The Ontic–Ontological Aspects of Social Life. Edith Stein’s Approach to the Problem

Abstract

The issue of empathy has become one of the central fields of investigation in phenomenology .

The issue of empathy has become one of the central fields of investigation in phenomenology .¹ This interest in experiencing the world can be traced back to the group of the early phenomenologists around Edmund Husserl , who following Husserl ’s lead, interpreted empathy as the fundamental act between subject and subject. The most important paper in this field was written by Edith Stein , who in her doctoral thesis On the Problem of Empathy ² 1917 was mainly concerned with Theodore Lipps ’ psychical investigation and Husserl ’s contribution to the problem of intersubjectivity .

In the interpretation of the act of empathy as a subjective act as well as the intersubjective act of the world constitution , the question is not how to differentiate between the levels and layers of empathy, but, how empathy contributes to the common world experience in the subject to subject relationship. In his book, Self and Other,³ Dan Zahavi states that the relationship between the empathic act as a personal act and the social act of the community life has not yet been developed. While there is consensus on the fundamental meaning of empathy, which is the constitutional act of the intersubjectivity , its connection to the social activity of the person has still not been evaluated.

Does empathy necessarily entail that an observer feels the same emotion that he detects in an other person? Does empathy preserve or abolish the difference between self and other? People disagree about the role of sharing , and caring, and imagination in empathy, just as they disagree about the relation between empathy and social cognition in general.⁴

From the beginning of his book, Zahavi emphasizes that the cognition of the self coexists with the constitution of the self ; that is, the self ’s world experience and self-experience coincide in the personal act of empathy . Therefore, the empathic world constitution of the self and the self experiences coincide in the narrative expression of the personal history.⁵

Similarly, Stein argues that the individual world experience will be personally identified in the intersubjective act of empathy (cf. On the Problem of Empathy , III. The Constitution of the Psycho-Physical Individual, §5e–f). On this point, Stein claims that the act of empathy in the subject–subject relationship conceals the ongoing constitutional act of the self and its experiences. In Ideas I,⁶ Husserl distinguishes the two sides of the experiences as the noesis and noema, which are the internal and external elements of the constituted ontology of the mind and the constitutive material of the spatial or ontical world. These two poles of experiencing the world, the noesis as the internal constitution of the thing [Gegenstand] and the noema as the constituted thing, compose the two components of the experiences of the self . Husserl elucidates here further, on how the world experiences can be constituted ontologically by these two components of the noesis–noema correlation (cf. §§19). Stein keeps the Husserlian noetic in mind when elaborating on the problem of empathy, which she extends to the question of social activity in her doctoral dissertation in which she developed the relationship between empathy and self-experience , but she first uses the term “social act “ in Individual and Community 1922.⁷ Focusing on Stein ’s interpretation of empathy , which, in her understanding is the founding act of intersubjective world constitution , I would like to investigate how Stein ’s ontology of consciousness in Individual and Community predated communal ontology, that is how the constituted world based on empathy provides the foundations for the ontology of social life .

She was already concerned about the issue of social life in her first published work, On the Problem of Empathy , which is, the life that is outside of the private sphere of the individual but which belongs to it (cf. the last chapter of On the Problem of Empathy : IV. Empathy as the Understanding of Spiritual Persons). While Stein investigates the act of empathy as a personal act and connects it with the social interaction of the individual , she tries to describe the relationship of the individuals to their community and takes the example from Dilthey ’s philosophy of life [Weltanschauung]. In Stein ’s account, the empathic encounter with the other creates the individual type of the other, which contains her personal value system. (cf. IV/§7b, Personal Types and the Conditions of the Possibility of Empathy With Persons). On this point, she discusses Dilthey ’s Introduction to the Human Sciences⁸ and The construction of the historical World in the human sciences⁹ and asserts that the personal/individual philosophy of life [Weltanschauung] is a fundamental component in the connection between individual and community .¹⁰ According to Dilthey , the individual and the community are in internal correlation with each other; that is, individual ability can be expressed only in the community and a community , which is constituted by the individuals, exists due to the individuals; therefore, the community and the individual are mutually dependent on each other (cf. Dilthey ’s statement elsewhere about the interdependency between the theory of the humanities and the social sciences, which constitutes the social historical reality .¹¹ According to Dilthey ’s work, Hans Ulrich Lessing emphasizes the “double role” of the individual in social life: on the one hand, the individual is an integral element of the social reality , while on the other hand the individual is the theoretical subject of the science examining this reality ).¹² This aspect of the interdependence between community and individuality was accepted by Stein as well, in fact , it was what her thinking about the community was based upon. In the second part of Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities ¹³ [Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften, ESGA 6], Stein systematically and methodologically improves Dilthey ’s thesis about the community , namely that the community in its history is determined by individuals. In Stein ’s view, the community exists as an ontic reality , which is an analogue existence to the individual personality. Contrary to Dilthey , Stein did not focus on the historical and temporal aspects of communal life, but directed the investigation on the present situation and experiences of individual life, which have a temporal character within community life. Like Dilthey , Stein recognizes that the ontology of the spirit corresponds to the ontology of nature. This ontology of the spirit is the essential structure for the historical revealing of personalities.¹⁴ Every sensation is individually determined, and the community can only be described by individual experiences; its temporal life is conditioned by the variability of individuals.

