Volume 12, Issue 2 - Special Issue: The Paradox of Fiction Guest Editor: Eva-Maria Konrad, Thomas Petraschka, Christiana Werner

Why is it that we respond emotionally to plays, movies, and novels and feel moved by characters and situations that we know do not exist? This question, which constitutes the kernel of the debate on »the paradox of fiction«, speaks to the perennial themes of philosophy, and remains of interest to this day. But does this question entail a paradox? A significant group of analytic philosophers have indeed thought so. Since the publication of Colin Radford’s celebrated paper »How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?« (1975), the number of proposals to solve, explain, reformulate, dismiss or even revitalize this apparent paradox has continued to proliferate. In line with recent developments in the philosophy of emotion, in this paper I will argue against the sustainability of the paradox, claiming that the only reasonable way to continue our discussions about it consists in using it as a heuristic tool to shed light on problems regarding our involvement with fiction. Against this background, I will then focus on one of the problems related to how our emotional responses to fiction contribute to our appreciation of it. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first section shows the parallel evolution of the paradox of fiction and the analytic philosophy of emotion. Here I claim that, although the paradox is epistemically flawed, since one of its premises is rooted in a limited view on the emotions typical of early cognitivism, the discussions it provokes are still epistemically useful. As Robert Stecker (2011, 295), among others, has pointed out, the paradox was formulated during the heyday of cognitive theories of the emotions in which emotion necessarily requires belief. Today, however, only few authors would endorse this premise. If emotion does not always require belief (as the majority of authors in the contemporary debate admit), let alone belief about the existence of the object towards which it is directed, then there is no reason to speak of a paradox. From this first conclusion, however, it does not follow that the paradox is completely without use from the epistemic point of view. A glimpse at the topics touched on during the discussions about how to solve, reformulate, or negate the paradox reveals their value in shedding light on the interrelation between emotion and fiction. The second section elaborates a phenomenologically inspired cognitive account of the emotions by focusing on their cognitive bases, their influence on cognitions, and their cognitive function. In this model, emotions are responsible for indicating values, for showing what matters to us, and for being appropriate to their objects. My claim is that this view applies not only to reality, but also to our involvement with fiction. In the final section I draw on this account to focus on one kind of appreciation of fiction which necessarily requires our emotional involvement. Following an idea put forward by Susan Feagin (1996, 1), I employ the concept of »appreciation« to refer to a set of abilities exercised with the aim of extracting value from the work. There is a long tradition in aesthetics that condemns any focus on the emotions in the appreciation of art and fiction, and defends the necessity of aesthetic appreciation without emotional influence. To refer to this negative attitude towards the emotions, I will borrow an expression coined by Susan Feagin (2013, 636), who refers to »the intellectualized view of appreciation«. Against this widespread view, I will argue that some aspects of the fiction can only be appreciated with the help of our emotions. The cognitive approach developed in the previous section can explain how the emotions might in fact play a significant role in the appreciation of art and fiction. Attention will be paid to three activities involved in appreciation, for all of which emotion is crucial: processing relevant information about the fictional world, understanding aspects of it, and becoming acquainted with the values it presents. My aim here is to argue that there are particular aspects of the fictional world that can only be appreciated if recipients have the appropriate emotions.

