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The Problem of : A Reach For Community Through the Humanities by Hank Galmish

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin “ any child to fnd that out,” depicts a vivid scene of a deep human truth said St.Claire, “there’s no keeping it from focused on relationships and empathy. In the them. But I believe that all the trying in following scene, the young Topsy, the African the world to beneft a child and all the slave girl picked up in the streets by Auguste St. substantial favors you can do them, will Claire, has been given to his cousin, Ophelia, never excite one of , a northerner. Tis was to be an experiment to while that of repugnance remains see if the liberal abolitionist can civilize her as in the heart; it’s a queer kind of fact,— Ophelia claims. In the scene, Topsy is being but so it is.” scolded for stealing and encouraged to be good. “I don’t know how I can help it,” Topsy exclaims that she knew nothing about , said Miss Ophelia, “they are disagreeable and despite Miss Ophelia's claims of afection to me,—this child in particular,—how for the girl, she knows that Miss Ophelia can't can I help feeling so?” stand to even touch her, that she despises her for “Eva does, it seems.” being a little black girl. Once Topsy says this, “Well, she’s so loving. . .”(Stowe 281) the appearances are stripped away and the truth revealed: Stowe’s thesis is that unless people feel and touch the human experience of the other, “I’ve always had a prejudice in this case the slave, they will never be moved against negroes,” said Miss Ophelia, to overcome their unjust attitudes toward the “and it’s a fact, I never could bear to other. Her book is an attempt to pierce this have that child touch me; but I didn’t limiting attitude by showing her readers the think she knew it.” living, breathing human beneath such terms.

28 Community College Humanities Review She enraged the South by transforming the black fairly quickly when a parent or signifcant adult in slave, “a piece of property” only, into a feeling his or her life is angry, sad, happy, or threatening. subject, a fesh and blood human being that A child thrives by responding appropriately to demands a human response. this knowledge. In these times of social and fnancial In 1915, the German-Jewish philosopher, struggle, the Humanities are being compelled Edith Stein, presented for her Ph.D. to defend their value in the public arena more thesis entitled On the Problem of Empathy, than ever. Te ability to establish an empathetic written under the direction of Edmund Husserl, bond between diferent groups of people in the father of phenomenology. She maintains this increasingly complex and diverse world is that empathy gives one the openness to know one of the essential values of the Humanities. accurately the and thoughts of another. Te German philosopher Edith Stein ofers in For Stein, the empathetic ability is at the her thought a cogent and brilliant defense of foundation of what it means to be human, and empathy as an essential epistemological faculty without it, not only would it be impossible for a to be developed in human beings if they are to person to think clearly about the external world, function as social beings. By understanding her but it would also be impossible to think clearly, if ideas, teachers of the Humanities are ofered a at all, about the internal world. Tus, for Stein, precise intellectual tool to present and defend Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” is a radically the traditional role of the Humanities in the fawed formulation, for the “I think” must educational endeavor. Empathy is a form of imply an object, and the of that object knowledge that allows us to know the other as must reveal itself to the potential thinker before other. Experiencing the other through story, he or she can think. Tus, in her thought, the drama, art, music, dance, or other forms of the proper formulation would be closer to “Reality Humanities, is a valuable way of inculcating is, therefore, I think about it, and therefore I that essential knowledge if we in a smaller and can claim to be.” For the more complex being smaller world full of diverse cultures are to escape we name “human,” the knowing of the other misunderstanding, and the violence these must mean the knowing of the other as subject forms of ignorance breed. who is relating or not relating to us through Our capacity to be human depends independent thoughts and/or feelings. My primarily upon our capacity to be open to the knowing this, my ability to empathize with the other not as object (even couched in the well- subject forms the constitutive process by which meaning idea of “equality”), but as thinking- my identity, my “I-ness,” comes to exist. Stein’s feeling subject. If we do not have this capacity, no thought, in contrast to Descartes’, maintains, amount of verbal trickery or adept rationalizing “You exist, and you think and feel about me, as I can disguise the absence. Average human beings come to know and to respond to you as subject, recognize from early on in life the human and in that response, I come to exist as subject capacity to know accurately what another thinks, too.” To be is to be in community. Not to be for even a person radically diferent from one’s own others, or to be to others, is, for Stein, ultimately self; they also recognize more importantly what not to be at all. To not feel the other, to not another person feels. In fact, this knowledge, have any understanding of what it is like to be if we refect upon it, is obviously crucial not only the other, constitutes a form of solipsism. And for our own growth, but also for our well-being, solipsism is suicide, a radical and fnal negation of even for our survival. A child, for example, knows one’s own existence as a human being.

