The Collected Works of EDITH STEIN ON THE PROBLEM OF EMPATHY

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Edith Stein
Empathy as the Understanding of Spiritual Persons
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125> Only in the last case can we say that there is no spiritual person
present. In all other cases r+'e must not put the person's nonunfblding
on a par with his non-existence. Rather, the spiritual
person also exists even if he is not unfolded. As the realization of
the spiritual person, the psycho-physical individual can be called
the "empirical person." As "nature" he is subject to the laws of
causality, as "spirit" to the lal's of meaning. Also that meaningful
context of psychic attributes of $'hich we spoke earlier, by virtue
of which the comprehensior-r of one attribute reasonably motivates
progress to the other, is his only as a personal one. Finest
sensitivity to ethical values and a u'ill leaving them completely
unheeded and only allowing itself to be guided by sensual motives
do not go together in the unity of a meaning, are unintelligible.
And so an action also bids for understanding. It is not merely to
be carried out empathically as a single experience, but experienced
as proceeding meaningfully from the total structure of the
person.l33
6. The Existence of the Spirit
Simmel has said that the intelligibility of characters vouches fbr
their objectivity, that it constitutes "historical truth." To be sure,
he does n()t distinguish this truth from poetic truth. A creature of
the free imap;ination can also be an intelligible person. Moreover,
histr>rical objects must be real. Some kind of point of depirrture,
such as a trait of the historical character, must be given to me itr
order to demonstratc the meaninp; context the object reveals to
me as an historical {act. But rf I get possession r>f it, in whatever
fflanner, I have an existil.rg product attcl not a merely thntasized
one. In empathic comprehension of'the foreign spiritual individual,
I also have the possibilrty of bringing his unverified behavior
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