In response to the so-called paradox of fiction, Kendall Walton famously argued that our affective reactions to fictions differ structurally from real-life emotions. Many authors now reject the idea that there really is a paradox of fiction. But, even if this is true, Walton may have been right in that there really are far reaching differences between the way we respond to fictions and our real-life emotional reactions. That is, even if we do not believe the paradox of fiction is a paradox, it can still lead us to doubt the homogeneity of our emotional responses and to reflect on the relation between real-life and fiction-based emotional reactions. In this paper, I want to further discuss this issue focusing on the case of empathy. The main questions I want to answer are: What are the differences between our real-life and fiction-based empathic reactions? Are there any far reaching structural differences between the two? In my discussion, I will stress the idea that real-life empathy is often built on a relatively complex interaction between the person that empathizes and the emotional subject. I will show, first of all, that this type of social interaction is not possible in literary fiction. Secondly, I will stress that literature often offers an introspective perspective on a character’s inner life. This is a perspective not open to us in real-life settings, which allows for a distinct kind of empathy. In discussing real-life and fiction-based empathy I differentiate between two different functions empathic reactions might fulfill. Thus, following Matthew Kieran, I suggest that some forms of empathy might allow us to infer the emotional state an agent is in and to predict his subsequent behavior. In other cases, however, the aim of empathy is not to achieve some sort of epistemic aim, but rather to feel a kind of solidarity with those that are in the grip of an emotion. In this paper, I concentrate on this second kind of empathy. I will start with some general remarks on the structure of real-life empathy. Drawing on some ideas originally voiced by Adam Smith, I will highlight the fact that empathy is a deeply social process involving two individuals: the one that empathizes (the empathizer or the spectator) and the one that is empathized with (the empathizee or the actor). According to Smith, both actor and spectator will often put themselves in the other’s shoes to bring empathy about. Furthermore, both sides engage in some form of emotion regulation: the spectator tries to regulate his emotions so they match those of the empathizee. The empathizee, in turn, may need to down-regulate his emotional reactions, so that they can indeed match. In how far he must do so, depends on his relation with the empathizer. I suggest that, additionally to these forms of emotion regulation, the empathizee also engages in some forms of reason giving. The exact form this takes again depends on his relationship with the empathizer. I then go on to show that this theory enables us to understand why empathy is sometimes so difficult to achieve in real life. Here, I show that high degrees of emotional intensity but also the type of emotion felt may make it difficult for the empathizee to engage in the sort of down-regulation and reason giving discussed. With these distinctions in place, I then turn to the case of fiction-based empathy. I will show that fiction-based empathy is not a social phenomenon in the same sense as real-life empathy. There is thus an important structural difference between the two. I then suggest that fiction often confronts us with the type of cases that present challenges to real-life empathy (i. e. cases where there is a lack of down-regulation, high emotional intensity and so on). Fiction, however, also provides us with additional resources that facilitate empathy even in these difficult cases. Fiction often gives us access to the stream of thought of a fictional character. Fictional texts thus allow us to get a glimpse on how emotional intensity and emotion type affect a character’s thinking, as well as offering us insight into the raw emotional feel, the intensity and urgency connected to many emotions. Fictional texts generally use aesthetic means to give us access to these aspects. Thus, when feeling empathy in response to a work of fiction we must therefore not only understand the situation in question, but must also be sensitive to (some of the) aesthetic features of the text.

It is often claimed that we cannot desire fictional states of affairs when we are aware of the fact that we cannot interact with fictional worlds. But the experiences we have when we read an engaging novel, watch a horror film or listen to a gripping story are certainly very similar to desires: we hope that the lovers get together, we want the criminal to get caught, we long for the hero to make his fortune. My goal in this paper is to outline the reasons why we might find it difficult to call these experiences genuine desires and to argue that they are not good reasons. In the second section I look at three reasons in particular: first, the reason that, if we genuinely desired fictional outcomes, we would act in silly or dangerous ways; second, the reason that, if we genuinely desired fictional outcomes, we would change plot lines if we had the chance, which in fact, however, we would not; and third, the reason that, if we genuinely desired fictional outcomes, we would not think it impossible to interact with fictional worlds, which, however, we do. I will dismiss the first two reasons right away: depending on how we interpret the first reason, either it does not have much weight at all, because we have many desires we never act on, or it rests on a functionalist definition of desires that wrongly takes it to be the functional role of desires to bring about action. I will dismiss the second reason by arguing that, if we desire a particular fictional outcome that we could bring about by changing the plot line, whether or not we would do it turns on our assessment of the cost of interference; and this, in turn, depends on the perceived quality of the literature. There is nothing that speaks against taking both the desire for a particular fictional outcome and the desire for a work of literature to remain what it is as genuine desires. I turn to possible ways of dealing with the third and strongest reason in the third section. The claim that, if I desire that p, I must not think that there is nothing I could possibly do to bring it about that p, is plausible. And of course, I do think that there is nothing I could possibly do to bring about a fictional state of affairs. I will argue that there are three possible ways of dealing with this problem. The first is to point to partners in crime