Monday, February 6, 2012

Big Questions

"What is the risk of empathy? Isn't it possible—here's the question—is it possible to empathize with      someone who clearly has done just horrible, horrible, horrible things? And by empathy, I mean is it worth trying to understand them? Is our job just simply to reject them, to moralize about them, or is our job to try to understand what's going on here?" -filmmaker Errol Morris

     "Voices on Antisemitism | Transcript." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 16 Aug. 2007. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. <http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/voices/transcript/?content=20070816>.

5 comments:

  1. this quote make sense and i understand that it is possible to Empathy this statement

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  2. The risk of empathy in a trial stand point is that if you some how can connect to something that has happened to them. Then your judgement can be altered and could possibly give them a lighter sentence. Yes it can be possible to empathize with someone who has done something horrible but it depends on the person and each individual trial is not the same. Most of the it isn't worth the time to try to understand what why they have done what they did. It's our job to figure out if they did the crime not why they did it. Weither or not they are moralize or rejected it doesn't matter.

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  3. Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness) that are being experienced by another sentient or semi-sentient being. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion.

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  4. This quote regarding the risk of empathy makes a good point. It's saying whether we can get down to the bottom of why these people committed these horrible crimes, and with questiion and reasoning i think it is possible. No matter how hanus their crime is, we should not just reject them but understand why they did what they did.

    - Katie and Kelly

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  5. Depending on the persons reasoning for doing "horrible, horrible, horrible things" I think it’s possible to empathize with someone. If the person feels sorrow or bad about the things they done and show guilt then I don’t think it’s out job to simply reject them, it’s our job to understand what's going on.

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