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.
Pure acts are acts of the subject targeting objects of the real world. These acts are, precisely, the mediation between the subject and the object world.
After a few days of reading On the Problem of Empathy, I finally came up with a matrix showing the targets of some pure acts, categorizing them into two (2): the “I” and the other.
What is shown below is that the acts (the ones in the rows) can or cannot access certain parts of the individual (the ones in the columns).
The Matrix
Outer perception can access the physical body of the self, and also the physical and living body of the other. Bodily perception can access both physical and living body of the self. Inner perception can only access one’s own psyche. Empathy, which is a sui generis form of perception, can access the psyche of the other.
An insight that I get from this is that the subject, which is a psycho-physical individual, has itself acts which may be of help in getting a clearer picture of itself and of the other individual.
Clarification of Terms
The “I” is, of course, the self.
The other is another self, another “I.”
The psychic refers to the mind, the spirit, or the soul.
The physical body refers to the human body, but treated as a thing comparable to a pen or a chair.
The living body refers to the human body that has sensations.
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.
“Empathy, for Stein, is a sui generis form of intentional experience directed upon the mental, or better, the experiential life of others. Put differently, empathy is a genuine other-directed experience (Szanto and Moran 2015, 450).”
For Edith Stein, empathy is not an emotion, fantasy, memory, or simulation. Rather, empathy is an experience distinct from the other forms of experience. It is, thus, a class of its own.
According to phenomenology, every experience is directed toward something. When we are experiencing, it is always about something, an object. We do not just experience out of the vacuum. An experience, by phenomenological definition, is intentional.
An empathic experience is intentional. It is other-directed. Empathy is directed toward the experience of the other person. When we empathize with another, we experience what the other person is experiencing. The object of empathy is, therefore, the experience of the other person.
For example, if I see my friend laughing out loud, I can directly experience his joy. I empathize with him. This is not a simulation of my friend’s experience, nor an interpretation of what is happening. It is, rather, a fundamental recognition or understanding of my friend’s experience of joy. I know that my friend is joyful because I am experiencing his joy, myself.
I experience not a joy that comes from me, but my friend’s. I’m not experiencing this joy as if it is my own, but rather I experience the lived experience of joy of my friend. So, this joy I experience in my friend is non-primordial (not happening in me). But my experience of my friend’s experience of joy is primordial (happening in me). This kind of experiencing is what Edith Stein means by empathy.
Borden (2003, 29) sums this up nicely, “Empathy is thus a two-sided experience: it is both our own and announces an experience that is not, and has never been, our own.” This is what makes empathy unique. It is a genuine experience of another person’s experience.
(This is just a rough sketch of my understanding of empathy, indeed a very short one. I still have to understand this concept deeply because I might be wrong in my interpretation.)
Szanto, Thomas, and Dermot Moran. 2015. Introduction: empathy and collective intentionality – the social philosophy of edith stein. Human Studies 38, no. 4 (Winter 2015), https://www.jstor.org/stable/24757458 (accessed January 17, 2019).
Empathy 