Empathy as Perception of Psycho-Physical-Spiritual Unity

In order to methodically investigate Edith Stein’s notion of spirit, it is necessary to begin with her philosophy of empathy, and the way in which empathy reveals the person as a psycho-physical-spiritual unity. In other words, through empathy I know the other to be a person because their being expresses itself to me. Stein asserts that empathy should by no means be confused with the inference of the foreign subject based upon the perception of the other’s physical body; rather, the foreign subject is directly given to me in empathy, and I perceive the person rather than physical signs that indicate the person. In this way, empathy is a direct apprehension of the other; “face to face,” as it were, and immediate. When I come face to face with the other I perceive his or her body as a lived body (Leib) rather than simply a physical body, and thus as the body of a conscious “I” that is just as much a subject as I am, and I that can sense, think, feel, and will. I argue that for this reason, it is necessary to begin an analysis of spirit with empathy, because it is through empathy with other spiritual persons that spirit is made known to us, and we furthermore are capable of empathy because we are spiritual persons. Just as our understanding of other persons (and of ourselves, for that matter) is founded in empathy, an understanding of spirit is founded in our understanding of person, and so an inquiry into spirit must start with understanding other persons through empathy.