How May Empathy and Sympathy Be Differentiated? What is its Significance Conceptually and in Life??
I have often seen the linguistic differentiation between sympathy and empathy as significant. In particular, in a colloquial way, the difference involves being able to appreciate, or feel another person's pain or suffering. The distinction here seems to be about resonance, as opposed to a detached approach of concern for another person's experience of pain and suffering.
However, I have been reading an article, 'Empathy and Sympathy', by James R Robertson, in 'Philosophy Now', ( issue 167, April/May 2025), which looks at it from a conceptual level. In particular, it looks at it in relation to the nature of affectations, which the author defines as 'the mental expression of emotions'; giving the examples of enthusiasm, resentment, forgiveness . Passions involve 'involuntary feelings arising in the body', including 'responses to adrenaline surges or directly to physical causes'.
Robinson argues that empathy involves 'entering into or sharing the affectations of another person'. It could be seen as a more detached approach based on reflective experience of pain and suffering, which involves a more intimate connection with another. This makes sense when thinking that empathy doesn't necessarily involve actual sentient or emotional experiences. Nevertheless, it is a starting point for compassion, or connection with 'other minds', human or of other beings.
I am raising this area of debate with a view to thinking about the nature of compassion. The author of the article also raises the question, 'Does Empathy Always Lead to Sympathy? I see this question as particularly significant as so much is becoming 'robotic' and machine-based? Is it leading to moral indifference and based on the philosophy of the objective idea of the importance of 'emotional detachment as an ethical ideal? What do you think about the ideas of sympathy, empathy and its relevance for life?.
However, I have been reading an article, 'Empathy and Sympathy', by James R Robertson, in 'Philosophy Now', ( issue 167, April/May 2025), which looks at it from a conceptual level. In particular, it looks at it in relation to the nature of affectations, which the author defines as 'the mental expression of emotions'; giving the examples of enthusiasm, resentment, forgiveness . Passions involve 'involuntary feelings arising in the body', including 'responses to adrenaline surges or directly to physical causes'.
Robinson argues that empathy involves 'entering into or sharing the affectations of another person'. It could be seen as a more detached approach based on reflective experience of pain and suffering, which involves a more intimate connection with another. This makes sense when thinking that empathy doesn't necessarily involve actual sentient or emotional experiences. Nevertheless, it is a starting point for compassion, or connection with 'other minds', human or of other beings.
I am raising this area of debate with a view to thinking about the nature of compassion. The author of the article also raises the question, 'Does Empathy Always Lead to Sympathy? I see this question as particularly significant as so much is becoming 'robotic' and machine-based? Is it leading to moral indifference and based on the philosophy of the objective idea of the importance of 'emotional detachment as an ethical ideal? What do you think about the ideas of sympathy, empathy and its relevance for life?.
Comments (42)
See, for example, The Sin of Empathy, where the basis is considered and yet there is a clear preference for sympathy.
I've understood empathy to be the ability to understand that another is in pain and the potential for emotion to arise in the observer as a result of that understanding. Whilst this is typically used to refer to equivalent emotions arising (eg. seeing a guy get kicked in the nuts, and clutching your own), I personally would view sadism as a form of empathy aswell (eg. satisfied when something bad happens to someone you dislike).
Sympathy on the other hand seems to refer to a purely intellectual understanding and concern for another. For example, a psychopath would still feel sympathy for their friends and family, but not empathy. Personally, I also generalised this into positive emotion (eg. understanding that another enjoys music even if you cant understand how anyone could like it).
Theyre often just words, and people will attach different values to them based on a range of preferences. Ive always found usage more interesting than the definition game. You might recall Paul Blooms 2016 book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, wherein he describes empathy as prone to distortion, emotionally exhausting and often leading to poor decision-making. He also argues that it promotes tribalism, which seems relevant to where culture seems to be now. Bloom argues for 'compassion led by reason'.
