Sympathy: Crossing Into Another Mind

The short answer

Humean sympathy is a mechanism by which an idea of another's feeling gains the vivacity of an impression. Similarity, closeness, causation, and observed signs help sentiments pass among social beings.

Read more deeply

We infer another's state from expression, situation, and behavior, then imagination makes that idea affectively present. This transmission explains emotional contagion, shared enthusiasm, shame before an audience, and concern for suffering. It is wider than benevolent empathy because hostile and competitive passions can also spread.

Sympathy makes society possible but is biased toward the near and familiar. Moral judgment therefore cannot stop at spontaneous resonance. Language, convention, and reflection help us adopt a more general standpoint from which remote people and stable consequences receive weight.

Context and caution

Hume's ‘sympathy’ is a technical eighteenth-century term. Translating it directly into today's empathy or compassion can hide its roles in contagion and social evaluation.

Primary-source guide

Primary guide: Treatise II.3.3, II.1–2, and III.3; Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.

Pathos Editorial · Reviewed 2026-09-12