Foreword

Roman Jakobson

pp. 1-2

in: Edith Stein, On the problem of empathy, Washington, D.C., ICS Publications, 1989

Abstract

T he complete work, from which the following expositions are taken, began with a purely historical treatment of the problems emerging one by one in the literature on empathy before me: aesthetic empathy, empathy as the cognitive source of foreign [fremdes] experience, ethical empathy, etc. Though I found these problems mingled together, I separated them in my presentation. Moreover, the epistemological, purely descriptive, and genetic-psychological aspects of this identified problem were undistinguished from one another. This mingling showed me why no one has found a satisfactory solution so far.