Empathy: An Overview of the Concept

The word empathy finds its roots within the Greek word ‘pathos’ which means suffering. The Greek word for empathy is empatheia, which translates to ‘in suffering.’ Not much is written about empathy by the ancient Greek philosophers; however, the word empathes has been reported to have been mentioned in Aristotle’s On Dreams and Plutarch’s Lives (Agosta, n.d.; Roy, 2022a). The concept of empathy however was discussed in seriousness much later, during the times of the Scottish enlightenment, by David Hume who had posited that “the minds of men are mirrors to one another” (Hume, 1739–40, p. 214) and his fellow countryman Adam Smith who had proclaimed “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it’ ( Smith, 1759, p. 11). However, the phenomenon that had been narrated by Hume and Smith was described by the term sympathy, the word ‘empathy’ was formally coined over a hundred years later.