From Sympathy to Empathy: Trajectories of Rights in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

I want to start the way the Greek poet Kafavy said we should always approach the world, at an angle, the angle of poetry. Here is a part of the American poet Mary Oliver’s poem, ‘Herons in winter on the frozen marsh’:

so the answer is

they ate nothing,

and nothing good could come of that.

They were mired in nature, and starving.

Still, every morning

they shrugged the rime from their shoulders,

and all day they

stood to attention

in the stubbled desolation.

I was filled with admiration,

sympathy,

and, of course, empathy.