Although Stein does not articulate it directly, the definition of the community as temporally determined phenomena conceals a narrative connection between individual and community life. The concentric relationship between the communal and the individual induces the mutual influence of the two; that is, the community had an influence on the individual as well. All the while, it is directed not only individually but has its own identity . However, this identity is individually defined. This entails a relationship between the individual and the communal, characterized by the relationship between the personal and the social life of the individual . The analogue links of the individual and the communal, and the personal and the social life are the two poles of the “personal I” and the “pure I ”. According to Zahavi , the personal I is by origin open towards social life; that is, the ability for life in a community is a pre-given in the personal life experience .

Husserl consequently holds that the personal I has its origin in the social life. Persons have abilities, dispositions, habits, interests, character traits, and convictions, but persons do not exist in a social vacuum. To exist as a person is to exist socialized into a social horizon, where one’s bearing to oneself is appropriated from the others.¹⁵

The radical interpretation of the relationship between the individual and the communal implies that the personal experience of the social life is intellectually accomplished, and the communal life [Gemeinschaftsleben] obtains a definition only individually. Stein ’s question, which she addresses in Individual and Community, is, what do we understand by “social life”, and, whether the social act exists independently from the individual act of empathy .

In order to elaborate on this problem, she distinguishing two questions: (a) The Community as a Reality: Its Ontic composition; (b) The Fundamental Relationship between Individual and Community.¹⁶

In the concluding chapter of On the Problem of Empathy (Empathy as the Understanding of Spiritual Persons), Stein explores the individual ’s value choices. These are individually constituted in the act of empathy and are influenced by the value choices of the other individuals. One can experience the “homo religiosus” of the other empathically, despite the exact meaning of religious faith being essentially alien to him.¹⁷ Stein uses this example to conclude her study on empathy, but this example also raised the problem of communal experiences . Whereas religion is the personal conviction of the individual , an individual philosophy of life, it also belongs to a community and participation in the community ’s life. As long as the personal individual observes the religious life as an outsider, she is not part of the community life, she does not have any practical experience about life in the community . While the individual experience creates an ontological background for personal life, which is also part of the community , there is also an ontical aspect of the community , which is the source of experience for the individual , which is part of the community ontology but not of the personal ontology. Employing Stein ’s two-step value interpretation, I will evaluate how this transition from the experience of the ontical world constitutes the ontological aspect of the communal life in the individual , and how the individual life experience —that is, the substance of the ontology of the personal life—contributes to the social ontology of the community .

The Community as a Reality: Its Ontic Composition

While in her first work on empathy Stein investigates how the act of empathy as a personal act relates to the experiences of the community and how the personal value becomes a communal value , in her study, entitled Individual and Community, she investigates the common ontological background of the individual and the community . According to Stein ’s thesis, in terms of individuality , the community is an ontical reality which is independent of the individual life, and the community is an experience of the spatial world for the individual life. At the beginning of the second chapter of the study, she introduces the real life of the community as a life that is intertwined with individual life. Communities are “out there in life” on the one hand,

…but we find them within us as well, for we live as their members. […] Epistemological investigation will probably make it clear that, for knowledge of the community just as for knowledge of the individual personality, “outer” and “inner” observations are interwoven.¹⁸

Both the individual and the community have an internal and an external or objective front, which are naturally able to transform into each other and the properties of the individual and the community are in analogue relationship to one another. Such internal elements as the lifepower [Lebenskraft], the psyche and the soul are possessed both by the individual and the community , and the individual and the community have an internal correlation to their objectivity. The objective appearance of both is constituted by their values. In this regard, the question is how the individual value system relates to common values; that is, whether the individual values are constituted by the communal values or vice versa?

