Ethics Paper
11/2/2020 Topic: EDITH STEIN SELECTION
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EDITH STEIN SELECTION 1
All Sections
THE TRANSPOSITION OF EDITH STEIN by John C. Wilhelmsson
Definition and Method
Edmund Husserl often had his doctoral students review the thought of another thinker on the same topic as their own doctoral theme as a starting point for study. This is the process Edith Stein engage in so I propose we follow that same path. Yet let us first, for the sake of clarity, define the term “empathy” and give a basic explanation of the phenomenological reduction.
When discussing the question of a given person attempting to enter into the “feeling” of another person a controversy often arises between the use of the word “empathy” or “sympathy.” Edith Stein seeks to put this question to rest promptly:
All these data of foreign experience
point back to the basic nature of acts
in which foreign experience is
comprehended. We now want to
designate these acts as empathy,
regardless of all historical traditions
attached to the word.
The purpose here is to help the reader realize that the investigation being entered into has little to do with the common usage of the words “empathy” and “sympathy.” These are terms we use to describe acts in which foreign experience is comprehended. However, the investigation we shall now enter into is concerned with the act itself: With the phenomenology of empathy.
The phenomenological reduction must first be understood. If I wish to intuit a given object, say a chair, I must first bracket off all of the things and facts I know about said object. I now enter into a state of pure consciousness as a subject which encounters an object by intending to it. However, this process of intentionality takes place only from a certain perspective, within a short moment in time. Therefore, I can only look upon the chair from a certain limited perspective which will only give the chair a certain limited meaning to me. Perhaps I see the chair directly from above so I am unaware of its legs. Then I intend to it from the side and become more aware of its features. Now
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by intending to it over and over again, thus seeing it from several different perspectives, I have the possibility of gaining determinate knowledge of the chair.
Are intending to objects, like a chair, and intending to another human person in an attempt to have empathy analogous to one another? Edith Stein speaks of seeing a friend who has just lost a loved one and becoming aware of that friend’s pain. This awareness might come about as a result of a strained tone of voice or a pale and emotionless face. Yet, by intending to my friend’s pain from many different perspectives can I come to a determinate knowledge of it? Stein states:
I can consider the expression of pain, more accurately, the change of face I empathically grasp as an expression of pain, from as many sides as I desire. Yet, in principle, I can never gain an “orientation” where the pain itself is primordially given.
Both the chair and my friend are objects present to my senses in the here and now yet my perception of objects and empathy are of a different nature. For I have the possibility of gaining determinate knowledge about the chair, however, I can never have the possibility of gaining determinate knowledge about the pain of my friend. Perhaps through a series of many intentions from many different perspectives I might ideally come to know how the pain effects my friend as a physical object. Yet, I can never in any condition fully gain access to the subject of the pain itself.
Stein further delineates this basic difference in nature between attending to an object and seeking to have empathy for another person.
When it arises before me all at once, it faces me as an object (such as the sadness I “read in another’s face”). But when I inquire into its implied tendencies (try to bring another’s mood to clear giveness to myself), the content, having pulled me into it, is no longer really an object. I am now no longer turned to the content but to the object of it, am at the subject of the content in the original subject’s place.
Edith Stein sees this shifting of the subject as the basic difference between empathy and memory, expectation or fantasy. For in all these later states the subject has continuity with the person having the memory, expectation or fantasy. However, in empathy the subject I face is not my own. I have now entered into the realm of intersubjectivity.
Philosophy of Empathy Stein begins by pointing out the distinction between the physical body and the living body. The physical body is an object we perceive, like many others, yet in a certain specific way. She states:
Every other object is given to me in an infinitely variable multiplicity of appearances and of changing
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positions, and there are also times when it is not given to me. But this one object (my physical body) is given to me in successive appearances only variable within very narrow limits. As long as I have my eyes open at all, it is continually there with steadfast obtrusiveness, always having the same tangible nearness as no other object has. It is always “here” while other objects are always “there.”
It would seem that Stein is referring here only to the sensory data of the physical body. For whenever I open my eyes or engage in self-touch my physical body remains present through this sensory data. Yet what if I close my eyes and stretch out my limbs inside of a decompression chamber? Even in this state, where I have no sensory data of my physical body at all, my sense of embodiment remains inescapably present. The fact that I know this body belongs to me can never be known by outer perception alone because outer perception would involve only interrupted streams of sensory data while my sense of embodiment remains constant. This constant sense of embodiment, given to me only outside of sensory data, is my “living body.”
