empathy

is it a real possibility?

Translated from the Greek meaning of empatheia: physical affection. (Thanks wikipedia).


How can we conceive of truly EMPATHISING with an-other. This other's feeling, in its alterity....understood or appreciated with the same strength of emotion felt by the one it to who it exists. Transcending oneself's own feelings, histories, and facticity.....then having the ability to emphasizes with someone else’s????????? This makes little sense to me.

You cannot know…..this lies in the beauty of otherness. We can have a relation of expression, and acknowledgment that this person feels this way yet I can never understand fully or empathises…….my attempt to do so would be to accommodate such a feeling into my “self” knowledge, and this it is no longer the feeling, in it’s original state of the other’s and thus to focus on this altered feeling is shear inaccuracy, and trivialises the original thought.

This may lead to a vacuous feeling with, and through the other, and the existing dialogue. However, it is this that draws out, and draws together, the precise relations of difference by which the other’s difference can be of aid. You cannot understand, and it is from this position that you can BE with me….and that I can ask OF you….