim of this study is to understand empathy as presented in Letter to the Father, with a focus on the cognitive and emotional aspects of this behavior. The specific objectives are to identify the emotional and cognitive aspects of empathy between the characters and to characterize these behaviors in Franz Kafka based on inferences drawn from his writing. This research is exploratory and bibliographic in nature, involving a literature review, reading, logical organization of data, thematic discussion, and writing, with an inductive methodology. It is suggested that this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between family experiences and the development of emotional and cognitive aspects of empathy while also emphasizing the importance of nurturing welcoming and respectful environments for healthy emotional growth.

Keywords

Empathy / Cognition / Emotion / Literature / Franz Kafka / Letter to the Father

Acknowledgments

None.

Funding

None.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author contributions

Conceptualization: All authors

Writing - original draft: All authors

Writing - review & editing: Samira Schultz Mansur

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Availability of data

Not applicable.

Further disclosure

Part of the findings has been presented at an academic meeting (Once Upon a Time and Neuroscience…Study of Empathy from Classical Literature of Franz Kafka, 2024, III Brazilian Online Teaching Congress, Research, and Extension). This research is part of an extension project at the Federal University of Santa Catarina.

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