This paper investigates the nature of empathy by means of examining the characteristic of pain. I discuss the topic of empathy from the following two approaches. One is the third-person approach to pain and empathy, which can be seen in moral psychological studies using empirical scientific method. The other is the first-person approach which can be seen in the phenomenological method such as Max Scheler’s theory of empathy. I argue that the two competing approaches face problems with arbitrariness of their application and relativism, which seem difficult to overcome. I propose that the second-person point of view with regard to empathy should be supplemented to complement and overcome the weakness of the two approaches.