such as the desire that one is reunited with a loved one who has recently passed away. I take these to be genuine and ordinary desires, even though they are accompanied by thoughts, indeed agonising thoughts, that there is nothing we could possibly do to bring about the desired end. Secondly, I will look at Maria Alvarez’s recent account of desires as multi-track dispositions. Alvarez claims that desires are dispositions not only to actions, but also to certain thoughts, feelings, and expressive behaviours and that they need to have had at least one manifestation in order to exist. Modifying this view a little, I argue that desires need to have manifested at least once in action preparations and show how, on this picture, the thought that I can do nothing to bring about the desired end is not in unbearable tension with the existence of the desire. Finally, I will point to the distinction between physical and metaphysical possibility and argue that, even if we accept the claim that a mental attitude cannot be a desire if it is accompanied by the thought that there is nothing one could possibly do to bring about the desired end, then this is only a problem for desires about fictional states of affairs if we think that metaphysical possibility is at play. However, there is no problem for desires about fictional states of affairs if they are accompanied by thoughts about the physical impossibility of bringing them about. I begin the paper by describing in the first section how desires enter into the controversies surrounding the classic Paradox of Fiction, which is the puzzle about whether and how we can have emotions about fictional characters, and by providing some examples designed to feed the intuition that we do, indeed, have genuine desires about fictional states of affairs.

The following article argues that fictional texts can be distinguished from non-fictional texts in a prototypical way, even if the concept of the fictional cannot be defined in classical terms. In order to be able to characterize fictional texts, semantic, pragmatic, and reader-conditioned factors have to be taken into account. With reference to Frege, Searle, and Gabriel, the article recalls some proposals for how we might define fictional speech. Underscored in particular is the role of reception for the classification of a text as fictional. I make the case, from a philosophical perspective, for the view that fictional texts represent worlds that do not exist even though these worlds obviously can, and de facto do, contain many elements that are familiar to us from our world. I call these worlds reading worlds and explain the relationship between reading worlds and the life world of readers. This will help support the argument that the encounter with fictional literature can invoke real feelings and that such feelings are by no means irrational, as some defenders of the paradox of fiction would like us to believe. It is the exemplary character of fictional texts that enables us to make connections between the reading worlds and the life world. First and foremost, the article discusses the question of what it is that readers’ feelings are in fact related to. The widespread view that these feelings are primarily related to the characters or events represented in a text proves too simple and needs to be amended. Whoever is sad because of the fate of a fictive character imagines how he or she would fare if in a similar situation. He or she would feel sad as it relates to his or her own situation. And it is this feeling on behalf of one’s self that is the presupposition of sympathy for a fictive character. While reading, the feelings related to fictive characters and content are intertwined with the feelings related to one’s own personal concerns. The feelings one has on his or her own behalf belong to the feelings related to fictive characters; the former are the presupposition of the latter. If we look at the matter in this way, a new perspective opens up on the paradox of fiction. Generally speaking, the discussion surrounding the paradox of fiction is really about readers’ feelings as they relate to fictive persons or content. The question is then how it is possible to have them, since fictive persons and situations do not exist. If, however, the emotional relation to fictive characters and situations is conceived of as mediated by the feelings one has on one’s own behalf, the paradox loses its confusing effect since the imputation of existence no longer plays a central role. Instead, the conjecture that the events in a fictional story could have happened in one’s own life is important. The reader imagines that a story had or could have happened to him or herself. Readers are therefore often moved by a fictive event because they relate what happened in a story to themselves. They have understood the literary event as something that is humanly relevant in a general sense, and they see it as exemplary for human life as such. This is the decisive factor which gives rise to a connection between fiction and reality. The emotional relation to fictive characters happens on the basis of emotions that we would have for our own sake were we confronted with an occurrence like the one being narrated. What happens to the characters in a fictional text could also happen to readers. This is enough to stimulate corresponding feelings. We neither have to assume the existence of fictive characters nor do we have to suspend our knowledge about the fictive character of events or take part in a game of make-believe. But we do have to be able to regard the events in a fictional text as exemplary for human life. The representation of an occurrence in a novel exhibits a number of commonalities with the representation of something that could happen in the future. Consciousness of the future would seem to be a presupposition for developing feelings for something that is only represented. This requires the power of imagination. One has to be able to imagine what is happening to the characters involved in the occurrence being narrated in a fictional text, ›empathize‹ with them, and ultimately one has to be able to imagine that he or she could also be entangled in the same event and what it would be like. Without the use of these skills, it would remain a mystery how reading a fictional text can lead to feelings and how fictive occurrences can be related to reality. The fate of Anna Karenina can move us, we can sympathize with her, because reading the novel confronts us with possibilities that could affect our own lives. The imagination of such possibilities stimulates feelings that are related to us and to our lives. On that basis, we can participate in the fate of fictive characters without having to imagine that they really exist.

