The essence of acts of empathy

pp. 3-35

in: Edith Stein, On the problem of empathy, Washington, D.C., ICS Publications, 1989

Abstract

All controversy over empathy is based on the implied assumption that foreign subjects and their experience are given to us. Thinkers deal with the circumstances of the occurrence, the effects, and the legitimacy of this givenness. But the most immediate undertaking is to consider the phenomenon of givenness in and by itself and to investigate its essence. We shall do this in the setting of the "phenomenological reduction."