In Individual and Community, Stein examined social life from an objective point of view, which presupposes an independent life for the community , but describes it as being an entity that is dependent on the individual . According to this interpretation, the autonomy of the community and its ontology , too, becomes very problematic. Szanto highlights the problem of the super-individuality of the community in the respect that Stein ’s understanding of the super-individual might be counterproductive, if the experiences of the super-individual are not interpreted on the horizon of the shared emotions of the individuality , that is, if the communal experiences are not fulfilled on the field of the spatio-temporality, e.g. on the field of the bodily experiences.¹⁹ Szanto differentiates between shared and collective emotions , and his argument may be appropriate in relation to Stein , in so far as he claims that the individuals mutually share the same emotional experience at a given time, if A and B, each respectively, partake in a convergent phenomenal. Contrary to shared emotions , members of a group have collective emotions , if there is a “shared emotional culture” with a robust evaluative and normative appraisal pattern.²⁰

Although Stein does not make this distinction between shared emotion and collective emotion , a structural differentiation appears in the relationship of the community and the individual . In Stein ’s interpretation of community , the lifepower of the community is not separable from the physical effects of the individuals and thus can be described without taking the individual ’s internal life into account. It seems that the community has an independent lifepower [Lebenskraft], which is not displayed by the individual psyche but has an effect on the individual historically. Stein asserts that

…if we consider the life of a nation as it stands before the eyes of the historian, then we have an ascent up to a summit of development and then a descent and extinction. By this we do not mean the blooming of properties and abilities, which manifests the same process. Rather we mean an increase and a decrease of the very power that makes possible the development of the single abilities and comes to expression in it.²¹

This mental lifepower [geistige Lebenskraft] of the community

…belongs to the area of purely physical, or biological, development, and may very well have a significance to the sentient lifepower – in [the notion of] the physical, we’re presupposing one of the sources from which lifepower is charged up – but it has got nothing to do with the life of the psyche itself in the first place.²²

Apart from this mental lifepower, which characterizes the community life objectively and has nothing to do with the internal constituents of it, the psychical lifepower [psychische Lebenskraft] of the community demonstrates the inner connection with the individual life. The psychical or sentient [sinnliche] lifepower of the community appears in the totality of psychical acts of psycho-physical individuals.

However, the roots of the psychical lifepower of the community are to be found in the psychical individuals, and the individuals remain in a twofold relationship with the mental lifepower of the community .

To start with, we know, that the lifepower of the community doesn’t exist independently and alongside of its components, but rather coalesces from the power of the single [members]. However the individuals do not contribute their full, undivided power into the community , but [contribute] only insofar as they are living as members of the community . Each one retains certain “reserves” for his or her individual living. And besides, keep in mind that each individual belongs to a whole range of communities, to which the individual distributes his or her power and which accordingly lay claim to the individual in very different degrees.²³

From the view of the individual , the internal relationship between the communal life and the individual life is a circular one, in which the communal life is a part of the individual life, and the individual ’s own share of the community contributes to the understanding of the individual ’s personal life.

Apart from the question of whether the mental lifepower of the communal life is independent of the individual , there is a more significant problem, which also provides an answer to the previous question, namely the problem of how the individuals transfer the power between each other. Szanto illustrates this problem of the emotional transition between the individual and the communal by the introduction of the two poles of the empathic act.²⁴ However, Stein never distinguishes between a social and a communal act of empathy , she emphasizes that the act of empathy leads the individual to the field of individuality . While Stein deals with the social aspect of the act of empathy and emphasizes that it is empathy that makes intersubjective experience possible in her doctoral dissertation, she avoids finding a solution for the problem of social experience through the act of empathy. In Stein ’s definition of the community life, she constrains the act of empathy to the subject–subject and to the subject–community relationship and points out, that the participation in the community life assumes a share in communal lifepower. According to Szanto as well as Stein , the individual relates to the community as to the We of the plurality of the individuals. The super-individual We of the community consists of co-experienced members of the community or of the plurality of the subjects.²⁵ The act of empathy cannot overstep the self and other or self and community relationship. This means the question is not whether the subject relates to the We or to the multitude of Is in the community , as it would to another I, but whether the social act of the multitude or multiplication of selves exists. That is, whether there is an act of the common meaning, feeling and acting , a community act, which in the common action does not distinguish the self from the other.

At this point we’re led to a question that’s of the greatest significance for the transfer of power from the individual to the other, the arc of sentient causality beyond the individual psyche . It’s the question of whether one individual really can be rendered capable of achievements that exceed his own power through the influx of powers not his own, or whether what’s going on in what we’re calling a transfer is nothing more than a freeing up his own power.²⁶

However, Stein emphasizes in her writing on empathy that the act of empathy is the fundamental interpersonal act, which makes the connection between the individuals possible, and it must be clarified whether the individual contribution to the personal experiences is at the same time a communal process as well; that is, whether the community influences the individual in any way or, rather, the communal life exists in the individual mind.

