This chapter starts by providing an overview of the intellectual background of sympathy and empathy in ethics and especially in animal ethics. It first provides a brief history of the concepts and emphasizes the semantic and conceptual problems that marked them from the very beginning. It then analyzes some theories about the differences between sympathy and empathy, concluding that, in the end, the meaning and import of these concepts is always a matter of stipulation. The chapter ends by analyzing Elizabeth Costello’s reconsiderations about her early theories in some new short stories. The bottom line is that Costello’s much-criticized vagueness and imprecision is a feature marking the whole debate on sympathy and empathy.