Sympathy And Compassion

People intuitively treats "sympathy" and "compassion" as the same concept, and tends to hold that "compassion" is pristine discussion of human compassion by ancient chinese philosopher. This paper will quote Hume’s sympathy and Mencius’compassion as the concept of representative view, expanding a comprehensive and comparative study, which reveals the difference of two concepts. First of all, the paper will look back to Hume and Mencius’original books, and interpretate sympathy of The Human Nature and compassion of Mencius, to accurately grasp the original concept of sympathy and compassion. Next, the paper further Hume and Mencius’emotional theory, and summarize the difficulties faced by their theory, at the same time, introducing refute the rationale of literature and other scholars’interpretation.Through a comparative study, The paper will classify Hume’s sympathy as "reflection sympathy", and treat Mencius’compassion as "intuitive sympathy". At the last part paper will focus on the concept、target and the metaphysical basis of sympathy and compassion, and then reveal both the commonness and individuality.Ultimately, combining the comparative study concluded, we will reflect on the moral measure of perspective. Based on this work, we will discuss the moral value and practical significance of sympathy and compassion.