The dilemma of choosing empathy
Hey guys,
do you agree that empathy for other people is something we have to choose to engage in? That it is not automatic? And that it should be chosen for those that you care about? And if you don't do so, it automatically means you don't care about that person?
Do you also agree that once you have embarked on the path of empathy in a case where you see someone under extreme suffering (like being burned alive or being physically tortured in the most ugly way) - whether friend, strang
If I try to apply the terms "affective empathy" versus "cognitive empathy" to our scenario, it seems to me that you cannot aquire the latter without the former. Just for the same reasons that abstractions are just floating abstractions without a perceptual basis in reality.
If you are going to understand what permanent severe pain really means, you first need to have experienced some taste of it yourself. Only then can you be affected by someone else's emotional state of such pain. And only