Great Niece Waltrout Stein's Prologue

Waltrout Stein, the great-niece of Edith Stein, played a key role in introducing and explaining The Problem of Empathy. Through her close family connection, she shared personal insights about Edith’s life, thoughts, and relationships, helping readers understand how her ideas were shaped by real experiences. Waltrout organized Edith’s notes and reflections, making complex philosophical ideas about understanding others clear and accessible. Her work provides a window into Edith’s mind and heart, showing how empathy is both an intellectual and deeply human practice. This prologue highlights the importance of family, memory, and careful stewardship in preserving a lasting philosophical legacy.

About Waltraut Stein

Waltraut Johanna Hedwig Stein, Edith Stein’s great-niece and translator, was affectionately known as Wally to family was born in Berlin on the 23rd March,1932. She emigrated with her family to the United States in 1937, travelling through Poland, Russia, China, and Japan before crossing the Pacific.

Waltraut earned a Master’s in Psychology from Ohio University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Northwestern University. She taught philosophy and psychology at the University of Georgia and the University of West Georgia.

A passionate thinker, she loved Plato and Kant and was influenced by Fritz Perls’ Gestalt psychology, spending a year in a Gestalt commune on Vancouver Island. In later years, she enjoyed knitting, crochet, embroidery, and creating over 20 intricate cross-stitch pieces. Waltraut’s life combined intellectual curiosity, creativity, and a deep love for learning and craft.

Waltraut passed away peacefully on June 28, 2023, in Sebring, Florida, at the age of 91.

Waltraut's Translation

Waltrout is recognised not only for her linguistic and scholarly skill but also for her empathic grasp of Edith’s thought, echoing the book’s own focus on empathy.

Her introduction situates Edith’s dissertation within Husserl’s phenomenological method, explaining the phenomenological reduction, clarifying Stein’s analyses of empathy, the body, and the spiritual person, and exploring unresolved questions, such as how the non-spatial “I” relates to the spatial body.

Detailed notes highlight how carefully terms like Leib/Körper, Seele/Geist, and Erlebnis/Erfahrung were translated, showing a commitment to preserving the technical precision of phenomenological vocabulary.

Personal and Spiritual Context

In her 1988 preface, Waltraut Stein reflects on how Edith’s early academic rigor connects to her later life as a Carmelite nun and martyr. The work bridges intellectual and spiritual life, showing that for Stein, faith and reason were deeply interdependent.

Empathy as a guide to Christian life. Waltraut sees in her great-aunt’s philosophical study a guide to living the Christian life fully, interpreting empathy as a model for love, understanding, and service.

Invitation to a broader readership. This edition aims to make Stein’s early, demanding work accessible to a wider audience, not just phenomenology scholars, but also psychologists, theologians and anyone interested in meaningful relationships and community engagement.

Empathy as a Unique Experience

For Stein, empathy is more than perception or imagination. It is a distinctive experience that allows one person to truly engage with another’s lived reality.

The layered Self. Stein describes the human being as Psycho - Physical - Spiritual, highlighting how empathy unites body, mind and soul in a holistic understanding of the person.

Intersubjectivity. Empathic understanding of others forms the foundation of human community and even scientific inquiry, connecting phenomenology to the social and cultural sciences and showing how we relate to one another in meaningful ways.

Summary

The Problem of Empathy is the essential starting point for exploring Edith Stein’s philosophy of the human person and her development in phenomenology.

Stein’s dissertation (meaning similar to a doctorate research today) is both methodologically rigorous and personally profound. It combines careful philosophical analysis with deep human and spiritual insight.

The translator and editors focus on fidelity, clarity, and empathy in presenting Stein’s ideas. Their aim is to make her early work accessible to scholars as well as anyone curious about human understanding.

Empathy, philosophically, personally, and spiritually remains central to understanding both people and the wider world.