This book explores the phenomenological investigations of Edith Stein by critically contextualising her role within the phenomenological movement and assessing her accounts of empathy, sociality, and personhood. Despite the growing interest that surrounds contemporary research on empathy, Edith Stein’s phenomenological investigations have been largely neglected due to a historical tradition that tends to consider her either as Husserl’s assistant or as a martyr. However, in her phenomenological research, Edith Stein pursued critically the relation between phenomenology and psychology, focusing on the relation between affectivity, subjectivity, and personhood. Alongside phenomenologists like Max Scheler, Kurt Stavenhagen, and Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Stein developed Husserl’s method, incorporating several original modifications that are relevant for philosophy, phenomenology, and ethics. Drawing on recent debates on empathy, emotions, and collective intentionality as well as on original inquiries and interpretations, the collection articulates and develops new perspectives regarding Edith Stein’s phenomenology. The volume includes an appraisal of Stein’s philosophical relation to Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, and develops further the concepts of empathy, sociality, and personhood. These essays demonstrate the significance of Stein’s phenomenology for contemporary research on intentionality, emotions, and ethics. Gathering together contributions from young researchers and leading scholars in the fields of phenomenology, social ontology, and history of philosophy, this collection provides original views and critical discussions that will be of interest also for social philosophers and moral psychologists.

Empathy's centrality to morality is heavily debated. Many religious and philosophical traditions have favoured empathy, sympathy, or compassion as key to moral thought, conduct, or motivation. This collection brings together original papers in philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, and neuroscience to give a comprehensive overview of the issue, and includes an extensive survey of empathy and empathy-related emotions. It is distinctive in focusing on the moral import of empathy and sympathy.

Any state exists only for the benefit of human beings. This basic tenet of Edith Stein's political thought rests on her conviction that humanity is fundamentally one community, precious beyond measure. Differences of race, culture, and language offer us means to grasp the values of life uniquely so that we may share them universally, reaching across all such social boundaries. Stein wrote this treatise in the early days of the Weimar Republic, shortly after the First World War. It sets forth a philosophy of law, government, and administration that is at once idealistic and practical. What is right, Stein argues, does not arise from legislation or litigation or politics. Right relations, as such, are more basic than any institution. Here, too, are Stein's first serious discussions of religious issues such as guilt, expiation, and freedom of conscience. This is the philosophical work that immediately preceded her decision to be baptized, on January 1, 1922. Whether ironically or predictably, Stein was put to death twenty years later by a state that brazenly defied nearly every principle that she had defended in this treatise. In death she bore personal witness to the unity and dignity of the human race. She perished with her people, Jews and Christians alike, at Auschwitz. This ebook contains a fully linked Index.

Before she was a saint she was a fine philosopher. Yet because she was a woman her contributions were ignored. This book asks the question: "Did Edith Stein make any important contributions to philosophy and, if so, what are the implications of them for us today?" It begins with a biography of Stein up until the acceptance of her doctoral dissertation "On the Problem of Empathy" in 1916. It then examines the phenomenology of Stein and, in exciting new research, demonstrates her contributions to 20th century philosophy as a whole. Finally, it looks at the feminist thought of Stein and its connection to "The Theology of the Body" of Pope John Paul II. Based upon an award winning thesis, here is a book that goes beyond looking at Stein's thought as a curiosity and instead makes a strong argument for her contributions to philosophy, feminism and "The Theology of the Body."