Apathy is the absence of all caring — nothing matters, nothing moves you. Voter apathy, public apathy, sink into apathy.
It is absence rather than opposition, which is what makes it so hard to argue with: the opposite of love is not hate but apathy is the usual formulation. In medicine it is a symptom of depression and of some brain injuries. Note that the Greek means without feeling, and the Stoics thought it a virtue.
1nounapathyThe absence of all caring.
“Voter apathy meant that few people bothered to vote in the local election.”
apathy is an absence of feeling.
Greek apatheia is a-, without, plus pathos, feeling. Pathetic, sympathy and passion come from the same feeling.
Ancient Greek
ἀπάθεια — impassibility”, “insensibility”, “freedom from emotion
Latin
apathīa
French
apathie
English, today
apathy
Built from
From French apathie, from Latin apathīa, from Ancient Greek ἀπάθεια (“impassibility”, “insensibility”, “freedom from emotion”), from ἀπαθής (“not suffering or having suffered”, “without experience of”), from ἀ- (“not”) + πάθος (“anything that befalls one”, “incident”, “emotion”, “passion”). a doublet of apatheia, which was borrowed directly from Ancient Greek.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA