The Collected Works of EDITH STEIN ON THE PROBLEM OF EMPATHY

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68 Edith Stein
participate in" the movement of knocked and knockinq ball. -fhe
character of the ball otherwise prohibits the attribution of represented
alive movement to it.eo
On the other hand, rigid immobility conflicts with the phenom_
enon of the sensitive living body and the living orgarrism in general.er
We cannor imagine a completely immobtle living being.
That which is bound ro one place completely motionless ls
"turned to stone." So far, spatial orientation cannot be com_
pletely separated from voluntary mobility. First of all, the varie_
ties of perception would become so limited if spontaneous movement
ceased that the constitution of a spatial world (so far, the
individual one) u'ould become dubious. This abolishes rhe pos_
of transference
libility
into the foreign living body and so of a
fulfilling emparhy and the gaining of his orieniation. Thus voluntary
movement is a part of the strucrure of the individual and is
entirely nonsuspendable.
(i) The Phenomena of LW
Now let us consider a group of phenornena that participate in
the structure of the i'dividual i. a special way: the y appeai i. the
living body and also as psychic experiences. I u,ould iike to calthem
the specific phenomena of life. They include gro\r,rh, devel_
opment and aging, health and sickness, vigor and sluggishness
(general feelings, in our terms, or, as Scheler would say, ;feeling
ourselves to be in our living body"). As he has protesred againsi
empathy in general, Scheler has very parricularly protested
against "explaining" phenomena of life by empathy.ez He wor.rld
be e.tirely justified if empathy were a genetic process so rhat the
elucidation of this tendency explained away what it was ro eluci_
date, as we mentioned earlier. Otherwise, I see no possibilitv of
detaching the phenomena of life from the individuai's other ionstituents
or of exhibiting anything but an empathic comprehension
of them.
In considering general feelings as our own experience, we have
seen horv they "fiIl" the living body and rhe soul, horv they defi_
nitely color every spiritual act and every bodily evenr. horv they
are then "co-seen" at the living bodyjust as fields of sensation are.
'I'hus, bl his walk, posture, and his every ntovement, \{e also
Constitution of the Psycho-Physical IndiaiduaL 69
"see" "how he feels," his vigor, sluggishness, etc. We bring this
c.o-intended foreign experieuce to fulfillment by carrying it out
nith him empathically. Furthermore, we not only see such vigor
and sluggishness in people and animals, but also in plants. Empathic
fulfillment is also possible here. Of course, what I comprehend
in this case is a considerable modification of my own life. A
plant's general feeling does not appear as the coloring of its acts,
lirr there is no basis at all to believe such acts are present. Neither
do I have any right to ascribe an "awake" "I" to the plant, nor a
reflective consciousness of its feelings of life. Even the otherwise
larniliar constituents of animals are absent. lt is at least doubtful
rvhether the plant has sensations,e3 and so our empathy is unjusti-
{red if we believe we are inflicting pain on a tree by cutting it
don'n with an ax. A plant is not the center of orientation of the
spatial world either, nor voluntarily mobile, even though it is
capable of alive movement in contrast with the inorganic. On the
other hand, the abse nce of this constitution does not justify us in
interpreting what is present in a new way and distinguishing the
phenomena of life in plants from our own. I would not like to
offer an opinion on whether we should look at the phenomena of
life as essentially psychic or only as an essential basis for psychic
existence fDaseins).sa That phenomena of life have an experiential
character in psychic contexts is hardly contestable.
No*' perhaps someone will think that I have selected general
feeling as a very convenient example of the psychic nature of
phenomena of life. Horvever, this psychic nature must also be
demonstrable in other phenomena of life. Scheler has himself
directed us to the "experience of life."e5 First calling "lived,"
isolated, finished experiences "psychic," as he does, seems to me
like a definition not derived from the essence of the psychic. The
psychic entity present (the primordial one, according to us) is
rvhat is becoming, is experience. What became, rvas lived, and is
{rnished sinks back into the stream of the past. We leave it behind
us when we step into new experience; it loses its prirnordiality but
remains the "same experience." First it is alive and then dead, but
not first non-psychic and then psychic. (There is no positive ternr
fbr "non-psychic.")Just as solidifying u'ax is first liquid and then
hard but still wax, so the same material body remains. There is no