Fall 2016 29 Tis viewpoint is challenging and in its infancy; it still lacked clear basic revolutionary. Her rigorous analysis of the human concepts; furthermore, there was no one capacity for empathy provides and explicates who could establish such an essential a philosophical underpinning for the current foundation. On the other hand, what valuing of diversity in the academic world; her I had learned about phenomenology, ideas also help to explain the spontaneous and so far, fascinated me tremendously irrepressible hungering for communities of all because it consisted of such a labor of kinds that we see around us these days. Our clarifcation, and because, here, one intense focus on the individual has led us into forged one’s own mental tools for the myopic dead ends. Stein ofers us the corrective task at hand. (qtd. in Basehart) lenses the modern person seeks; a communion with the other. Stein moved to Gottingen in 1913 so as Edith Stein’s life informed her thoughts. to be able to study directly under Husserl. She Te basic facts are found in Waltrud Herbstrith’s became very active in philosophical circles of this biography Edith Stein and Sr. Mary Catherine energized center in which the new discipline of Baseheart’s Person in the World: Introduction to the phenomenology was forming. She continued at of Edith Stein (Baseheart; Herbstrith). the university until 1916, earning her doctorate with her dissertation On the Problem of Empathy.” Her studies Our capacity to be human depends were interrupted by World War I, primarily upon our capacity to be open to and she served as a nurse tending the other not as object, . . . but as thinking- the wounded in the feld hospitals nearby. She returned to her home feeling subject. in Breslau in 1916 and began teaching, but moved to Freiburg- Edith Stein was born October 12, 1891, im-Breiegau when she was asked to serve as interestingly enough upon the feast of Yom Husserl’s private secretary, organizing and editing Kippur, the high Jewish feast of Atonement. his voluminous papers. She stayed at this work In April 1911, she entered the University until 1918. After a difcult time seeking work of Breslau where she studied languages and and being turned down directly because no classic humanities. She became very active in university at that time would hire a woman, she the emerging women’s movement, that was ended up taking a minor teaching position in advocating at this time, full equality for women Speyer Dominican sister’s school. in the work place. During the years 1912-1913, On New Year’s Day, 1922, she converted she studied but was disappointed to Catholicism. For the next ten years, she was by its lack of precision, especially due to its lack very active in academic institutes throughout of rigorous terminology. Ten she read Edward Germany teaching, translating, lecturing, and Husserl’s Logical Investigations and immediately pursuing her own studies. In 1932, with the decided to study philosophy. She writes in her rise of Nazi power, she was forced to resign her autobiography: teaching position. In 1933, at the age of 42, she entered the Carmelite convent in Cologne. Te All my study of psychology has situation became so difcult for Jewish people persuaded me that this science was still that her convent moved her to the Netherlands in

