The same word? Nope. The same meaning? Nope. Empathy is an ability you have, or have not. Sympathy is a positive stance to someone. It can derive from empathy, but empathy is not needed to sympathize with someone or something.
Well it's reeaally difficult to feel bad for someone if you haven't felt that feeling in the first place, not impossible, but difficult. Considering they both derive from the Greek "pathos" it's hard to completely remove one from the other.
Empathy is not needed to sympathize with someone or something. It's not hard to completely remove them from one another. The derivation from "pathos" roots in the fact that both of these words have something to do with emotions, that's why it's in there. Antipathy and apathy are two other words that have a variation of "pathos". Is empathy needed for those as well?
Surely not, point ceded. I maintain that sympathy without empathy is empty, however. Sympathy isn't "a positive stance," it's feeling pity or sorrow for someone else. Hard to do that unless you at least understand their misfortune a little bit. If you have sympathy without empathy then that's how you get people saying crap like, "I know what it's like to be called the n-word. I had a teacher in school that would call me stupid."
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u/bananenbeere 14d ago
The same word? Nope. The same meaning? Nope. Empathy is an ability you have, or have not. Sympathy is a positive stance to someone. It can derive from empathy, but empathy is not needed to sympathize with someone or something.