The living body is not given to me as a sensation or as a group of sensations, but rather as the focal point of all of my sensations. It thus has an entirely different nature than that of my physical body. Stein says of this:
All these entities from which my sensations arise are amalgamated into a unity, the unity of my living body, and they are themselves places in the living body.
Through this Edith Stein begins to speak of the living body as having a “zero point of orientation” which she refers to as the “I.” She presents the example of a foreign physical object which could approach my living body, and even appear to be closer to my “I” than one of the outer limbs of my living body (or the sense of embodiment of said outer limb). Is this foreign physical object now closer to my zero point of orientation than my own outer limb? Edith Stein answers:
The distance of the parts of my living body from me is completely incomparable with the distance of foreign physical bodies from me. The living body as a whole is at the zero point of orientation with all physical bodies outside of it. “Body space” [Leibraum] and “outer
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space” are completely different from each other.
The problem remaining here for Stein is that one’s own physical body can be perceived with the senses just as foreign physical objects are. Therefore, from the standpoint of the senses, what separates the two?
Stein has been speaking strictly of a body at rest up until this point. Yet once a body is put into motion a further understanding of the relationship between the living body and the physical body becomes possible.
When I move one of my limbs, besides becoming bodily aware of my own movement, I have an outer visual or tactile perception of physical body movements to which the limb’s changed appearances testify. As the bodily perceived and outwardly perceived limb are interpreted as the same, so there also arises an identical coincidence of the living and physical body’s movement. This constant sense of fusion between the living body and the physical body is one which cannot be broken. For wherever my physical body goes my living body must follow in an almost perfect and “indissoluble” union.
In terms of the phenomenological reduction Edith Stein points out that no matter what standpoint one takes in order to gain a perspective on a given object the physical body and the living body remain in this always and indissoluble union:
Every step I take discloses a new bit of the world to me or I see the old one from a new side. In doing so I always take my living body along. Not only am I always “here” but also it is; the various “distance” of its parts from me are only variations within this “here.”
Thus the living body and the physical body are both necessary for the phenomenological reduction.
Stein now seeks to delve more deeply into the relationship between the living body and the physical body through the foot “gone to sleep” example. She describes the foot “gone to sleep” as being beyond the realm of the living body because of its lack of sensation. Like a “foreign physical body that I cannot shake off.” Yet when circulation returns and the foot “awakes” it once again becomes a part of the living body. Stein points out the implications of this toward understanding the living body.
For the living body is essentially constituted through sensations; sensations are the real constituents of consciousness and, as such, belong to the “I.” Thus how could there be a living body not the body of an “I”!
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Thus the concepts of the living body, the physical body and the “I” are joined together.
Stein goes on to investigate the relationship between the living body and feelings. She points out that this relationship is somewhat similar to the phenomenon of fusion already discussed between the living body and the physical body. However, one could wish to express a cheerful feeling yet be simply too physically exhausted to do so. She refers to this as “the phenomenon of the reciprocal action of psychic and somatic experiences.” By this she means that the psychic depends upon the somatic in order to understand experiences. The consciousness of the “I” is always body bound.
Feelings have another particular characteristic to them for Stein. They are never complete in themselves but always seek, even demand, bodily expression.
Feeling in its pure essence is not something complete in itself. As it were, it is loaded with an energy which must be unloaded.
She goes on to point out some of the many different ways a person might express feelings with bodily expression being the most normative among them. And although the bodily expression of feeling can be faked, expressed only in terms of the physical body, the actual phenomenon of the expression of feeling is a rather definite process.
I not only feel how feeling is poured into expression and “unloaded” in it, but at the same time I have this expression given in bodily perception. The smile in which my pleasure is experientially externalized is at the same time given to me as a stretching of my lips.
So while it is possible to simply stretch your lips without the accompanying feeling and sense of unloading of said feeling in expression, the actual phenomenon of the expression of a feeling is a much more complex and definite experience.
This leads Edith Stein into a discussion of the role of the will within the psycho-physical individual. She sees the will not just as a mechanism of choice isolated in itself but as always seeking to be connected to action in a similar way as feelings always seek to be connected to expression.
The will employs a psycho-physical mechanism to fulfill itself, to realize what is willed, just as feeling uses such a mechanism to realize its expression.
With the main difference here being that the existence of feelings is something a person has little control over while the will is a voluntarily controlled function.
However, this begs an important question which should not be passed over. Edith Stein now moves on to the question of whether the will is causally determined. If the choices we make now are really our own or just the result of a long line of causality which we no longer have any control over.