30 Community College Humanities Review 1938 where she lived in a Carmelite community simplicity of oneness, unifed in her person, until 1942. On August 2, 1942, in an act of Edith Stein, Jewish-Catholic-German-feminist- German reprisal against an outcry by Dutch intellectual was murdered in 1942 at Auschwitz, bishops over Nazi atrocities, hundreds of Dutch ironically at the hands of those who have come Catholic-Jews were arrested and transported east to be symbols of people who most radically failed to the death camps. Edith Stein was among this as humans, the Nazis. She died at the command group. On August 7, Edith Stein, with thousands of an institution run by people who failed totally of others, was taken from the holding camp at in their ability to empathize—failed in their Westerbork and transported by rail to Auschwitz. ability to know the thoughts and feelings of an On August 9, 1942, Edith Stein died there in one entire race of people. In fact, the institution that of the infamous gas showers. Tese basic facts of her life are signifcant for helping to understand her philosophical ideas. She died at the command of an Te eminent philosopher Alasdair institution run by people who failed MacIntyre notes while commenting on the totally in their ability to empathize— life of Edith Stein that she had a unique ability to “cross boundaries” while at the same time maintaining the essential integrity of commanded her death was under the control her initial identifying and formative community. of highly educated people who failed to even As she developed throughout her life, it was as acknowledge that an entire race of people were if a series of expanding ringed circles, as in a people. tree, becoming more than she was by taking on Stein began her doctoral work under diference, without giving up the core of who she Husserl at the very moment that her master was was (MacIntyre). Tus, Edith Stein is a Jewish engaged in his radical shifting from his earlier born woman from out of a traditional Jewish views of realism to his later views of idealism. family who is also a noted philosopher at home Stein was drawn to and deeply infuenced by the in a fundamentally agnostic academic world early Husserl refected in his Logical Investigations, of men. She remains true to both worlds; she and in her thought, she remains a realist to becomes a feminist leader speaking forcefully for the end. She accepts the phenomenological female rights in the work place, and at the same discourse, especially Husserl’s insight into the role time, she enters the Caramel, living the life of a of intentionality in human cognition, but never recluse, a contemplative nun. During this period, accepted his reductive bracketing. For Stein, she immersed herself more deeply than ever in the cognitive ability to know a reality provides her philosophical work, the phenomenological a steady and reliable testimony to the existence studies that were her beginning. She also spent of that reality apart from the knowing self. She time studying her own Jewish roots that remained maintains that the mind is informed by the world her frst love as manifested especially through the and not the opposite, the mind forming the person of her mother. Stein, as MacIntyre notes, world. Tis key to her thought she holds without had the unique gift to enter into a divergent wavering. Later, it will be one of the key ideas by community without denying the community which she bridges to the thought of Aristotle, and out of which she had been formed; she lived the ultimately, Aquinas and other scholastic thinkers. life of empathy that she wrote about in her frst Te mind is created with the capacity to major academic work. Finally, in the complex know reality apart from itself in all its diversity

Fall 2016 31 and so cannot be actualized without an actual what establishes the sense of a unitive self. world of such diversity. Self-knowledge and 4) But immediately, Stein states that a self-development are dialogical in that they are human soul cannot exist without or apart dependent upon a fuller knowledge of what from a physical body. Stein’s anthropology the other is, or, to state it diferently, a fuller demands a body as the natural substance knowledge of what one is. in which a soul fnds its identity. To have Stein’s philosophy is based on a concept a soul implies that one must have a body. of personhood that must be understood to Here and only here is where the “I” is to be understand the conclusions she reaches. Te found. Te idea will help her, of course, to question of identity is one of the key ideas she bridge efortlessly, in her later thoughts, to reduced phenomenologically in her dissertation the hylomorphism of Aristotle, which will What is the meaning of “I” we use so ubiquitously also be taken up by Aquinas (MacIntyre). in all human discourse? She proceeds step by step analyzing it in this manner: In summary then, the “I” that we speak of in common discourse is a unitive being capable 1) Te pure “I”—as in the famous “Cogito/I of diverse and fuid processes, bounded by a soul think”—is so abstract and universal by that exist only within a physical body, and this “I” defnition that it is meaning-less and can only come to a sense of self-identity within cannot be used in real situations to indicate this body. Te “I” is thus dependent for its self- anything of meaning. understanding upon the coming from 2) Te phenomenological “I” that the average received sense data. We know ourselves only to person experiences in the seemingly endless the degree that we know the other be it subject comings and goings of thoughts, feelings, or object. Individual identity cannot be achieved perceptions, urges, , and impressions outside a network of complex, continuous that seem extended across time—that is relationships. We exist as human beings within they are found to exist in the past through a community or we do not exist at all. Alasdair memory and to exist in the future through MacIntyre, in refecting upon his thoughts, asks the faculty of apprehension. Tis “I” exists within the fuidity that writers refer to as “the stream of We exist as human beings within a consciousness" (a phenomenon community or we do not exist at all. that modern novelists like Wolf and Joyce sought to duplicate). 3) But Stein argues, this “stream” of image us to refect upon the process in which a very has “banks,” clear limits that give to the young child comes to develop a personality and subject a perception of ownership, i.e. these an identity. Tere is the ritualized play of the thoughts are mine and not yours. Tis child gazing upon the mother or father receiving frame or shell that gives unique identity signs of love, , laughter, approval, , and to my fuidity Stein terms the soul. Tis with the reception, the child responds in a similar is not to be confused with religious entity, manner, which elicits from the parent further although it does embrace that idea in her feelings. Trough this reiterative or echoing later thoughts. For Stein, the soul provides manner, the complexity of the “I” constitutes the context of a purposed whole—it is itself. Tis process continues, Stein maintains,

