What is Empathy?

The definition of empathy is the intellectual identification or vicarious experience of the feelings, thoughts and attitudes of another.It is the experience of understanding another persons condition from their perspective. An extreme example of empathy would be your ability understand or theorize how a psychopath would be feeling or acting after committing a murderous act. This capability to understand or "step into someone else's shoes" is a clear example of how empathy works. It is an important skill to be able to empathize in history because in order to fully grasp both sides of history you need to be able to 'step into other peoples shoes'. Only understanding the morally correct side of history gives the student a rose colored view that there was only good and bad, when in reality both sides would have had good and bad parts, like the Union soldiers. Their intentions were good at first, trying to abolish slavery and fight for African American freedom, but in reality the Union soldiers still held prejudice against their fellow black soldiers. Almost sometimes as bad as the Confederate soldiers and slave masters.

Mirror of Empathy