more on this theme | more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Empathy and in-his-shoes imagining are not sufficient for sympathy. Nor are they necessary. You can even sympathise with another when these are impossible, with the sufferings of a whale or a dog, for example.
Gist of Idea
Empathy and imagining don't ensure sympathy, and sympathy doesn't need them
Source
Peter Goldie (The Emotions [2000], 7 'Sympathy')
Book Ref
Goldie,Peter: 'The Emotions' [OUP 2002], p.216
A Reaction
Goldie is right that these distinct faculties are a blurred muddle in most of our accounts of dealing with other people. Empathy with a whale in not actually impossible, because we recognise their suffering, and we understand suffering.
Related Idea
Idea 24005 We know other's emotions by explanation, contagion, empathy, imagination, or sympathy [Goldie]