Individuality and Community. Construction of Sociality in Edith Stein’s Early Phenomenology

The problem of individuality lies at the basis of phenomenological investigations both in Edith Stein’s earliest and mature works. Her doctoral thesis, the On the Problem of Empathy, focuses on the phenomenological acts of perceiving persons in an intersubjective situation. She aims at a conception of the person beyond a construction based on the pure “I” or the stream of consciousness. According to her, the psycho-physical subject can comprehend the foreign living body as an individual. Dilthey is not interested in the individual in a phenomenological sense, but rather in the question as to what constitutes value in the society. Although all of Stein’s references to Dilthey’s views in her doctoral thesis are of critical nature, there is still a connection between the two thinkers. In this paper, I would like to investigate the relationship between Edith Stein’s critique of Dilthey’s understanding of the individual with a particular focus on Stein’s conception of empathic act as the founding act for the community.

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