32 Community College Humanities Review throughout one’s life. Consider, for example, this Stein restricts the words to a defnite type of statement: meaning—Te ability to know clearly what another person feels or thinks and this insight I was so happy to see how pleased is ground-breaking in the way that only a basic you were when I invited you to my home common sense statement can be. Today, the after I had learned you were feeling so concept has been taken over by the discipline of saddened by my own tragedy. psychology. One eminent psychologist Robert Coles writes about the power of literature Te other comes to us evoking a movement (signifcantly of stories) to develop and strengthen out of ourselves in response, and through that the sense of understanding and in the continued and multifaceted response, our average person (Coles). Many studies are being potential to become a human being is either done on both the process by which empathetic actualized or it is not. Without a capacity to awareness is formed in a human being, and comprehend, to know accurately what another probably more importantly, how it is that some person thinks or feels about me, is to be cut people remain solipsistically and selfshly locked of forever from knowing and realizing certain in the prison of an unauthentic, unrealized “I.” important capacities that are uniquely human. Te “I” devoid of empathy. Of course, there are clear risks in such in such At the end of her thesis, Stein tries development, for as Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin to elucidate the relationship between the understands, we are often formed by the hateful manifestations of the body (the primary vehicle or disparaging thoughts, feelings, and actions by which is received that allows for of others.Te term “empathy,” a translation of an empathetic understanding) and the inner state Stein’s German “Einfuhling,” was a relatively of the subject herself. For example, she asks, what new term in Germany having been created by is the relationship between a person physically Teodore Lipps in the 19th century to describe the pulling back or cowering and the mental state aesthetic feelings evoked by a great piece of art. of fear? Or what is the relationship between Edith Stein explains her own process of choosing the smile and the inner state of ? this idea for her dissertation in this way: Stein explores three possible relationships: a) the two are identical; b) the two are contingent In his course on nature and spirit, but only in an accidental manner; c) the inner Husserl maintains that one could state generates within normal operations the only experience an objective external outer manifestations. Stein maintains that the world inter-subjectively—that is, by third possibility is the one that best expresses a plurality of knowing individuals the phenomena of human judgements based who can communicate experiences upon the capacity to achieve an empathetic with one another. Such an exterior understanding of another. Tis stable, generative world presupposes the experience of connective is what allows for a true understanding other individuals. Husserl called this to take place in a way that is generally consistent experience Einfuhling (empathy), but and trustworthy. But it also is what accounts for did not explain what it consisted of. mistakes of judgment at times, due to conscious Tis was a gap worth flling: I wanted to deception by a subject or by a physical anomaly. fnd out what empathy meant. A person can choose to smile even when in (De Fabregues 23) actuality he or she is consumed with . But