I'm not sure where I land on this and I probably see most of it as a tangle of semantics and really the quesion is - Do we care about the welfare and happiness of others; even those who are not of our tribe and don't share our worldviews? (think Good Samaritan parable) And what does 'care' mean? For the most part, we seem to preference those who share our worldviews and codes of conduct. It's very easy to imagine we feel empathy from an armchair.
I'm currently in a rehabilitation facility (for a couple of more months) with other post-op amputees and variously disabled elders where I'm confronted especially each night by sounds of acute pains (and prolonged indignities due to staffing shortage) which, even as a recovering patient/resident in this place, I'm not prepared to ignore or disregard. Is this "compassion" (now thwarted by own incapacity)?
No. The latter is active and former passive.
And what about, for instance, the atrocities and abuses countless generations of folks long before this era have inflicted on one another as if they were "machine-like robots" completely devoid of "empathy" and "sympathy"? The modern world, global civilization, was not built or maintained by "compassion", mate current technocapitalism, imo, doesn't make today's "compassion" problem any more acute and dire than it was back when the Upanishads were being written.
No, as pointed out above.
They are (like) moods; the relevant capability, or trait, is compassion motivation stronger than sympathy to actually help alleviate another person's suffering actually helping one another.
I am responding to your post first because I can relate to it most, as I was in hospital twice and experiencing cries of distress from other patients. The question does involve the extent to which one's own pain makes us more sensitive or blinds us from that of others' suffering. It may vary so much. I am also thinking that your situation sounds 'worse' than mine if you had a limb amputated, which your post seems to suggest. (I was in hospital for chest infections, although I need further tests for underlying systemic health problems).
But, going back to the issue of how one's pain affects the response to the pain of others, comes down to mood and attitude. It is possible to become shut in a prison of personal suffering or to become more awake to that of others. One thing which I have reflected upon is that when my mother had chest infections, I may been less empathetic as at that time I was not aware of how awful the experience is. This may apply in so many issues. For example, those who have been homeless or in poverty may be more compassionate toward those in similar circumstances, but not always.
Your point about empathy being more passive whereas sympathy being more active is important. I used to think that empathy was 'better' than sympathy because it involved authenticity. However, it does seem that sympathy involves a more active need to help in many ways. Empathy is the experience of feeling alongside another, involving the passions. I guess that both empathy and sympathy can be hollow responses if not involving some kind of action. That is where compassion-based ethics steps in.
As far as your questioning of the current vs historical nature of empathy, it is likely that human nature does not change in itself. It is possible to see the suffering of past times and in far distant lands as 'barbaric'. The closer it comes to daily experience may make such a difference. Presently, the news shows so much trouble in the world (2025 seems far worse than the time of the pandemic from my point of view). The difference between passive emotion and action involves the extent to which the emotion is matched with reasoned responses and a pragmatic approach. That is if one does not become overwhelmed, especially by the intensity of the emotions, and 'the fight and flight' aspects of human nature and survival.
In the meantime, I wish you a speedy recovery from whatever health problems have led you to a rehabilitation unit.
Best wishes,
Jack
I am uncertain about where I stand on the issue of empathy/sympathy being about semantics. That is because so much does come down to usage and context of words. However, so much of the conceptual understandings within philosophy do as well, and part of in the debate about empathy vs sympathy becomes apparent in its translation to ethical responsibility.
Also, the issue of empathy has become an important area in psychiatry, in relation to autism. Lack of empathy has become medicalised. However, even in that context there may be blurring of semantics. Some assumptions and assessments may be about the ability, or lack of ability for 'feelings'. This may involve value judgements on the part of those assessing. Nevertheless, on a more analytic level, the research on autism looks at theory of mind, involving the ability to be able to imagine another's perspective, which is the basis of the concept of empathy.
A mother who has lost a child can empathise with another mother who has lost a child. I could only sympathise as I would not be arrogant enough to think I could imagine the process and pain. Maybe, that is my lack of imagination but the mother would have my utmost sympathy.
I would have sympathy for a homeless crack addict but doubt I could empathise.
How can someone with autism feel an emotion that they have no concept of and cannot read the situation anyway?
Sociopaths have no concept of empathy (I assume) Narcissists too?
