Abstract

This article proposes an extension of Edith Stein’s natural approach to empathy that points to the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. The key concept herein is that of type, as related to the analogy present in every experience of empathy. Edith Stein rejects inference by analogy as an explanation to the knowledge of others. But that does not amount to an exclusion of analogy itself from that knowledge. Husserl approaches the experience of another subject by way of an analogy without inference. Stein also provides an explanation by analogy of the experience of other subjects, as an experience of belonging to the same type. The concept of type is an analogical concept itself, built on similarity. Type allows access to the transcendental sphere, after Edith Stein’s criticism of the concept of pure self. Type also preserves the alterity of the empathized subject, as a result of the inhomogeneity and distinctiveness of its specimens. Type as a basis of the analogical process that takes place in empathy reveals itself as its transcendental foundation, as it points to an intersubjectivity that pre-exists empathy as a psychological experience.