The Collected Works of EDITH STEIN ON THE PROBLEM OF EMPATHY

105>
Edith Stein
absolutely as the scientific ideal. This would be harmless if this
interpretation were confined to natural scientists. One could
calmlv allow them the satisfaction of looking down on "unscientific"
(because not "exact") cultural science, if'the enthusiasm for
this method had not gripped cultural scientists themselves. People
do not want to be inexact and so cultural sciences have gone
along in man), $'ays and have lost sight of their own goals. We find
the psychological interpretation of history'r6 advocated in the
textbooks on historical method. The study of'this interpretation
is emphatically recommended to ]'oung historians by Bernheim,
for example, who ranks as an authority in the area of methodology.
\4'e certainly do not maintain that psychological findings can be
of no use at all to the historian. But they help him find out n'hat is
beyond his scope and do not yield him his real objectives. It is
necessary for me to explain psychologicallv when I can no longer
understand.rrT But when I do this, I am proceeding as a natural
scientist and not as an historian. If I ascertain that an historical
personality shou'ed certain psychic disturbances as the result of
an illness, for example a loss of memory, I am establishing a
natural event of the past. This is an historical occurrence as little
as the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii. I can account
for this natural event by laws (assuming that I have such laws), but
it does not thus become in the least intelligible. The only thing
that one is tcl "understand" is hon, such natural events motivate
the conduct of these people. They have historical significance as
"motives." But then one is no longer interpreting them as natural
facts to be explained by natural laws. Should I "explain" the
u'hole life of the past, I would have accomplished quite a piece of
work irr natural science, but rvould have completelv destroyed the
spirit of the past and gotten not one graiu oi historical knowledge.
If historians take their task to be the determination and
explanation of the psychological facts of the past, there is no
longer any historical scrence.
Dilthey calls Taine's historical works a horrible example of the
results of this psychological interpretation. Wilhelm Dilthey's
goal in life was to give the cultural sciences their true foundation.
He stressed that explanatorv psychology was not capable of this
Ernpathy as the Understanding of SpirituaL Persons 95
and rvanted to put a "descriptive and analytic psychology" in its
place.rr8 \4Ie believe that "descriptive" is not the proper u'ord, fbr
descriptive psychology is also the science of the soul as nature.
Such a psychology can give us as little informatiorr on ho.rv the
cultural sciences proceed as on the procedure of natural science.
Phenomenology urges that reflecting investigation of this scientific
consciousness make clear the method of cultural science as
n'ell as that of natural science. Dilthey is not completely clear
here'.
Indeed, he also sees "self consciousness" as the way to an epistemological
grounding.lre And he recognizes reflective turning
o{'the glance toward the procedure of the cultural sciences to be
the understanding that makes it possible for us to relive the
spiritual lif'e of the past.r20 (We would call this empathic comprehension.)
But he finds man as nature or rhe total life of the
psvcho-phl,sical individual to be the subject of this undersrand-
ing.t:lt Therefore, the science occupied rvith human beings as
natllre, i.e., descriptive psychology, is the presupposition of the
cultural sciences on the one hand, and on the other hand, what
gir,'es them unity; Ibr cultural sciences are concerned r,r'ith the
single ramifications exemplifying this totality as a rvhole. These
include art, morality, law, etc.
But nou' the principal difference bet.w'een nature and spirit has
been suspended. Exact natural science is also presented as a unity.
Each one of these sciences has an abstract Dart of the c