How can we be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina? By asking this question, Colin Radford introduced the paradox of fiction, or the problem that we are often emotionally moved by characters and events which we know don’t really exist (1975). A puzzling element of these emotions that always resurfaced within discussions on the paradox is the fact that, although these emotions feel real to the people who have them, their difference from ›real‹ emotions is that they cannot motivate us to perform any actions. The idea that actions towards fictional particulars are impossible still underlies recent work within the philosophy of fiction (cf. Matravers 2014, 26 sqq.; Friend 2017, 220; Stock 2017, 168). In the past decennia, however, the medium of interactive fiction has challenged this crystallized idea. Videogames, especially augmented and virtual reality games, offer us agency in their fictional worlds: players of computer games can interact with fictional objects, save characters that are invented, and kill monsters that are clearly non-existent within worlds that are mere representations on a screen. In a parallel to Radford’s original question, we might ask: how can we be moved to shoot zombies, when we know they aren’t real? The purpose of this article is to examine the new paradox of interactive fiction , which questions how we can be moved to act on objects we know to be fictional, its possible solutions, and its connection to the traditional paradox of fictional emotions. Videogames differ from traditional fictional media in that they let their appreciators enter their fictional worlds in the guise of a fictional proxy, and grant their players agency within this world. As interactive fictions, videogames reveal new elements of the relationship between fiction, emotions, and actions that have been previously neglected because of the focus on non-interactive fiction such as literature, theatre, and film. They show us that fictional objects can not only cause actions, but can also be the intentional object of these actions. Moreover, they show us that emotions towards fictions can motivate us to act, and that conversely, the possibility of undertaking actions within the fictional world makes a wider array of emotions towards fictional objects possible. Since the player is involved in the fictional world and responsible for his actions therein, self-reflexive emotions such as guilt and shame are common reactions to the interactive fiction experience. As such, videogames point out a very close connection between emotions and actions towards fictions and introduce the paradox of interactive fiction: a paradox of fictional actions . This paradox of fictional actions that is connected to our experiences of interactive fiction consists of three premises that cannot be true at the same time, as this would result in a contradiction: 1. Players act on videogame objects. 2. Videogame objects are fictional. 3. It is impossible to act on fictional objects.   The first premise seems to be obviously true: gamers manipulate game objects when playing. The second one is true for at least some videogame objects we act upon, such as zombies. The third premise is a consequence of the ontological gap between the real world and fictional worlds. So which one needs to be rejected? Although the paradox of interactive fiction is never discussed as such within videogame philosophy, there seem to be two strategies at hand to solve this paradox, both of which are examined in this article. The first strategy is to deny that the game objects we can act on are fictional at all. Espen Aarseth, for example, argues that they are virtual objects (cf. 2007), while other philosophers argue that players interact with real, computer-generated graphical representations (cf. Juul 2005; Sageng 2012). However, Aarseth’s concept of the virtual seems to be ad hoc and unhelpful, and describing videogame objects and characters as real, computer-generated graphical representations does not account for the emotional way in which we often relate to them. The second solution is based on Kendall Walton’s make-believe theory, and, similar to Walton’s solution to the original paradox of fictional emotions, says that the actions we perform towards fictional game objects are not real actions, but fictional actions. A Waltonian description of fictional actions can explain our paradoxical actions on fictional objects in videogames, although it does raise questions about the validity of Walton’s concept of quasi-emotions. Indeed, the way players’ emotions can motivate them to act in a certain manner seems to be a strong argument against the concept of quasi-emotions, which Walton introduced to explain the alleged non -motivationality of emotions towards fiction (cf. 1990, 201 sq.). Although both strategies to solve the paradox of interactive fiction might ultimately not be entirely satisfactory, the presentation of these strategies in this paper not only introduces a starting point for discussing this paradox, but also usefully supplements and clarifies existing discussions on the paradoxical emotions we feel towards fictions. I argue that if we wish to solve the paradox of actions towards (interactive) fiction, we should treat it in close conjunction with the traditional paradox of emotional responses to fiction.

