SYMPATHY. - In a general sense, it denotes that phenomenon by which a particular modification in any being is reproduced in another being, according to a physical law of induction or a psychophysiological law of imitation. More properly in psychology, it is the spontaneous tendency to relive within oneself the affective states of another person and to establish various forms of communication with that person.
In Greek philosophy, Empedocles already attributed the attraction between similar things and the repulsion between dissimilar things—hence cosmic change—to immanent feelings of love and hatred within individual things. Aristotle adopted Empedocle’s naturalistic theory and applied it to friendship (Eth. ad Nic., VIII, 1, 1155 b). Yet in Aristotle, the term carries the particular meaning of an affective and conscious state, namely, the feeling and loving of oneself and, at the same time, the feeling and loving of others according to the degree of their resemblance to oneself (ibid., IX, 4, 1166 a). With the Stoics (Marcus Aurelius, Ad se ips., IX, 9) and especially with the Neoplatonists (Plotinus, Enn., IV, 3, 8), it came to signify the inner principle of the harmonious unity of all material things: “the harmony and friendship of things that are deaf and devoid of sense... which the Greeks called sympathy” (Pliny, Nat. hist., XX, 1). In a similar sense, it was later taken up during the Renaissance revival of Neoplatonism and naturalism by Pico della Mirandola: “the consensus of the universe, which the Greeks more aptly termed συμπάθειαν” (De hominis dignitate, 1377; Florence 1942, p. 152).
Hume (v.) and A. SMITH, ADAM (v.) revived the term in the psychological sense of Aristotle and tended to make sympathy the very foundation of morality. For Hume, sympathy is the natural capacity to feel another’s good and evil as one’s own (Treatise, II, 1, 11). From this derive directly the natural virtues of charity and beneficence. Justice, on the other hand, is an artificial virtue, arising from a rational calculation of utility and determining social life with a view to collective well-being; it produces a depersonalization of the subject through a phenomenon of reflected sympathy, whereby the individual comes to experience within himself the good or evil of the entire community and to take it as the evaluative motive for his actions, above any private interest (ibid., III, 3, 1).
A. Smith goes beyond Hume’s position inasmuch as he considers the essence of sympathy not only in sharing another’s affective state but also in appropriating the very motives that determine others to act. With sympathy, the individual’s judgment of an action becomes a reflection of the judgment that he senses in others and transmits to others; hence the moral principle: “always act in such a way that an impartial observer could sympathize with you” (Theory of Moral Sentiments, III, 1–3).
Morality based on sympathy, by denying the existence of an objective moral order, remains on a subjectivist and relativist plane and fails to escape the fundamental egoistic and utilitarian evaluation. Some contemporary sociological currents (v. SOCIOLOGY) take sympathy in a vitalistic and psychological sense to explain the deepest roots of spontaneous and affective forms of association; the most important of these SCHELER, MAX (v.).