While Epictetus was writing during a time where death and illness took lives more often than what most of us experience, and so uses that example, I also see this passage as providing a way for those of us who live relatively comfortable lives to cultivate our own neutrality to everyday losses, like the little disappointments that come with aging. Indeed, as Epictetus says, “Such things must happen.” I know I can’t fight gravity or time, but women especially are encouraged to believe they might with all of those ads for products and procedures. We could practice "sympathy and sociability" with everyone on this matter and yet we often end up feeling (as in the passage from Epictetus), “Woe is me!” Or, "how can this be happening?" Or, maybe if I buy X, I really will look better. Or, I’m too young to need another hearing test.
It would be so much easier, more frugal, and even enjoyable if we could find more ways to share sympathetic laughter over this process we share with everyone in our lives.
Thank you again dear Massimo for your lesson. My experience (I’m a physician, specialty emergency medicine) is that empathy (which is taught and encouraged primarily by hospital admin) is wrong. Compassion is right. With empathy, it degrades into “I know how you feel” etc with the emphatic on “me, me, me”. Compassion allows for sympathy and for a plan of action to relieve suffering.
Massimo, I'm curious, would you say that father in one of Epictetus' Discourses who couldn't bear to sit with his sick daughter was someone who was consumed with empathy? Would that be an example of it?
I enjoyed Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy”, mainly because of his care in establishing a clear definition of empathy for the purposes of his book. It’s like “stoical” in everyday language, it has a variety of different meanings, depending on context and use in day to day use.
There is a more meaningful word in Buddhist philosophy “Karuna” which means sympathy with action ie when we do something about someone’s sorrow. Empathy in my profession is the quickest way to burn out & the problem with sympathy most of the time,I find, people aren’t genuine & they are just words when sympathy is expressed & soon forgotten. Even then Sympathy with action is important Empathy not a good idea.
While Epictetus was writing during a time where death and illness took lives more often than what most of us experience, and so uses that example, I also see this passage as providing a way for those of us who live relatively comfortable lives to cultivate our own neutrality to everyday losses, like the little disappointments that come with aging. Indeed, as Epictetus says, “Such things must happen.” I know I can’t fight gravity or time, but women especially are encouraged to believe they might with all of those ads for products and procedures. We could practice "sympathy and sociability" with everyone on this matter and yet we often end up feeling (as in the passage from Epictetus), “Woe is me!” Or, "how can this be happening?" Or, maybe if I buy X, I really will look better. Or, I’m too young to need another hearing test.
It would be so much easier, more frugal, and even enjoyable if we could find more ways to share sympathetic laughter over this process we share with everyone in our lives.
Could we say, then, that empathy is a first impression and it should be submitted to reason and turned into sympathy as a way to keep harmony?
Thank you again dear Massimo for your lesson. My experience (I’m a physician, specialty emergency medicine) is that empathy (which is taught and encouraged primarily by hospital admin) is wrong. Compassion is right. With empathy, it degrades into “I know how you feel” etc with the emphatic on “me, me, me”. Compassion allows for sympathy and for a plan of action to relieve suffering.
Massimo, I'm curious, would you say that father in one of Epictetus' Discourses who couldn't bear to sit with his sick daughter was someone who was consumed with empathy? Would that be an example of it?
I enjoyed Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy”, mainly because of his care in establishing a clear definition of empathy for the purposes of his book. It’s like “stoical” in everyday language, it has a variety of different meanings, depending on context and use in day to day use.
There is a more meaningful word in Buddhist philosophy “Karuna” which means sympathy with action ie when we do something about someone’s sorrow. Empathy in my profession is the quickest way to burn out & the problem with sympathy most of the time,I find, people aren’t genuine & they are just words when sympathy is expressed & soon forgotten. Even then Sympathy with action is important Empathy not a good idea.