yguy

I'm not sure the line between empathy and sympathy is as sharp as you think.

empathy

n : understanding and entering into another's feelings

WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

Now no one with any sense would be against understanding another's feelings, but enetering into them?? I submit this is abolute folly. If a child has a temper tantrum because a parent won't replace a broken toy, the overly empathetic parent will be intimidated into replacing the toy, robbing the child of the ability to feel the pain of conscience and teaching him that tantrums pay. On an adult level, feeling what a depressed person feels legitimizes self-pity from his perspective, and robs you of the ability to give him the slap upside the head that he may need.

Viti

Empathizing with someone does not require you act in a certain way. A tantrum over a broken toy is not a moral situation so empathy would not play a role. As far as empathizing with a depressed person, depression is usually an illness or a normal human reaction to a certain situation (death of a loved one, loss of a job etc.)...you think being ill or in mourning is "self pity" and deserves a slap upside the head?

I consider myself very empathetic, I intuit others' feelings and motivations very easily...yet ask anyone here who knows me well, I do not coddle or baby or walk on eggshells at all, ever.

You have a very strange idea of true empathy...you seem to equate it with giving in or enabling weakness or bolstering character flaws.

Jagged

Oh for fuck's sake, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! Of course he bloody empathized with her; in fact, that is the whole goddamn point of the story!

(sorry to crash your thread, everyone)

What is empathy if not to feel a human commonality between yourself and someone else? Human commonality being the whole point of Jesus Christ in the first place! God wants to express ultimate love for humanity, so he becomes human.

The story of the adulterous woman is a demonstration of empathy before judgement. Christ asks the would-be stoners (as in, rock-throwers, lol) to look within themselves (i.e., to empathize), and if they find themselves to be without sin, only then to condemn the woman in front of them. Empathy is replacing Law as the primary modus operandi.

Christ is theoretically the most empathetic person who ever lived! ("God so loved the world...") He died a horrible death in order to prove the absolute purity of his empathy for humanity. Again, it is just the whole point of Jesus Christ.

btw I'm not a Christian. I do think Jesus Christ is one of the best things about Christianity (too bad Christians don't), and I also do think empathy is the ultimate basis for morality, yes.

yguy

No, but it inclines one to act in a certain way.

I can't agree with that. The child who does it is tempting the parent, and if the parent responds with either impatient anger or excessive coddling, he/she has done the child a moral disservice.

In certain cases, yes.

If that's true, our difference is purely semantic.

In some cases, that's what it is. There is way too much wiggle room in the idea to say what "true empathy" is, IMO.

yguy

There was no empathy required for them to look within themselves - I know, because I've done it. And in any case, such empathy as they would have felt with the adulteress is qualitatively different from what Christ felt towards humanity, because He never sinned.

There is more to it than that. He succeeded where everyone else failed. In that sense at least, it appears He lacks the capacity for empathy with the rest of us. Would you have Him disown His success in the presence of the envious for the sake of empathy? Where was His empathy for the pharisees?

Jagged

yguy

I think the only reason you're not seeing any empathy here is that you are starting with the assumption that it is not there.

Farren

You miss Jags point. The request to look within themselves is almost self evidently a plea to find common feeling within, in other words empathy. Otherwise the passage doesn't make sense.

Any way, I think we've hijacked this thread for a stretch here. The OP was about empathy being the foundation of morality, not whether or not Christ was the foundation of morality, or whether Christ felt empathy.

Clutch

The real head-shaker is looking to such a strained and small-scale example (not to mention fictional, even by the standards of many Christian scholars) of compassion. The world is full of far more striking examples on a daily basis -- and these are ones that actually happen.

yguy

Where is here, and where is there?

When have I said that empathy doesn't exist, or even that it is universally a bad thing? What I'm getting at is that what many people call empathy is really the emotional coddling of people's weaknesses.

Farren

In terms of language (I've provided one dictionary definition), in terms of psychiatry (I've provided links) and in terms of philosophy this is not what empathy is.

And as far as what most people see it as, our personal experiences differ vastly. Most people I've known have a fairly good understanding of it, even where they lack technical exactness.

I must respectfully submit that you're projecting your false understanding on others around you, and confusing a possible consequence of the exercising of empathy with empathy itself.