International Journal of Contemporary Research in Multidisciplinary

Introduction:

The act of deducing someone's thoughts and experiences from their expressions was the original definition of empathy. The word empatheia, which means bodily fondness or passion in Greek, is the source of the idea (Harper, 2021). However, throughout time, the idea gained traction in Germany as a topic of interest to late-modern and contemporary German philosophers. Thus, in 1908, the word empathy emerged as a translation of the German einfuhlung, which literally translates as "in-feeling." The idea behind this definition of empathy was to transfer one's own imagined sentiments and movements onto inanimate objects in addition to comprehending another person (Psychology Today, 2021). The meaning of the concept of empathy has varied from the onset and has not been reconciled yet. This has also affected its application to certain situations. An understanding of empathy as a shared feeling does not necessarily require a person to be in the other person’s experience or standpoint to share similar feelings with them; it could only require that the person has an understanding of the situation or event, regardless of the dissimilarities between empathizer and empathized. In addition, before the German einfuhlung was introduced to the English language as empathy, the concept of empathy was mostly understood in reference to sympathy. Sympathy simply means understanding someone else’s feelings from a state created in our own minds and sometimes from a distance.