The Collected Works of EDITH STEIN ON THE PROBLEM OF EMPATHY

92 Edith Stein
First of all, \{e want to determirre how f ar the spint has already
crept into our constitution of the psycho-physical individual. We
have already taken along the "I" of the foreign living body as a
spiritual subject by interpreting this body as the center of orientation
of the spatial u'orld, for we have thus ascribed to the foreign
living body an object-constituting consciousness and considered
the outer world as its cr>rrelate. All outer perception is carried out
in spiritual acts. Similarly, in every literal act of empathy, i.e., in
every comprehension of an act of feeling, we have already penetrated
into the realm of the spirit. For, as physical nature is
constituted in perceptual acts, so a new object realm is constituted
in feeling. This is the r.r'orld of values. In joy the subject has
sonrething joyous facing him, in fright something frightening. in
fear something threatening. Even moods have their objective
correlate. For him u'ho is cheerful, the world is bathed in a rosy
glow; {br him n'ho is depressed, bathed in black. And all this is cogiven
u'ith acts of feeling as belonging to them. It is primarily
appearances of expression that grant Lls access to these erperiences.
As we consider expressions to be proceeding from experiences,
we have the spirit here simultaneously reaching into the
physical world, the spirit "becoming visible" in the living body.
This is made possible by the psychic reality of acts as experiences
of a ps1'cho-physical individual, and it involves an effect on physical
nature.
This is revealed still more strikinglv in the realm of the will.
What is willed not only has an object correlate facing the volition,
but, since volition releases action out of itself, it gives what is
willed reality; volition becomes creative. Our whole "cultural
world," all that "the hand of man" has formed, all utilitarian
objects, all works c-rf handicraft, applied science, and art are the
realit,r' correlative to the spirit. Natural science (phvsics, chemistry,
arrd biology in the broadest sense as the science of living
nature, which also includes empirical psychology) describes natural
objects and seeks to clarify their real genesis causally.
'I'he
ontology ofnature seeks to reveal the essence and the categorical
structure of these objects.rr5 And "natr,rral philosophy" or (in
order to avoid this disreputable rvord) the phenomenology of
nature indicates horv objects of this kind are constituted within
Empathy as the Understanding of Spiritual Persons 93
cor-rsciousness. Thus it provides a clarifying elucidation of how
these "dogmatic" sciences proceed. -fhey themselves make no
iustification of their methods and should do so.
The Geisteswissenschaften [cultural sciences] describe the products
of the spirit, though this alone does not satisfy them. They
also pursue, mostly unseparated from this, u'hat they call "histor1"'
in the broadest sense. This ir-rcludes cultural history, literary
history, history of language, art history, etc. They pursue the
formation of spiritual products or their birth in the spirit. Thel
do not go about this by causal explanation, but by a comprehension
that relives history. (Were cultural scientists to proceed by
causal explanation, they rvould be making use of the method of
natural science. This is only permissible for elucidating the genetic
process of cultural products insofar as it is a natural occurrence.
Thus there is a physiology of language and a psychology of
language, r,r'hich, for example, investigate what organs have a
part in making sounds and what psychic processes lead to the fact
that one word is substituted for another with a similar sound.
These investigations have their vah.re, only one should not believe
that these are true problems of philology or of the history of
language.) As it pursues the formative process of spiritual products,
we find the spirit itself to be at work. More exactly, a spiritual
subject empathically seizes another and brings its operation
to giverrness to itself.
Only most recently has the clarification of the method of the
cultural sciences been set about seriously. The great cultural sci-
entists have indeed taken the right course (as some publications
by Ranke andJacob Burkhardt show) and also have been "very
well aware of the right course," even if not with clear insight. But
if it is possible to proceed correctly without insight into one's
procedure, a misinterpretation of one's own problems must necessarily
cause undesirable consequences in the functioning of the
science itself. Earlier, people made unreasonable demands of natural
science. It was to make natural occurrences "intelligible"
(perhaps to prove that nature was a creation of the spirit of God).
As long as natural science made no objections to this, it could not
develop properly. Today there is the opposite danger. Elucidating
causally is not enough, but people set up causal elucidation