It is widely acknowledged that responses to fiction can be divided into two categories: emotions or moods. Research on the paradox of fiction, however, solely focused on emotional responses to fiction. This paper analyses the different potentials of the mood concept with regard to the paradox of fiction: its potential to avoid the paradox on the one hand and its potential to rise a new paradox of fiction, a paradox of fiction for moods, on the other. To this end, the paper distinguishes two different meanings of the everyday concept of mood and two different paradigms in the research on moods. The mood concept can designate not only affective states of an individual (moods 1 ), but elusive, nuanced atmospheres of objects, places or situations (moods 2 ). The mentalistic paradigm, widespread in psychology and analytic philosophy, generally assumes that moods are mental states with a certain quality of feeling (and physical symptoms). Moods 2 are regarded by such approaches, if they discuss them, as a secondary phenomenon based on subjective perception. In contrast, the phenomenological paradigm focuses on moods 2 and, if it accommodates moods 1 as well, often postulates a characteristic connection between the two: moods 1 reveal extra-individual atmospheres (moods 2 ) that are assumed to exist in some ontologically robust sense. Therefore, moods 1 can be said to have a world-disclosing function within the phenomenological paradigm. Researchers in the mentalistic paradigm deal, among other issues, with the difference of emotions and moods 1 . One way in which moods 1 differ from emotions is that they lack an intentional object and it is for that reason that the concept of mood 1 , at first glance, seems to offer a solution to the paradox of fiction. The paradox of fiction presumes that we have emotions with regard to fictional objects. If it were possible to redescribe the alleged emotions as more subtle mood 1 responses without clear intentional objects, this would undermine a central premise of the paradox and dissolve it. However, such a redescription seems not equally plausible for all cases discussed in the debate (e. g. the green slime case). Therefore, moods 1 can only be one element of a more subtle ›phenomenology‹ of affective reactions towards fiction and the »paradox avoiding potential« of the mood concept is limited. The paradox creating potential of the mood concept emerges if one takes into account the outlined complex semantics of the concept »mood« and the postulated world-disclosing function of moods 1 . It seems possible to construct a new paradox, the paradox of fiction for moods: (a) Only real entities or representations of real entities can evoke moods 1 with world-disclosing function (because this mood 1 evocation is actually immersion in an atmosphere). (b) Many entities in fictions are not real. (c) Nevertheless, fictions can evoke moods 1 with world-disclosing functions (e. g. with regard to places, situations) in the recipient. The paper argues that the outlined paradox can be dissolved by pointing out that the expression »moods 1 with world-disclosing function« in sentence (a) means something different than in (c). While the expression in (a) relates to the idea of grasping an atmosphere (mood 2 ) that somehow is »in the world«, it means acquiring a non-propositional form of knowledge, namely knowledge of what-it-is-like to be in a certain situation, in (c). The idea that it is possible to acquire knowledge of what-it-is-like by means of fiction has often been postulated in the research literature, but rarely been spelled out in greater detail. The paper argues that such an acquisition can occur, among other possibilities, on the basis of mood 1 evocation, but that the conditions for the acquisition of knowledge of what-it-is-like by means of fiction are more demanding than under usual circumstances: A recipient of fiction can reasonably be said to acquire knowledge of what-it-is-like to be in a certain situation if the fictional representation evokes a mood 1 which is characteristic of a situation S and the recipient understands this mood 1 as an affective reaction to a situation of the type S. Please note that moods 2 play no explanatory role in the second interpretation of »world-disclosing function«. Since assumption (a) and assumption (c) concern different world-disclosing functions or, in other words, different mechanisms of world-disclosure, there is no paradox. Although moods 1 evoked by fictional representations (with some limitations pointed out in section 4) do not possess a world-disclosing function in the sense the phenomenological tradition postulated, it is possible to ascribe these moods 1 a world-disclosing function, even within a non-phenomenological framework: They allow the recipient the acquisition of a knowledge of what-it-is-like to be in a certain situation or in a certain place. Ultimately, for the paradox of fiction for moods seems to hold what could be said about the classical paradox of fiction as well: Even if the paradox ultimately dissolves, its analysis can be instructive for related research fields like the debate on knowledge from fiction which takes moods rarely into account until now.

