Edith Stein: Empathy as a Problem. Phenomenology and Personalism

Edith Stein'’s On the Problem of Empathy (1917), together with Max Scheler'’s Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (1916), constitutes the first (German) source of personalism. Both of them would extend and modify Husserl'’s first words – and would ethically accomplish the project of an intersubjectivity not only made of constitution (aiming at the world – viser le monde), but also of relations and values (judging the world). Yet this first work of Edith Stein remains highly phenomenological. The question of the continuity and/or discontinuity of Edith Stein'’s own journey raises the question of the agreement and/or disagreement between phenomenology and personalism. Can one truly found a ““personalism””, and therefore an axiomatic, upon the ““phenomenological”” method called reduction? To what extent can the phenomenological epoché – which precisely puts ““everything”” except for the ego (Ideen I, § 57) within brackets, including God and even the set of values (Ideen I, § 58) – truly move to personalism without leaving phenomenology itself? The reflection proposed here on the problem of empathy in Edith Stein is but a stone in the road. However, it legitimates the figure of Husserl'’s assistant as the one from whom everything starts to play out. Beyond Edith Stein, and through her, phenomenology and personalism begin either to merge or to confront each other, and such is the disputatio that must now be reinitiated.