I think thats a very different use to what people generally mean. In autism the view is that they dont have whats called a theory of mind. Many autistic people can feel deeply for the plight of others and may have a highly developed sense of social justice,
Lack of empathy is also sometimes called sociopathy. But I didnt think this OP was about psychiatric definitions but more in the area of personal development and how we see ourselves in relation to others. Are you not trying to delineate the subject of caring for the welfare of other people. I think for most people we can probably set aside such words and look at how people treat each other, rather than labeling it empathy or sympathy. I wonder if its more an instinctive behaviour of a social species?
I do believe they are similar yet distinct. The way I see it, "sympathy" is recognizing someone else's situation and that it's not a situation you would want. "Empathy" is feeling their feelings with them, a kind of emotional mirroring. I think it is possible to have too little OR too much of either. I consider myself an almost pathalogically empathetic person, but if anything it's made me more cynical and less compassionate over time as high empathy can be easily exploitable. Sometimes you have to put your own oxygen mask on first.
Yes, the psychiatric understanding of autism and empathy is probably slightly different from the issue of sympathy/empathy. The reason why I mentioned it is that the issues of autism are becoming so common. There are so many people who are self diagnosing themselves as autism and, lack of empathy may be part of this criteria.
It also overlaps with the idea of 'emotional intelligence'. However, it would be too crude a stereotype to think of autistic people as lacking social concern. Greta Thundberg is an example of someone who cares for social issues of justice. Sometimes, gushy emotionality can be mistaken for empathy, as in 'crocodile tears'.
Yes, both too little or too much empathy can be problematic. Too little can lead to indifference to the suffering of others and too much can lead to extreme sensitivity. It is indeed possible to become afflicted by the pain of others through sensitivity. This may be a cause of mental suffering, including effective disorders and forms of addictions, including drug and alcohol.
It partly comes down to the problem of being separate individuals, but interconnected.
Yes, the imagination of someone to feel another's pain may be limited and that is why the issue of autism is relevant. It is hard to know to what extent the ability to empathise is about biological wiring or experiences, including trauma. Even reasoning about others' suffering and ethical concerns may be affected by these factors. Traumas may do so much damage.
Yes, the communication issues involved in conveying sympathy or empathy are critical. For example, if I relate an experience of great suffering and receive what feels like a shallow response of someone who is not suffering it may feel like a 'condescending', or 'chocolate box' response. The interpretation of the person receiving the response is also significant, and it may differ from the intention of the sender.
I wonder about the present time, when so many appear to be suffering, although that is an interpretation of news, may open or shut down empathy and compassion. It may lead to Hobbes' conclusion of life being 'brutish, nasty and short' or about egoism and the need for survival. Individuals may focus on self interest, in a harsh world, or may consider altruism, which goes beyond the idea of action for direct personal advantages and gains.
So much of philosophy may be about abstract and nitty gritty ideas and may lose sight of existential suffering and the questions which it poses about the human condition. We are not simply 'minds' but embodied beings, and any understanding of empathy or sympathy needs to embrace this, in understanding the human condition.
Which is not an actual diagnosis or or clinical term and is primarily a pop-psychology label.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Maybe, but really, we're not in a position to know whether people care about others or not. We can only judge by actions, not by sentiment or professed values. What do people actually do?
Quoting Jack Cummins
Self-diagnosing neurodivergent conditions like ADHD or autism is common and probably a sign that people are seeking an explanation for why they feel like outsiders or experience social isolation. A sense of emotional bluntness, dissociation, or lack of empathy may not be pathological but rather a product of ones environment or depression.
Something I have often pondered. I have thoughts on that regarding the self and the transmission of ideas. Perhaps what we experience as empathy is being receptive to the emotional ideas their words/body language/tone of voice is sending. Empathy receives and mirrors the message; Sympathy observes it was sent.
Yes.
needing compassion
Quoting Tom Storm
:100:
Quoting Tom Storm
The view that autistic people lack theory of mind any more than anyone else presented with another creature different from themselves, is out of date. Simon Baron-Cohen did a lot of damage with this, and the experiments purported to show this lack of theory of mind have been robustly challenged. See Damian Milton on the 'Double empathy problem' in which he argues that non-autistic people have just as much trouble understanding the autistic perspective as autistic people do understanding NTs.