The discussions around the paradox of fiction that began 40 years ago have slowed down considerably during the last decade. The main reason for this decrease of interest can be seen in the fact that many theories have tried to show that the paradox can be solved or never existed. Nevertheless, there is hardly any major work on the theory of fiction that does not deal with the paradox in some way or other. Nowadays, however, the interest in the discussion has moved away from attempting to solve the paradox. Contemporary theory of fiction is rather interested in the question whether and how the long-lasting and extensive discussions around the paradox have led to a better understanding of the nature and variety of our emotional responses to fiction. This paper, however, sets out to investigate the discussions around the paradox from a different perspective. It undertakes to identify the blind spots in the discussions around the paradox, i. e. it aims at examining which aspects of our emotional response to fictional works did not come into view and, thus, have been neglected by the way in which the paradox has usually been dealt with. One of the most popular strategies for dealing with the paradox consists in comparing our emotional response towards fictional works with our emotional response towards objects that are before our eyes (or that we experience via other senses) and towards events that are actually going on around us. This strategy has led to unsatisfactory results because it highlights the representational content of art works and neglects the particular ways in which this content is depicted. It thereby fails to take into account one of the most crucial aspects of fictional works, i. e. the fact that they are representations. Few theorists have questioned this popular strategy. Among them are R. Moran, who claims that emotional reactions to objects in the actual here and now should not be considered as the paradigms of our emotional involvements when we deal with fictional texts, P. Goldie, who maintains that most of our emotional reactions regard non-actual states of affairs, and D. Matravers who distinguishes between emotional reactions in confrontation situations and those towards representations. And these doubts about the way the paradox is dealt with have hardly had any impact on the discussion. It can be shown, however, that due to the fundamental differences between emotional reactions regarding objects we are confronted with and objects we learn about via representations, some of the answers given to the questions that have been treated in the discussion around the paradox implicitly dealt with the representational aspect of fictional works but not specifically with their fictionality. Moreover, by analysing the theories by R. Moran, P. Goldie and D. Matravers it is argued that widely neglected, but helpful questions can be raised if we compare the emotional response to fictional representations with the emotional response to factual representations instead of comparing it to our emotions in real life situations. Especially Matravers’ theory has several advantages: it respects the representational aspects of our emotional response to texts and other art works, it provides us with an account that is based on semiotic features of these art works and the way we process them, and it can be productively linked to other relevant concepts like R. Gerrig’s willing construction of disbelief or H. Rott’s doxastic voluntarism . Moreover, by comparing Matravers’ theory of emotional response to (fictional) representations with the corresponding theory in G. Currie’s early works it is possible to raise further arguments in favour of the thesis that an explicit exploration of the representational aspects of fictional works is of vital importance for a discriminating theory regarding our emotional response to fiction. However, Matravers’ theory is not entirely satisfactory because it postulates that there are no differences between emotional responses towards fictional representations and those towards factual ones. It is argued that taking into account the representational aspects of factual and fictional works might be a promising way to look for such differences. Investigations into our various emotional responses to fictional works would then be led against the backdrop of our responses to factual representations. Moreover, insight might be gained if we compare fictional representations not only to truthful factual representations but also to deceitful ones. Such an approach that looks beyond the problems that have been debated in the discussions around the paradox of fiction would be able to fill the gaps regarding our response to fictional artworks caused by these discussions. This would lead us to learn to distinguish between the kinds of emotional responses that are specific for representations in general and those that are specific for fictional representations. Moreover, it would enable our investigations into the emotional responses to fictional works to take into account two aspects that have also often been neglected in the discussions around the paradox of fiction: the differences between the various semiotic systems on which works of the differing artforms are based and the specific representational features that are linked to the fictionality of every specific work.

