Empathy vs. Sympathy

In class we talked about the definition of empathy which is the intellectual identification or vicarious experience of the feelings, thoughts, or attitude of another. Empathy is the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective, while sympathy is the feeling of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune.

I can empathize with Nazi soldiers even though I believe that what they're doing is awful because they feel pressure from authority. Nazi soldiers were considered weak, unmanly, or traitors if they could not carry out the task of killing the Jewish people. Although some didn't agree with it, they feared for their own lives and for their punishment they would receive if they didn't carry out the given task. I can empathize because sometimes you have to choose between moral obligations and authority.

Empathy is important for people studying history because you have to be able to put yourself in their shoes in order to understand why they did what they did. Without empathy, you would not be able to make sense of some of the decisions that were made in the past.

Empathy