![]() The Grief Recovery Handbook makes a point of saying that no one else can know exactly how you feel. They’re presuming that they can feel what the other person is feeling. That’s really what most people mean when they say that they have empathy for someone else. To understand affect is to understand how the other person feels. I understand the environment, the factors, and the connections to other people. ![]() When I’m understanding, I can mean that I understand, cognitively, what your world is like. ![]() The best definition of empathy that I’ve seen is “I understand this about you.” It’s a simple expression that equates empathy with understanding. Cognitive and AffectiveĪ good place to start is the fact that we use empathy to mean two relatively distinct things. In Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, Bloom decomposes what we mean when we say “empathy” and suggests that we should focus on only the “good” parts of empathy while finding ways to side-step the problems. Who could be against empathy? Isn’t it a good thing? Don’t we need it to relate to one another? How could someone, Paul Bloom, write a whole book about why empathy is bad? The answer is a surprising journey into what we mean when we say “empathy” and the negative side of what is seen as a wholly good response. ![]()
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