Edith Stein's Foreword. Empathy

In her foreword, Edith Stein explains how she studied empathy by reviewing past approaches, separating aesthetic, cognitive, and ethical perspectives. Stein also identified the core issue as understanding empathy as perceiving others’ experiences. Acknowledging Husserl’s influence, she emphasises her own careful analysis and aims to clarify the central question, providing a foundation for future research.

Foundation of Stein’s thought

The Problem of Empathy lays the groundwork for Edith Stein’s later philosophy. It shows a broad outline of her thinking about the human person, ideas she develops more fully in subsequent writings.

Contribution to Phenomenology

Stein’s dissertation is a key early contribution to phenomenology (the study of conscious experience that focuses on how things appear to the human person). Following her mentor Edmund Husserl, she carefully observes thoughts, feelings and perceptions to understand reality through direct, unbiased attention to experience. Stein gracefully uses her own independent critical insights even as a beloved student of Husserl.

At the same time, she critically examines thinkers like Max Scheler, showing both respect and independent insight, demonstrating her ability to engage deeply with existing ideas while developing her own philosophical perspective.

Empathy as central to human understanding

For Stein empathy it is the primary way we understand others. Her work links empathy to the full psycho-physical-spiritual unity of the person, forming the basis for her philosophical anthropology.

Originality and independence

Stein demonstrates Independence and Critical Insight, questioning aspects of Husserl's and Scheler’s theories and anticipating later existential and phenomenological developments of exploring the lived experience of the person, including selfhood, relationships, and empathy.

Her focus on human consciousness, individuality, and intersubjective understanding foreshadows ideas later developed by thinkers like Merleau-Ponty and existential philosophy (the study of human freedom, choice and the meaning of life in personal experience).

The Empathy Question

Edith Stein began her work on empathy by looking at how the topic had been treated in existing literature. She noticed a mix of different approaches like aesthetic empathy, empathy as a source of understanding others’ experiences, and ethical empathy, but these had often been blurred together. By separating and analysing them, she identified the core problem, which was understanding empathy as the direct perception of other people’s experiences.

Stein’s Thoughtful Contribution

Stein was aware that her findings were only a small step forward. She acknowledged the influence of her mentor, Edmund Husserl, but emphasised that the results came from her own careful thinking and investigation. Her approach aimed to clarify the basic question so that all other aspects of empathy could be better understood, providing a foundation fo