According to Edith Stein, empathy is non-primordial in its content. Her first warrant for this is that there are acts that are non-primordial in content. She brings into the discussion the acts of memory, fantasy and expectation, which are primordial as an act, but non-primordial in content.
Now, her second warrant is that in empathy, while the act is primordial, the experience is foreign (i.e. not mine). Stein says that the object of empathy is precisely another subject, which is wholly different from me. In contrast to the contents of my other acts which I claim to be mine, the experience in empathy is someone else’s.
This specific non-primordiality (i.e. grasping the experience of another individual) makes Stein think that empathy is a sui generis act of perception.
The primordiality of the act of empathy is part of Edith Stein’s general claim that empathy is “an experience of foreign consciousness in general.” She breaks down this claim into two sub-claims: (1) empathy is a primordial act (or “originary” for some texts) and (2) empathy is a non-primordial experience.
Stein opens up the claim of primordiality with a warrant that the object of empathy is in the “here and now.” In other words, in the act of empathy, the object directly faces me, without any mediation. Stein’s ground for this is the “seeing” of the pain of someone in the bodily expression of pain. This perception of someone’s pain is direct and immediate. She supports the warrant in saying that outer perception (i.e. the act that grasps physical expressions) does not give us the experience of pain.
So, for Stein, empathy is primordial as an act, analogous to outer perception. It is primordial because it is a present experience (i.e. happening here and now) when executing. Thus, when I empathize with someone, I directly perceive the experience of the individual without any detour to anything.
Reflection is a special term in phenomenology. Edith Stein uses it to mean a “looking-at” the experience itself, especially of the experience of empathy.
The acts of the subject are considered experiences. Perceiving the laptop in front of me is an experience. Empathizing with my mother about the slowness of the internet connection is an experience. Reflection, itself, is an experience.
The act of reflection does not “go out,” unlike the other acts (e.g. outer perception and empathy). Rather, it looks at the subject’s experience of the object. So, when I “reflect,” in the phenomenological sense, I am focusing on my own experience at the moment. I go out from myself to look at my experience from a certain distance.
What is unique with reflection is that it captures the relationship of the subject and its lived experience. That is why when the subject reflects, it always shows the subject’s intimacy with the experience at the moment.
In an empathic experience, I become aware of a unique experience through empathic awareness. Then, being led by this experience, I experience an intimate connection through empathic fulfillment. And when this is finished, a new level commences, which I call empathic comprehension.
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.
The third, and final, level of empathic experience is the “comprehensive objectification of the explained experience.” This refers to a comprehension of the unique experience of empathy. What happens here is that the subject has finished grasping the other’s experience and therefore recognize it as foreign. In other words, it is the completion of empathy where I recognize the experience as the other’s experience.
Only at this level that I become aware of the non-primordiality of the experience (i.e. the experience is not mine all along). Of course, Stein would say that there is never a fusion of the two subjects (i.e. they do not become one and the same). Nevertheless, the recognition of alterity in an empathic experience happens only at this level.
This level, thus, lets the subject return to how it was in the first level. In the first level, the subject faces the object and connects with it through empathy. Here at the third level, the subject faces the object again, but with a new kind of objectification: a comprehensive understanding of the situation of the other.
Empathic Comprehension In Practice
What does this level look like in practice?
In practice, it looks like this: when after you have “put yourself in the other’s shoes,” you as if say to yourself, “That is his problem, not mine” (of course, not in an insensitive way). There is just, thus, a recognition that the experience that you have undergone through empathy (the second level) is not yours but the other’s.
It is, then, just like coming to your senses.
P.S. A disclosure: “empathic comprehension” is my term as I describe the third level of empathic experience.
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.
According to Edith Stein, empathy is “the experience of foreign consciousness in general, irrespective of the kind of the experiencing subject or of the subject whose consciousness is experienced (p. 11).”
I constantly go back to this definition of empathy because I believe, and obviously, it is crucial for my thesis. The Steinian definition of empathy given above is broad. It is probably because Edith Stein was establishing it as an act revealing the presence of other individuals. Precisely, this is the background in which Stein explored empathy. It was the fact that, as Stein pointed out in her dissertation, the subject has an awareness of other individuals. How this is so, the act of empathy is the answer. So, for Stein, regardless of the nature of the subjects, the knowledge and experience they have with each other are based on the act of empathy.
*All of the above is based on Edith Stein’s On the Problem of Empathy.
Empathy 