Fictional heroes have long attracted the attention and emotions of their audiences and readers. Moreover, such sustained attention or emotional involvement has often taken the form of identification, even empathy. This essay suggests that since 9/11, however, a new cycle of heroism has emerged that has taken its place, namely the hybrid hero (cf. Van Tourhout 2017; 2018). Hybrid heroes have become increasingly popular during the post 9/11 period, offering escapism and reassurance to audiences in difficult times in which clear-cut divisions between good and bad, between right and wrong came under pressure. These characters challenge audiences and creators on moral and narrative levels because of their fluid symbiosis of heroic and villainous features. We find some well-known examples in contemporary TV-series such as Breaking Bad , House of Cards , etc. Hybrid heroes are looking for ways to arouse audiences and are aiming at the complicity of the audience. The most striking example of this complicit nature can be seen in the TV-series House of Cards when Frank Underwood addresses the audience by staring into the camera. Traditional psychological and aesthetic theories on empathy are challenged by the phenomenon of the hybrid hero because empathy is generally conceived in prosocial terms, with most of the current research being geared toward a positive notion of empathy (cf. Johnson 2012; Bal/Veltkamp 2013; Koopman/Hakemulder 2015). Additionally, there has been a prevalent confusion between sympathy and empathy that has impacted our understanding of the perception of such heroes (cf. Jolliffe/Farrington 2006). In fact, one of the reasons for the predominantly positive connotation of empathy in the study of literary reception is that empathy has been narrowly defined as »sympathy and concern for unfortunate others« (Bal/Veltkamp 2013, 2). The distinction between empathy and sympathy is crucial in the study of immoral figures because, as research has shown, only sympathy involves a moral judgement. The concept of a hybrid hero pushes us to decouple the core of fictional empathy from moral impulses or prosocial actions because it demands a »suspension of moral judgement from its viewer« (cf. Vaage 2013). Some recent studies (cf. Happ/Melzer/Steffgen 2015) have found that empathic responses to videogames cause antisocial effects, while others report cases of »tactical empathy« (cf. Bubandt/Willerslev 2016) or »empathic sadism«, which allows the fiction reader to predict the feelings of the characters and to find enjoyment in this prediction, independently of the negative state and the pain of them (cf. Breithaupt 2016). We believe that the conceptualisation of an emotional bond between the audience and questionable or hybrid heroes will only be permitted through a turn in the approach to the concept of fictional empathy in media studies and aesthetic theory. Thus, the scope of the present paper is not only to describe the phenomenon of the hybrid hero, but also the specific notion of empathy and aesthetic enjoyment that the concept of a hybrid hero demands, that, compared to the present concepts of empathy: (1) distinguishes empathy from sympathy, (2) decouples empathy from morality, (3) takes into account the aesthetic enjoyment associated with negative emotions and moral violations. Finally, we argue that this renewed concept of fictional empathy should be incorporated into newly introduced models of art reception, which integrate both positive and negative emotions in art fruition (cf. Menninghaus et al. 2017). Recent research in empirical aesthetics and media psychology seems to support this view in showing that a moral violation in fictional stories produces mixed emotional and enjoyable responses (cf. McGraw/Warren 2010). The success of the hybrid hero confirms that the interplays of positive, negative and mixed emotion elicited by ambivalent figures such as the hybrid hero can partially explain the massive success and broader impact of contemporary TV series.