Fall 2016 33 in typical human development, within normative truth described in the Meditations: alone, at ranges, we are built to interpret and to judge night, in his room, imprisoned in his mind the mental state of another through his or her alone he seeks a way out; for Stein as her life physical manifestations, and it is those judgments demonstrates the search for truth can only that allow us to modify our behavior toward the begin and end in community—family, other in a way that is most appropriate for life academic colleagues, national service for and growth. Tus, we know through the use of a cause, sisterhood. Te life blood of a sense and the corresponding empathetic capacity community is empathetic understanding. So by establishing empathy at the core of the human conscious Stein points to the essential need for others . . . act, Stein points to the essential if we are to become the fullest human being need for others in all that we that we are capable of becoming. know and do if we are to become the fullest human being that we are capable of becoming. the diference between a teeth-baring snarl 2) Stein reengages the world as a realist, and a teeth-baring smile and act appropriately giving to her readers a phenomen-ological when faced by each respectively. It should be understanding as to why realism is true remembered that Edith Stein worked for a period even while she recognizes the subjectivity of time during World War I as a nurse in a feld of all human knowledge. For Stein, realism hospital caring for wounded German soldiers. is afrmed through the process of what Te role of nurse illustrates perfectly she terms inter-subjectivity bolstered by the need for a developed sense of empathetic rigorous and disciplined communication. understanding, a sense that all biographies She writes, “Tus empathy as well as the indicated Stein possessed to a high degree. basis for intersubjective experience becomes A nurse must be able to know quickly and the condition of possible knowledge of the accurately the mental and psychological state of existing outer world, as Husserl, and also her patients, sorting out the ones truly in Royce present it“ (64). It is as if she were or distress from those seeking attention only, able to have the six blind men of the noted and a nurse must be able to act upon those fable sit down and carefully discuss their judgements and knowledge with some degree of relative knowledge with each other about certitude. their own experiences of the elephant. In this brief overview, I have tried to Out of the community of experience, a elucidate the salient points of Edith Stein’s fuller picture of realty informs the mind. doctoral thesis, On the Problem of Empathy. I Tere is no other way to accurately touch conclude by recognizing the value of inherent in the outside world except through the her ideas to the defense of the Humanities. function of empathy exercised within a community. Te discipline of the 1) Stein’s approach constitutes a radical Humanities, as taught in the traditional break from the philosophical traditions of curriculum, is a crucial tool to embed the her time that focused on individualism. student into the lived communities of Te diference is seen clearly by contrasting those in other communities both in time Descartes famous search for irrefutable and space.

34 Community College Humanities Review 3) Stein returns philosophical discourse to knowledge can be taught. We can teach people the realm of the common sense, the reality to know the biological makeup of a human, of experience that is ordinary and average. and we can test for this knowledge as is done at Her philosophical discourse analyzes what medical schools all the time. One signifcant role is commonly understood by most, if not by of the Humanities in its multiple forms, is to all. Like Aristotle, Stein accepts common teach a person how to know the thoughts and human experience to be trustworthy; then feelings of a person constituted in part by those she uses the tools of phenomenology to biological parts. elucidate logically and carefully what one Te teaching of literature especially already knows experimentally. through the experience and analysis of story is 4) Stein’s thought emphasizes the key role one of the most direct ways of expanding human that emphatic understanding holds in consciousness and empathy. As Robert Coles terms of psychological development. For writes: her, a healthy human being is able to not only accurately judge another’s feelings, Te whole point of stories is not but is also able to evaluate accurately those "solutions" or "resolutions" but a feelings vis a vis the situation. One knows, brightening and even a heightening of for example, that in certain situations our struggles—with new protagonists too little anger is just as damaging as too and antagonists introduced, with new much anger. Both responses of a subject sources of concern or apprehension or can be valued, can be evaluated, against a , as one's mental life accommodates healthy norm. A man who feels nothing itself to a series of arrivals: guests who at the death of his child is acting in an have a way of staying, but not necessarily unhealthy manner no less than another staying put. (129) man who is unable to arise above his in the same situation. Stein thoughts lay A good novel invites strangers into our the philosophical background for a study home, and forever we are changed as they become of evaluative judging, or in other words, a part of our extended consciousness. for an understanding of ethical judgments. It is essential for us as educators in the Humanities to teach others how to relate to Tese are the signifcant points that should others who are diferent in signifcant ways. If be recognized as present in this seminal piece of Edith Stein is correct, this is only possible if we writing by Edith Stein. ourselves are genuinely open to diferences. Te In an increasingly diverse and yet more dilemma of the failed educational approach compressed earth, the ability to know what devoid of the Humanities is perfectly illustrated others think and feel may soon become the in another famous piece from the 19th century primary skill needed for human survival. Stein literature, Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. As the helps us to understand the need for community book ends, the narrow, rationalist, utilitarian and the function of empathetic knowledge in the Gradgrind comes up against the hard dangerous formative process of a healthy human being. Her efects of his own maiming form of education study does not focus on the question of whether in the person of his former student, Bitzer. or not empathy is a form of knowledge that can Gradgrind begs for mercy for his son caught in a be taught just as the more traditional forms of crime in the following manner:

