Edith Stein, Empathy, and Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 5:10 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Reconsidering Good Teaching (Table 2)

Abstract

Empathy has been a central and important topic in fields such as education, psychology, and philosophy over the last 25 years; however, it remains a complex and confusing concept. This paper looks to the work of Edith Stein to provide a broad framework with which to understand the concept of empathy. Focusing attention on a close reading of Stein’s dissertation, The Problem of Empathy, the paper follows her phenomenological approach to demonstrate how empathy focuses on the problem of intersubjectivity and provides a means for knowing others as selves that are different from one’s self. In this way Stein provides a way to know and connect with others, but one that maintains the differences and otherness that exists between us.

Author

• Jeremy Alexander, Boston College