فاطمه حدادی

Edith Stein, who began her philosophical career as Edmund Husserl’s research assistant, is a significant thinker in the phenomenological tradition. Her first major work, On the Problem of Empathy (۱۹۱۷), explores the problem of other minds and the way inner states are perceived by others. Stein’s phenomenological analysis conceptualizes empathy as a fundamental intentional act, distinguishing it from emotional contagion and other modes of intersubjective perception. One of her key innovations is her emphasis on embodiment in the empathic process. While Husserl acknowledges embodiment as part of conscious experience, Stein argues that embodiment and situatedness in the world play a fundamental role in the constitution of empathy. She emphasizes that the lived experience of the body is not only a medium for perceiving others but also a necessary precondition for the very possibility of empathy. She differentiates between two approaches to empathy: the descriptive-phenomenological approach, influenced by Husserl’s theory of intentionality, which examines empathy as a structure of consciousness, and the genetic-psychological approach, which relies on empirical analysis and cognitive science. Stein contends that empathy is not only essential for understanding others but also plays a crucial role in self-awareness. For her, empathy is a process that not only grants access to the experiences of others but also serves as the foundation for personal identity formation.