Fall 2016 35 “Bitzer,” said Mr.Gradgrind, broken efciency and such maddening order. Te Nazis down and miserably submissive to him, moved with relentless logic to solve a perceived "have you a heart?” problem once and for all with what they termed “Te circulation sir,” returned Bitzer, “a fnal solution.” But they acted not as complete smiling at the oddity of the question, human beings; they acted without a heart, as “couldn’t be carried on without one. Dickens might say, or they acted without a No man, sir, acquainted with the facts capacity for empathetic understanding, as Edith established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood can that I have a heart.” It is essential for us as educators in the “Is it accessible,” cried Humanities to teach others how to relate to Mr. Grandgrind, “to any compassionate infuence?” others who are diferent in signifcant ways. “It is accessible to Reason, sir,” returned the excellent young man. “And to nothing else.” Stein would say. Stein’s writings and her life both Tey stood looking at each other, witness to the need for empathy in the modern Mr. Grandgrind’s face as white as the world if we are to survive at all. Te divisions of Purser’s. (Dickens 266) the modern world are too great; there is no other way across except by building an empathetic Often in disagreements, we are left staring bridge across the chasms of misunderstandings face to face at another mystifed by the puzzle that we face. Te Humanities are an important staring back at us. It takes “heart” to solve that vehicle in helping to develop the faculty of puzzle. What does it mean “to have a heart”? empathy. It is a case that we can make, and must For Stein, only the man or woman who has a make, in the market place. Edith Stein's ideas developed capacity for empathy can fully answer and her life can show us the way. that question. A person without a capacity for empathy will act like a disease within a community ofering sickness and division and fear, while the person who can engage the other through empathy brings health, community, and life. _____In August of 1942, Edith Stein was taken from her convent in the Netherlands and transported to Auschwitz, along with her dearly loved sister, Rosa, and thousands of others, and there, for the crime of being “Jewish,” was systematically killed. A group who controlled one of the most intellectually enlightened countries in modern history implemented her death. One of the terrible ironies of the Holocaust is that many of the achievements of the modern scientifc minds and of our technological civilization were what helped it to happen with such horrifying

36 Community College Humanities Review Works Cited

Baseheart, Sr. Mary Catherine. Person in Te World: Introduction to the Philosophy of Edith Stein. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997.

Coles, Robert. Te Call of Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1989.

De Fabregues, Jean. Edith Stein: Philosopher, Carmelite Nun, Holocaust Martyr. Boston: St. Paul Books, 1993.

Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy: with Selections from the Objections and Replies Oxford World's Classics, 2008.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988.

Herbstrith, Waltraud. Edith Stein: A Biography. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992.

MacIntyre, Alsdair. Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue 1913—1922. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefeld, 2007.

Stein, Edith. On the Problem of Empathy. Translator, Walter Stein. Washington D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1981.

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