As a panpsychist, I think there is a similar problem with rocks. It's hard to attribute mind to them because they are very 'other'.
There is a distinction between cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Cognitive empathy is understanding that someone else is feeling something. The more different that other person is, the more difficult it is to notice that they are feeling something. Once you have noticed that other person is suffering (for example) then affective empathy comes in. You 'feel the pain' of the other in some sense, you care and are moved to help to alleviate their suffering. With autistic people, sometimes they fail to notice that an NT is in distress (cognitive) so do not have the opportunity to care (just as NTs frequently fail to notice autistic people are distressed). However, once the distress is recognised, autistic people care just as much as anyone, and will often try to help.
A clever psychopath, by contrast, may have excellent cognitive empathy, but lack affective empathy. But I'm not an expert on psychopathy.
Yes, BC is widley disliked in some psychology circles. Tony Attwood, who I am more familiar with also subscribes to ToM models.
Quoting bert1
I think these distinctions are useful. Many of these psychopaths are CEOs and often work in persuasion-based businesses: politics, law, advertising, marketing, etc. You dont need to drive around in a black van picking up co-ed hitchhikers to be a public menace.
The debate on theory of mind offers an interesting one for thinking about consciousness and personal identity. Rocks don't have a sense of identity but humans do. However, personal identity is constructed socially and the idea of 'otherness', or 'difference' too.
The autistic perspective may be about wiring and seeing from 'the outsider's perspective. It is not an academic psychology text but maybe useful, and I am referring to Colin Wilson's, 'The Outsider'. It looks at a number of creative artists and thinkers, including Camus, Nietzsche and Van Gogh. Wilson was interested in states of peak consciousness and this may involve seeing outside conventional frames of reference.
Camus' 'The Outsider' is significant here because in the short aftermath of his mother's death he has sex and goes on to kill someone. This may be important in the understanding of sociopaths, or Nietzsche's idea of 'Beyond Good and Evil'. Lack of empathy, especially effective empathy may involve emotional numbing. But, it would be a great mistake to make over generalisations about autistic people as each person is unique.
It is likely that many of the creative artists and scientists would have been seen as on the autistic spectrum. I have come across suggestions that Immanuel Kant would have been, and his entire philosophy of the categorical imperative could be seen as a theoretical foundation for empathy based ethics.
what does that mean?
Radars detect.
Sympathy means you can detect the problem, because you understand what's going on... doesn't mean you give a damn about helping.
Empathy is more than just the understanding of, but rather more of the action of feeling another's pain and helping thwm overcome it.
I'm thinking of empathy as being experiental and sympathy as being judgemental:
For example: If I see you in pain, can't bear it, and leave, I'm being overwhelmed by an empathic response and not driven by a sympathetic response to help. Similarly, I can care deeply about another person's pain without having the faintest clue what that pain is about; you have a sympathetic response, but not an empathetic one.
My intuition is, for example, incompatible with @bert1's distinction between cognitive empathy and affective empathy. To me (intuitively), cognitive empathy isn't empathy at all. It's just a form of problem solving: If I see you cry and it makes me want to laugh because I enjoy that sort of vista I do not have an empathetic response, but I certainly undertand that you're miserable. I might even figure out what you're upset about, and how. So, for example, "cognitive empathy" + "sympathy" would be just sympathy + trying to figure out why as an external problem. You've learned to "read the cue cards", but there's nothing inside to replicate the experience (which is what I'd say enables empathy).
It's my experience that my intuition often leads to such incompatibilites, and thus they just might be off base. Alternatively, there might be a way to resolve the incompatibilities somehow?
Second, there seems to be a logical possibility of having an "empathetic response" that "fails", is inadquate to what the target person actually feels. And I'm unsure whether my intuition would allow for that - i.e. I'm dithering on this. My intuition might have internal contradictions.
