Would you agree that empathy is an exercise? Is reading

Doing your homework, faggot?

>>10018242
No. How does this even remotely seem like a homework question? This is a discussion board and I'm looking to discuss. I think empathy isn't contemplated enough.

If anyone's got good philosophical works on the subject please recommend.

>>10018239
Isn't it more self-insertion than empathy that appeals to readers?

>>10018315
Maybe if you're a massive plebian.

>>10018239
>Would you agree that empathy is an exercise?
No, exercise is like jogging and weights and shit.

>Is reading an exercise in empathy
Considering how many teenagers and edgelords read stormfag/nietzschean/ayn rand propaganda and are affected by it, no. 4chan itself in evidence against this. People generally feel empathy from real life cues that are absent in text.

I know this one. Autistic sandal man imagines girl naked.

>>10018427
>I know this one. Autistic sandal man imagines girl naked.
It's young Sartre and De Beauvoir, so you're essentially correct.

>>10018389
Hint: maybe the content of what you're reading matters?

>>10018239
An exercise for what?

I i showed you what real empathy looked like, you wouldn't last.

>>10018239

There is an interesting book called The Empathy Exams you might want to check out.

>>10018239
Empathy is identifying that someone else is feeling something you have felt.

Reading is not in itself having felt what the author feels and is conveying through writing.

>>10019727
Nice suggestion, it's already on my to read-list. I actually made a thread on lit the other day about it, but got no response.

>>10019712
There's an example I always give when I'm trying to explain the difference between sympathy and empathy.

Imagine that someone you know told you that their dog died, but you didn't know their dog at all. Someone who merely sympathies with that person and their loss might feel bad for the person in question and ask questions like, "What kind of dog was it?", or "How old was it?", or "How did it die?" to try to get a better understanding of the situation at hand.

Someone who empathizes with the loss, who understands the greif that the person is going through, is more likley not to ask questions at all understanding that the person may not want to go into detail about it, and if they do the questions are more likely to follow the lines of "How long did you have them for?", or "What was their name?", or just generally "What were they like?".

At least that's how I understand the difference. Sympathy is knowing how someone feels whereas empathy is understanding how someone feels. Everyone knows what sympathy is, but very few people really understand what empathy is, even if we all feel it it some way, shape, or form.

>>10019773
Could we consider writing an exercise in empathy then?

I mean, whenever I write I try to put a little bit of myself into each page in an attempt to reach out to whoever might read it and to better understand myself in the process, but I understand that there are a lot of people who don't do that.

>>10019838
The example didn't speak to me, but
>Sympathy is knowing how someone feels whereas empathy is understanding how someone feels.
Is very well put, anon.

I personally also believe that you must feel pain to be empathic, but I know many would disagree with that. Saying, casually but well-intentioned, "I'm sorry I hurt you" is being sympathetic - whereas actually hurting from in turn having hurt the other person is being empathetic.
Do you disagree with me, anon? And do you consider it a "radical" opinion?

>>10018290
Not who you replied to, but this sort of question closely mirrors some I met in my
philosophy of art courses (and was homework), i.e. the reality of fictional worlds, aesthetics in relation to morality,
it seems very close to the question of, "Why do we feel pity for Anna Karenina" ?

My knowledge on this area is sadly limited to the analytic tradition, but someone, if you are interested in the subject,
who has something to say from this perspective is Noel Carroll.

>>10019880
Well, the thing is that sympathy and empathy aren't nessarily tied to negative emotions. You can empathize with someone who is happy as much as you can empathize with someone who is sad.

That being said I think I would agree with the general premise. The only thing that I could think of as being an exception is when an individual nativity empathizes with an individual, but compartmentalizes the shared feeling and either doesn't register it consciously or deliberately blocks it out for whatever reason.

Basically just saying cognitive dissonance is a thing, and I'm honestly not sure how that works with the whole interplay here.