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Action is always the creation of what is not. This process can be carried out in causal succession, but the initiation of the process, the true intervention of the will is not experienced as a causal but as a special effect.
Stein does believe that causality plays a certain role in carrying out the will but only in terms of it being a conditioning factor. Such as when I will my body to move but it is very tired. However, she maintains that “All these causal relationships are external to the essence of the will.”
Stein now transitions to a study of the foreign individual. Yet she first sums up what we have learned so far about the psychophysical individual.
The psycho-physical individual as a whole belongs to the order of nature. The living body in contrast with the physical body is characterized by having fields of sensation, being located at the zero point of orientation of the spatial world, moving voluntarily and being constructed of moving organs, being the field of expression of the experiences of its “I” and the instrument of the “I’s” will.
Given all of this information the question arises. How is empathy toward the foreign individual possible?
Edith Stein starts with the example of the inner perception of the living body being “co-given” with the outer perception of the physical body within a given individual. This fusion between the living body and the physical body of the individual then allows him or her to observe the foreign individual’s living body and physical body being given in this same way. Once this is understood one can transpose their living body onto the foreign physical body of the other and begin to form an “empathic representation” of it.
Thus the key to understanding empathy is contained within the individual. For once I understand the relationship between my living body and my physical body all I need to do to is act as if the foreign physical body is my own physical body through putting my living body into relationship with it (either through fantasy or representations of my own past experience). She speaks of seeing someone’s hand pressing on a table. If I wish to understand the sensations of this hand I simply act as if the foreign physical hand is my own physical hand and, by either recalling a time my hand was pressing on a table or by engaging in a fantasy about a possible experience, enter into relationship with it. Edith Stein refers to this act as a “co-comprehension” between my living body and the foreign physical hand.
Edith Stein more explicitly defines this new term while summing up the nature of sensual empathy. Notice the key role that the relationship between the living body and the physical body plays:
The possibility of sensual empathy is warranted by the interpretation of our own living body as a physical body and our own physical body as a living body because of the fusion of outer and bodily perception. It is also warranted by the possibility of spatially altering this physical body, and finally by the possibility of modifying its real properties in fantasy while retaining its type.
Thus it is only through a proper understanding of the nature of our own body and sense of embodiment that empathy for the foreign individual might become possible.
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Feminism When Edith Stein speaks of “transposing” my living body onto the foreign physical body of the other she is alluding to her idea that the nature of the human person is this integral union between the living body and the physical body. Yet just what is the living body? From her descriptions we know it is the constant sense of embodiment given to me only outside of my sensory data. That it is my zero point of orientation or “I.” And that it is something which exists in an almost perfect union with my physical body yet has no physical attributes of its own. What else can Edith Stein be speaking of here except something that is very much like a soul? Thus we see here in Edith Stein’s philosophy a perfect underpinning for the theological idea of Pope John Paul II that the body is a manifestation of the soul.
While this is an interesting connection in a certain sense it is not all that surprising. For in fact many philosophers down through the ages have written about the nature of the body and the soul. Plato thought that the body was the prison of the soul. Aristotle thought that the body and the soul were a composite. One of the first philosophers to write of the body as really being of benefit to the soul was St. Thomas Aquinas.
Aquinas saw the human body as being of great help to the human soul in gaining knowledge. This is because he saw the soul in its pure state as having a limited intellect and thus not being able to come to a full knowledge of the world without the sensory data of the body. In this way for Aquinas the body and the soul are connected to one another and, certainly in an intellectual sense, the soul relies upon the body to become fully manifest.
Thus what is so novel about what Pope John Paul II is saying here is not the idea that the body is a manifestation of the soul. What is so novel here is the idea that the soul is of two complimentary types—masculine and feminine. In his catechism of November 21, 1979 John Paul II is quite clear and explicit about this when he says of man and woman:
They are two ways of "being a body" and at the same time a man, which complete each other. They are two complementary dimensions of self-consciousness and self-determination and, at the same time, two complementary ways of being conscious of the meaning of the body.
Aquinas held to the common thirteenth century view, based upon Aristotelian biology, that women were inferior to men. While more could be said about his views on women one thing is certain: The thought of Aquinas is not a good place to go looking for the philosophical underpinnings for the views expressed here by Pope John Paul II on the complementarity between man and woman. However, Aquinas is not really to blame in this for Aristotelian biology was simply the accepted thought of the thirteenth century.
Even if one searches throughout all of the other centuries and the entire history of philosophical thought on the body and the soul one is hard pressed to find anything similar to the idea Pope John Paul II puts forth here. This idea that there are two complimentary types of the human soul, masculine and feminine, is in fact something quite unique and novel. Indeed, I know of no other philosopher who has, with any sense of depth, put forth such an idea —save one.