It's an interesting thread, and I'll continue reading.
That isn't true at all. People can have sympathy for someone's situation and help. Empathy is having an understanding and sharing feelings. How can a man who hasn't had a child have empathy with a mother who has lost her child? They can have massive sympathy and help the women as much as they are able but I cannot see how someone could claim empathy.
Yes I think you are probably right. Perhaps it would be better to say that empathy has two components, both of which are necessary for empathy to occur. You can't feel another's pain (in some sense) without first recognising that they are in pain.
Like bro, Im sympathetic to your cause but I'm busy with my own shit...
Im definitely not your man. You stick to your own shit.
Before the Internet, I corresponded with prisoners. Prisoners wanting letters could put their name and address in a motorcycle magazine. So this one guy writes to me...
"You may think shit tastes bad, but you don't know how bad untile you eat it."
And remember Spock in Star Trek. Spock was brought back to life, and Doc asked him what it was like to be dead. Spock replies by asking him if he has ever been dead. Doc answers that he was never dead, so Spock tells him that he has nothing to reference to. In other words, the only way to know an experience is to have that experience.
When I studied gerontology at the local university, I thought I knew about growing old. :lol: All that book learning did not prepare me for the experience of being old, and there is no indication that our doctors understand the meaning of struggling with pain and tiredness and unpleasant physical changes. They know the words and dictionary definitions, but not the experience.
All that is different from question about Quoting Jack Cummins
That is more a psychological matter than philosophical. Number one, THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE! For our own self-defense, we have to shut down because it is way too much to engage with everyone on a personal basis every day of the week. We can not be intimate with everyone in our lives and hold most people as personally distant as we can, so the checkout clerk is part of the store, not part of our lives. This is way more mechanical than family relationships. We stand on a crowded elevator with strangers we ignore. If we do not learn to tune people out, we burn out. This is especially so for professionals in caregiving positions. For example, I can not work in a nursing home because I can't handle all that pain. I gave up a volunteer job when I realized there was nothing I could do for homeless mothers needing shelter. Even rescue dogs need to find living people. The need is so strong for dogs, the handlers will intentionally give the dog a living person to find.
I love linguistics and learning the origin of words.
The word has Greek roots
Origin
em and pathos
The prefix "em-" in words like "embolden" or "embrace" comes from the Latin prefix "in-" (meaning "in" or "into"), which is then assimilated to "em-" before labial consonants like "b" or "p", according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. So, "em-" itself isn't a root word, but rather a variant of "en-" used in specific contexts.
"Pathos" itself comes from the Greek word meaning "suffering" or "feeling."
I think we can have sympathy for another without having empathy, because we can think something is bad without feeling the pain.
Like homelessness- I think everyone can think that being homeless is undesirable, but having the experience of being homeless triggers many thoughts that come with feelings. Fear, fatigue, low self-esteem, and powerlessness. That is a little more than the inconvenience and discomfort of not having a home.
It is a good question as to whether someone needs to have experienced another's pain in order to be able to empathize. In mental health care, there was some focus on the employment of people who had experienced mental health problems because they had more lived experience which would enable greater understanding of mental health problems. However, it did also appear that members of staff who had family members with mental health issues also were able to empathise and understand these issues extremely well.
The right balance between others' pain and becoming overwhelmed by it is critical. This does explain burnout in the healthcare profession Also, in everyday life, the term 'compassion fatigue' is a way of describing too much concern for others to the point where it drains one's energies.
The issue of 'too many people', is one problem which I see with the commandment of 'love your neighbour as yourself', as there are so many neighbours. How does one prioritize, especially in the global context. It may be simpler in small scale communities. The problem is that in densely urban populations, a lack of community exists. It is in this context that people may become treated as numbers, or even as 'objects'. Lack of 'community' can result in so many people becoming isolated and neglected.
Sympathy = hypothetical/imaginative empathy
Empathy = actually understanding what someone is dealing with.
That may not be entirely accurate, as I think i've imported some of my own use here. It's probably two lines similar, but weaker than the above.
What a bizarre post. You carryon.