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Empathy And Compassion - Example Papers

Empathy And Compassion

The word compassion comes from Latin and means "to bear with" or "to suffer with." Compassion and empathy are essential human qualities that allow one to feel, understand, and respond to the suffering of others. They enable individuals to enter into and maintain relationships of caring. The ability to care has been identified by Martin Heidegger as a fundamental aspect of the human condition. In every society the sick and the dying have been treated with compassionate care. This is a universal human response. Many of the world's major religions hold compassion as one of the highest spiritual virtues.
Dynamic compassion, or Ahimsa in Hinduism, is known as the God quality within a person. ...

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the way God interacts with creation and is, therefore, the way people should interact with one another. In all of these spiritual traditions, directly addressing the suffering of others through compassionate care is a religious obligation. In such responses we can see the hallmark of our shared humanity.
To have compassion or to "suffer with" another implies a quality of imagination and an identifying with the other's pain as something we can vicariously feel along with them, however tangentially. Compassion is an active choice to want with others and to want for others the alleviation of their suffering. In acting compassionately we acknowledge that we all share the same conditions of mortality; we all suffer and we all die.
Empathy derives from a Greek root word meaning, "in feeling" or "feeling into." A component of compassion, empathy is the recognition and understanding of the other's suffering. It is a deep appreciation for what it is truly like to be in the other's ...

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 3/3/2011 04:51:57 AM
Submitted By: dookie_84
Category: Social Issues
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 915
Pages: 4

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