After her work as Edmund Husserl’s assistant Edith Stein sought a university academic appointment of her own. Despite her obvious talents and fine contributions she was at this time denied that opportunity. Perhaps this was all in God’s plan as soon after this she began to feel
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drawn to Christianity. Not just Christianity in general but the Catholic faith in particular. She had chanced to read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila while staying at a friend’s house and became fascinated by the great Carmelite Saint. After her conversion in 1922 she wished to join the Carmelites but did not do so immediately out of concern for her devoutly Jewish mother Auguste’s feelings.
What happened next was a great blessing for all concerned. For Edith Stein was offered a position in the Dominican School at Speyer. Both living and working with the sisters allowed her the opportunity to begin to reflect upon women’s education. Being a phenomenologist her reflections were deep. And the fruit of these reflections is the remarkable, yet still largely misunderstood, feminism of Edith Stein.
The first unique aspect of Stein’s feminism is its sources. For she holds that it is a theology of feminism which is at the same time a philosophy of feminism:
Rightly understood and employed, the theological and philosophical approaches are not in competition, rather, they complete and influence each other.
Stein further says of her method:
The philosophizing mind is challenged to make the realities of faith as intelligible as possible.
Edith Stein holds that the revelation of the Bible creates a framework for feminism. Yet this framework must be built upon by reason in order to understand the full truth about woman. The Genesis story reveals that:
God created man according to his own image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.
From this Stein infers a philosophical truth:
I am convinced that the species humanity embraces the double species man and woman, that the essence of a complete human being is characterized by this duality; and that the entire structure of the essence demonstrates the specific character.
Here we have a philosophical statement suggesting that human beings are not just one but two species—man and woman. Stein is obviously not using the term “species” in the biological sense here, for part of the definition of a biological species is the ability to reproduce, but rather in a logical sense in order to denote a dramatic difference between man and woman. Yet just what is this difference?
At this point many people become confused about Stein’s thought. They see that she is making a bold statement about the nature of man and woman yet do not see any basis for it. Some have even gone as far as to suggest that Edith Stein is making a statement here that, in a philosophical sense,
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she cannot back up. Here it is necessary to understand Edith Stein’s feminist thought within the context of her philosophical thought as a whole. She offers us some hints to this when she states: “Her entire essence demonstrates the specific character” and then goes on to note:
There is a difference not only in bodily structure and in particular physiological functions, but also in the entire corporal life. The relationship of soul and body is different in man and woman.
Given this text alone it does seem like Edith Stein is making a rather bold statement about the nature of man and woman which she cannot, in a philosophical sense, back up. However, if you consider her thought here in light of a prior understanding of her work on empathy and the philosophy of intersubjectivity, which I hope the reader of this book is now in a good position to do, a great deal of light can be shone upon it.
Edith Stein holds that empathy takes place when I transpose my living body onto the foreign physical body of the other. This presupposes the idea that the living body and the physical body are joined in an indissoluble union and that this union shades not only the understanding I have of my own world (subjectivity) but also the understanding I have of the world of others (intersubjectivity). Now let us add to this calculation the factor of whether I have either a male or female physical body. If the relationship of my living body and my physical body shades my entire understanding of self and others will not the factor of my physical body being either male or female then become an extremely important one? Absolutely yes!
So when Edith Stein states that “The relationship of soul and body is different in man and woman” she is not making a statement which she cannot support. For one can refer to her doctoral dissertation On The Problem Of Empathy and find a lucid philosophical framework for such a statement. For in Stein’s philosophy of empathy we understand ourselves through the pairing of our living body with our physical body and we understand the other through the pairing of our living body with the foreign physical body of the other. In light of having come to know Edith Stein’s thought more fully we can see that when she states: “The relationship of the soul and body is different in man and woman” she means that a soul that is embodied in a female body will in fact become different in nature than a soul that is embodied in a male body. Thus this sense of embodiment as female is the key to understanding the feminist thought of Edith Stein.
i BIBLIOGRAPY
Taken from, The Transposition of Edith Stein: Her Contributions to Philosophy, Feminism, and The Theology of the Body. By John C. Wilhelmsson. San Jose: Chaos To Order Publishing, 2012. Used by permission.
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(https:// Nickolas Franco Emerson (https://sjsu.instructure.com/courses/1369231/users/4313588) Sep 4, 2020
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If Stein's idea of empathy is the pairing of living bodies, what is sympathy defined as?