On the Problem of Empathy

I have heard it said that all subsequent philosophy after the 4th Century BC in Greece is commentary on Plato. And also that all much more recent philosophy is a debate with David Hume (1711 - 1776). The subject of this book review is an English translation of the 1916 doctoral dissertation in German of Edith Stein (1891 - 1942). Stein was a student of Edmund Husserl, founder of phenomenology, and for him she wrote her 1916 dissertation on THE PROBLEM OF EMPATHY. *** Like her master Husserl and other phenomenologists, young Edith Stein must have always had David Hume somewhere in the back of her mind. Like Hume, both Husserl and all his students (including Martin Heidegger) at one time or another asked themselves: What is it that I perceive through my five senses? Do those perceptions put me beyond any shadow of doubt in touch with real, independently existing objects outside my individual knowing self? ***To oversimplify his position: Hume held that our senses give us nothing directly but a chaos of colors, smells, flavors, sounds, prickles -- all unorganized. We ourselves through memory and imagination organize the raw data into cause and effect, into place and time and into a supposedly real external world. But, for Hume, men cannot possibly be sure if there is anything really "out there" beyond our senses. ***Husserl, Stein and other phenomenologists thought that Hume erred. For he did not really look carefully and dispassionately at what he sensed, at whatever phenomena we are in contact with. He brought to his perceiving too many prejudices and preconceptions. He did more than just perceive. *** To phenomenologists, if I am honest and accurate, at any moment when I focus on what I am perceiving (abandoning all preconceptions), I do not perceive chaos. I perceive, for instance, a white screen onto which I am typing this review. In her 1916 dissertation, Edith Stein moves from such personal perceptions step by step, layer of consciousness by layer, to perceive herself perceiving her own solid body as "here"; not only that but another body as "there." And she perceives herself moving from here to there. And the other moving from there to here. She perceives her own consciousness and her own will causing the movements of her own body. *** Through "empathy," Stein, you, I, anyone just looking at the data, then knows beyond doubt that some of those other bodies "out there" do not depend on our individual consciousness, rather, those bodies are conscious like me, indeed, "ensouled." Through empathy, I know their thoughts and feelings and they know mine. *** Scholars say that Stein drew on her World War I experience as a nurse in an Austrian army hospital for men with infectious diseases. There brilliant linguist Stein quickly developed a fair working proficiency in eight different Austro-Hungarian army languages, including Ruthenian. She held soldiers' and civilians' hands as they died. She emptied their bedpans. She changed their linen. She corresponded with their loved ones. Edith Stein also learned to see their facial expressions as identical with the emotions behind those grimaces. ***After this point in her 1916 dissertation, onetime psychology major Stein began to sketch a complete theory of the human person -- in the end, only hinted at in her 1916 paper, but soon to be developed in follow-on documents. Indeed ere many years had passed, this brilliant young philosopher had developed a philosophy of man in society and man in the state. ***Edith Stein's ON THE PROBLEM OF EMPATHY is the work of a very young and "new" philosopher. It is not without flashes of originality and evidence of thorough scholarship. But it is an apprentices's work. More questions are raised than are answered. It seems clear that in her own mind, Stein intended her dissertation to be no more than a first step into a lifetime career in academic philosophy. ***Alas, Stein soon discovered that even in enlightened post World War I Prussia in particular and Germany in general she bumped up against a double glass ceiling: for she was both a woman and a Jew. She wanted to become the first tenured woman professor of philosophy at a German University. But, despite the originality and brilliance of subsequent writings designed to win her that position, she failed. *** She lived, fortunately, a great follow-on life, first as teacher of girls, then convert to Christianity then as lecturer around Europe on feminism and women in the professions, then as a Carmelite nun and finally an executed martyr in 1942 at Auschwitz. Edith Stein is now a canonized Roman Catholic saint. And many Jews and Christians are painfully evaluating the workability of her personal prayer to be a bridge forever between the Torah of Judaism and the Cross of Jesus Christ. *** Who should read Edith Stein's 1916 dissertation on Empathy? It is not for everyone. There are many other works of hers far less knotty for general readers to grasp, starting with her autobiography, LIFE IN A JEWISH FAMILY 1891-1916. Her dissertation text is densely reasoned, sprinkled, it is true, with examples. But it is a book for academic philosophy majors with considerable prior familiarity with David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. It is not a literary or even a philosophical masterpiece. But it is a great start for a young philosopher with several cultural and political strikes against her. -OOO-