In her doctoral dissertation On the Problem of Empathy, Edith Stein brings into the discussion Lipps’ account of empathy, appreciating its merits while at the same time being critical. Doing this, Stein further clarifies the essence of empathy.
While she agrees that empathy is an “inner participation,” Stein disagrees with the radical interpretation that in empathy there is a tendency for “full experiencing,” that the empathized experiences become the empathizer’s own experiences. It is as if their experiences collide and become one.
Of course, Stein would say that this is not the case because my experiences are my own, and the other’s experiences remain his or her own. This is the non-primordial character of empathy. I do not become the other, and the other does not become me. Individuality is preserved even in the most intimate level of empathy.
Stein says that Lipps conflated the fulfilling explication of empathy and the relationship of primordiality and non-primordiality. It is not that in empathy the foreign experience become my own, but rather this foreign experience may motivate me to produce other acts, which are primordial to me (e.g. sympathy).
Stein would say that a person’s empathic experience might stay at empathic awareness, the first level. This would probably be due to various reasons. But it can proceed to the second level if the situation permits.
For Edith Stein, there are three (3) levels of empathic experience. This would mean that empathy lets the subject go through a unique experience, so unique that Stein would say that it is sui generis.
Empathic Fulfillment
The second level of empathic experience is fulfilling explication. This refers to the intimate experience of being “at” the place of the other subject as if the subject becomes one with the other subject. In layman’s terms, this would be “putting oneself in the other’s shoes.” For Stein (p.12), this level is the “highest level of the consummation of empathy,” agreeing with Lipps.
Whereas in the first level the subject faces the other subject, in the second level the subject is at the other subject’s place.
It should be pointed out that for Stein, individuality is still preserved even in this intimate connection. Meaning to say, I do not become the other. While empathizing, I would always be myself and the other would still be a wholly other. It is just that, in empathy, I would be experiencing things as if I am in the other’s place.
Also, it should be noted that even at this level, emotional response from the subject is not warranted, and therefore may not happen. But, of course, sympathy might happen because of empathy.
Empathic Fulfillment in Practice
What does empathic fulfillment look like in practice?
Have you not experienced losing yourself (i.e., not conscious of yourself) when you were listening with your best friend? Have you never wondered that you know why a person feels this or that way? Have you not noticed that you seem to truly understand your friend’s grief over the loss of a loved one? Have you not experienced knowing the plight of a street vendor? Have you not noticed that you seem to understand the wrath your mother feels over your father?
This kind of understanding of what the other feels, as if you are the other, is what Stein calls empathy. This level is indeed the peak of the empathic experience.
P.S. All of the above is based on Edith Stein’s On the Problem of Empathy.
P.P.S. A disclosure: “empathic fulfillment” is my own term as I describe the second level of empathic experience.
“Should empathy persist beside primordial joy over the joyful event… and, moreover, should the other really be conscious of the event as joyful…, we can designate this primordial act as… fellow feeling (sympathy) (p.14).”
For Edith Stein, sympathy is when two (or more) subjects feel the same feeling over the same event. To sympathize with the other, then, means to feel what the other is feeling (i.e. to have a primordial feeling relatively the same as the other’s) over the same event. The caveat, of course, inherent in Stein’s argument for empathy, is that the feeling of the “I” will never be one and the same as that of the other. Individuality is still preserved. On the above passage, Stein uses the example of when the two subjects feel joy over a joyful event.
The question now is: is empathy necessary for the fulfillment of sympathy? In other words, is empathy the condition for sympathy?
*All of the above is based on Edith Stein’s On the Problem of Empathy.
Empathy 