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The Ontic–Ontological Aspects of Social Life. Edith Stein’s Approach to the Problem

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Women Phenomenologists on Social Ontology

Part of the book series: Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences ((WHPS,volume 1))

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Abstract

The issue of empathy has become one of the central fields of investigation in phenomenology .

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cf. The most important current literature on this topic: Zahavi (2010, 2011, 2014), Szanto (2015), Lebech and Gurmin (2015), Rieß (2010), Yu (2010), Beckmann-Zöller (2006), Hackermeyer (2008); etc.

  2. 2.

    Cf. Stein (1989). Here and in all quotations I refer to the English translations of the Edith Stein editions.

  3. 3.

    Cf. Zahavi (2014).

  4. 4.

    Zahavi (2014, 101).

  5. 5.

    Cf. Zahavi (2014, 13, 55–58, 204), etc.

  6. 6.

    Cf. Husserl (1977).

  7. 7.

    Cf. Stein (2000a).

  8. 8.

    Dilthey (1923).

  9. 9.

    Dilthey (1927).

  10. 10.

    To Edith Stein ’s contribution to Dilthey see also Jani (2015a, b).

  11. 11.

    Cf. Dilthey (1923). Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, GSch I., 95.

  12. 12.

    Cf. Lessing (2001, 110).

  13. 13.

    Stein (2000b).

  14. 14.

    Cf. Stein (1989, 95): “As natural things have an essential underlying structure, such as the fact that empirical spatial forms are realizations of ideal geometric forms, so there is also an essential structure of the spirit and of ideal types. Historical personalities are empirical realizations of these types. If empathy is the perceptual consciousness in which foreign persons come to givenness for us, then it is also the exemplary basis for obtaining this ideal type , just as natural perception is the basis for the eidetic knowledge of nature”.

  15. 15.

    Zahavi (2014, 81).

  16. 16.

    Cf. Stein (2000a, chap. II).

  17. 17.

    Cf. Stein (1989, 117).

  18. 18.

    Stein (2000b, 197).

  19. 19.

    Szanto (2015, 510).

  20. 20.

    Ibid. 511.

  21. 21.

    Stein (2000b, 201).

  22. 22.

    Ibid. 202.

  23. 23.

    Ibid. 203.

  24. 24.

    Cf. Szanto (2015, 522): “With this in mind, consider first the membership misidentification problem. With individual -to-group and intragroup—or social empathy —and group to member—or collective empathy—properly functioning various misidentifications concerning experiential or emotional sharing might be corrected”.

  25. 25.

    Ibid. 507.

  26. 26.

    Stein (2000b, 204).

  27. 27.

    Zahavi (2014, 64): “The retentional process consequently not only enables us to experience an enduring temporal object; it does not merely enable the constitution of the identity of an object in a manifold of temporal phases; it also provides us with a non-observational, pre-reflective, temporally extended self-consciousness . This is why Husserl ’s account of the structure of inner time-consciousness (pretention-primal impression-protention) must be understood as an analysis of the (micro)-structure of first-personal givenness”.

  28. 28.

    Cf. Stein (2000a, 205).

  29. 29.

    Ibid.

  30. 30.

    Ibid. 207.

  31. 31.

    Szanto (2015, 507).

  32. 32.

    Stein (2000a, 209).

  33. 33.

    Cf. Stein (1989): III/§4a, The Givenness of the Living Body.

  34. 34.

    Cf. Stein On the Problem of Empathy , III/§5d. The Foreign Living Body as the Center of Orientation of the Spatial World 61.

  35. 35.

    Zahavi (2014, 126).

  36. 36.

    Cf. Stein (1989, 62): “A sensing subject has become one which carries out acts”.

  37. 37.

    Stein (2000a, 210).

  38. 38.

    Cf. Stein (1989, 109): “As my own person is constituted in primordial spiritual acts, so the foreign person is constituted in empathically experienced acts. I experience his every action as proceeding from a will and this in turn, from a feeling . Simultaneously with this, I am given a level of his person and a range of values in principle experienceable by him. This, in turn, meaningfully motivates the expectation of future possible volitions and actions”.

  39. 39.

    Stein (2000b, 212).

  40. 40.

    Ibid. 227.

  41. 41.

    See Foot note (40).

  42. 42.

    Stein (2000b, 231).

  43. 43.

    Cf. Stein (1989): IV/§7b, Personal Types and the Condition of the Possibility of Empathy with Persons.

  44. 44.

    Stein (2000a, 273).

  45. 45.

    Cf. Szanto (2015, 507).

  46. 46.

    Cf. Stein (2000b, 208).

  47. 47.

    Cf. Zahavi (2014, 55).

  48. 48.

    Stein (2000b, 290).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pazmany Peter Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary

    Anna Jani

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  1. Anna Jani
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Correspondence to Anna Jani .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Sebastian Luft

  2. Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists, Institut für Humanwissenschaften, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Ruth Hagengruber

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Jani, A. (2018). The Ontic–Ontological Aspects of Social Life. Edith Stein’s Approach to the Problem. In: Luft, S., Hagengruber, R. (eds) Women Phenomenologists on Social Ontology. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97861-1_4

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