Abstract
In On the Problem of Empathy Edith Stein claims empathy to be a three-step process in which the experiences of the other person (1) emerge to me as meaningful in my perception of her, I then (2) fulfil an explication of these experiences by following them through in an imaginative account guided by her, in order to (3) return to a more comprehensive understanding of the experiences of the other person. Stein obviously employs the phenomenon of empathy to (A) explain how we may access the experiential world of the other person, as well as (B) develop an ethics centred around the notion of personhood. Although it is debatable whether Stein actually succeeds in fully realizing either of these aims in her book, in this chapter I intend to explore how the Steinian theory of empathy could serve both as an experientially based anchoring point of medical epistemology and as a founding ground for medical ethics. Empathy is an apt starting point for medical ethics in that it acknowledges that moral reflection begins in experiencing the suffering of a person, who is in need of help, a starting point that also connects to the question of which capabilities (virtues) a good doctor (health care professional) needs to embody.
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Notes
- 1.
The new German edition of Zum Problem der Einfühlung in the collected works of Stein contains additions to the text made by Stein in her personal copy, as well as a valuable introduction by the editor Maria Antonia Sondermann dealing with the genesis of the work (Stein 2008: xi–xxvi). Stein’s book is a shortened version of her doctoral dissertation, which she wrote under the supervision of Husserl and presented in Freiburg in 1916. During 1913–15 she studied philosophy in Göttingen and listened to the lectures not only of Husserl (whom she followed to Freiburg in 1916, when he was appointed professor there) but also of Scheler, whose influence is very visible in her text.
- 2.
In his recently published study Lived experience from the inside out: Social and political philosophy in Edith Stein Antonio Calcagno makes the point that Stein’s phenomenology of empathy is meant to serve as a gateway to a philosophy of personhood and ethics (2014). Calcagno, however, presents Stein’s theory in the manner of the meeting with the other person ultimately serving me in the process of getting to know myself (as a person), whereas my interpretation will rather stay with the other person as the fundamental point of gravity in a Steinian ethics.
- 3.
Kay Toombs in “The role of empathy in clinical practice” (2001) aims to do something similar to the project I am embarking upon in the current chapter. Toombs, however, rather aims to make the epistemological point about getting to know the experiences and world of the patient through empathy lucid than using Stein’s theory to develop a medical ethics .
- 4.
The standard phenomenological terminology for the medical body would be “Körper,” in contrast to “Leib,” see (Slatman 2014).
- 5.
Although it is not the main topic of his phenomenological proposal for empathy, it should be mentioned that Zahavi does investigate the possibilities of a multi-layered approach to empathy à la Stein (and Husserl) in Zahavi (2014).
- 6.
Unfortunately, Waltraut Stein’s translation of this key passage (and many others) in On the Problem of Empathy is far from ideal, constantly mixing up references to “Gehalt” and “Erlebnis” and using “explanation” instead of “explication” in the last sentence (Stein 1989: 10). Because of this I have made my own translations of Stein’s book in this chapter referring to the German original.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
It should be pointed out that some phenomenologists, notably Husserl, use the term “empathy” in the broader sense of including encounters with other persons in which we do not take any special interest in the experiences they are having (Zahavi 2012). In the case of empathy, however, I think the contemporary phenomenologist wanting to use the term “empathy” in a non standard manner would have to be careful in pointing out that he is using the term in a way that does not cover the cases many other empathy theorists (and lay persons) view as paradigmatic for empathy and/or in a way that covers cases many other empathy theorists (and lay persons) would not count as examples of empathy.
- 10.
Stein’s analyses are Husserlian in flavour on this point; for a comparison between Husserl’s and Stein’s theories of empathy and intersubjectivity, see Zahavi (2014).
- 11.
Stein’s account of the perception of the expressive body of the other person is very similar to the often-referred-to position found in Scheler: I see the anger in the clenched fist, the joy in the smile, etc. (Scheler 2009: 260). Scheler even spread the rumour that Stein had simply stolen thoughts and arguments found in his unpublished lectures (that Stein had attended) without giving proper references. Stein, however, vehemently denied this in a letter sent to Scheler after she had encountered the rumours of plagiarism (Stein 2008: xx).
- 12.
For my account of Lipps’s theory, see Stueber (2006: 7–9).
- 13.
- 14.
Many contemporary moral philosophers are sceptical towards the project of regarding sympathy and/or empathy “as the high road to an ethical outlook” (Goldie 2000: 180), since they tend to make us care only about persons who are close to us and not about suffering or moral duties in general; see, for instance, Prinz (2011). For more positive accounts of what role empathy could play in ethics, see Slote (2007) and Svenaeus (2014).
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Svenaeus, F. (2017). Edith Stein’s Phenomenology of Empathy and Medical Ethics. In: Magrì, E., Moran, D. (eds) Empathy, Sociality, and Personhood. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 94. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71096-9_9
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