final paper ideas_ how is pain and pleasure connected with sympathy( Prometheus)?
Pain and pleasure are definitely parts that allow the person to experience sympathy, for that particular situation. These two things are components that allow for a more submersive experience when trying to sympathize with another individuals. This idea of the concepts being connected can be seen as, different parts of one big thing. The pain aspect is the part that weights down or gives gravity to the situation at hand. To, try to sympathize with and individuals to not be able to have a solid understanding of the emotion that they are feeling at that moment makes it more difficult to sympathize; more generally it does not even have to be the emotion of pain solely , but in general the principle of self application to the other individual. The chorus in Prometheus bound do this by directly asking the person for a first hand account of their experience. Do they find pleasure in this?
It would not be to far fetched to thing not because this allows them to experience a situation in a type of way that is unique to there conscious being, but as well as recounting it in a way that is accurate to a first hand account. Ultimately, pain and pleasure allow for the individual to gain a firm grasp on what they aim to understand and learn, and as a result sympathize with.
It is interesting that you're taking this tack, and I actually find this sentence interesting: "To try and sympathize with individuals and to not be able to have a solid understanding of the emotion that they are feeling at that moment makes it more difficult to sympathize..." I wonder if this is entirely correct. We sympathize or feel pangs of empathy towards individuals who are experiencing pain and suffering we have never felt. We can feel sympathy for animals, and we have do not necessarily know if they experience pain in exactly the same way we do. To some extent, if we see someone suffering something we too have experienced, we might actually shy away instead, and not want to hear or be near that pain. Perhaps this is where the pleasure aspect comes in - we are able to empathize (not entirely) with pain we see but have not experienced first-hand, and we get pleasure in that experience. If it "hits too close to home," it's not fun anymore.
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