Dear Kind Ones,

Empathy is the capacity to feel into the experience of another, from the Greek word ἐμπάθεια, literally “to suffer into (pathos as in pathology),” usually translated as malevolence or hatred. The word as we use it worked its way into English via its use in German esthetics where empathy (einfühlung) regarded the capacity of an artist to “feel into” their work. The term jumped from the arts to social sciences at the beginning of the 20th century as psychologist Edward Titchener used empathy as a translation of the German. But in the translation, the sense of dread or hatred was dropped. Empathy was no longer a negative term, but a positive force for one’s capacity to mirror the feelings of others.