In Self and Other, Zahavi states that there is a fundamental relationship between the experimental selfhood and the self -consciousness . This dichotomy of the consciousness of the self and the self -consciousness dissolve in the Husserlian notion about the protention, primal-impression and retention of the temporality, and it reveals the origin of the personal I in the social life from the first person perspective.²⁷ As Edith Stein indicates, the “power transfer” [Kraftübertragung] is a special mental function, and it “is possible only with an ‘openness’ of the individual for an other”.²⁸ Stein is aware that the communal life becomes conscious mentally, and the mental awareness presupposes the psychical lifepower [psychische Lebenskraft] of the community life. Stein offers the following example:

So an artistically gifted human being who doesn’t lack for contact with art or “opportunity” for aesthetic experiences may remain entirely unproductive as long as he is left to himself, but may be rendered capable of creative deeds as soon as he falls in with a circle of real live artists. So it is they - above and beyond the opportune causal conditioning under which an individual stands - who are co-responsible for his personal development, for that which unfolds from his original predispositions.²⁹

This example quite clearly proves the ontical aspect of the community . In the first case, the “artistically gifted human being ” is aware of the existence of art but she does not participate in the artistic action . The situation is analogous to the outside observation of a community —e.g. to a religious group —when the individual is not part of it. It is able to describe the community life from outside, but it does not automatically mean that the individual can participate in its inner life. In the second case, the direct artistic milieu makes the artistical deeds possible. The environment should be conceived as acting together, as a common ontological acquirement of a community , which cannot be perceived as a close social influence (e.g. a family) but has an indirect influence on the talented person. The personal contact with the community presupposes a similar openness of the person. According to Stein ’s example,

The family that I come from and the community of scientific work that I join are two communities that as such have nothing at all to do with one another, do not know one another know nothing about one another, and exert no direct impact upon one another. But through my mediation a causal bond can be established between them. When power pours into me from the one, I can feed it into the other.³⁰

Szanto ’s distinction of the shared emotion and the collective emotion make the internal life of the community visible: Sharing is both the empathic act in subject–subject relationship and being the fundamental act of community life.

In shared emotions , this is a supra-individual intentional object or values. Supra-individual intentional objects of shared emotions are not simply public objects but, rather, must be apperceived under the same intentional mode, i.e., as shared, and targeted as having the same emotional import for me as for others. Thus, they are not supra-individual simply because they are shared but because they are targeted and experienced as shared.³¹

At this point, the question of how the experience of the communal becomes the experience of the individual arises; that is, how the communal value judgement influences the individual one.

The Fundamental Relationship Between Individual and Community

In Stein ’s most significant reflection regarding the problem of individual experience and communal experience , she employs the example of family life which is the narrowest field of social life. Stein claims that leaving the closest community life, the family or closer social environment leads to the transition from the subjective mental life [subjektives geistiges Leben] to an objective mental life.

Obviously, here we’ve made our way out of the sphere of the “subjective” mind [subjektiver Geist] and into that of the “objective” mind. From this sphere flow powers for mental living, without its being depleted or even diminished in its effective power. In our case, it was apparently subjective mental life that became “objective” in that it was captured in the form of logical significances. Whether and how such a becoming-objective is possible – that’s a new problem.³²

By supplying power to the other, the individual ’s own state of life is transferred to the other. In On the Problem of Empathy , Stein emphasizes that there is a fundamental difference between body [Leib] and corpus [Körper] by their sensation in the spatial world. She names every unmoving and unliving thing corpus, and the experience of the other in the terms of the material object of the experience . The living body is always both the experienced object of the spatial world and it is also the sentient body of the personal I. According to Stein , the body has a twofold constitution as a sentient body and as the experienced corpus of the spatial world, and it gets its place in the space in this twofold condition.³³

It is the zero point of the orientation,³⁴ which contributes, according to Stein , to the locational awareness of the individual , as well as having a fundamental role in the world constitution of the self .

Based on Husserl , Zahavi highlights the ambiguity of the bodily experiences. While the body of the other is intuitively available to me, the experiences of the other are not.

They can never be given to me in the same original fashion as my own experiences; they are not accessible to me in inner consciousness . Rather, they are appresented through a special form of appresentation, or, to use a different terminology, they are co-intended and characterized by a certain co-presence.³⁵

As the empathic I considers the body of the other as a sensual body , it obtains a new orientation and a new image of the spatial world. Stein claims that the sensation of the other transform the subject, who has feelings, to a subject, who fulfils acts.³⁶ This social body [sozialer Leib], which participates by the act of empathy in the intersubjective world constitution , is the outside appearance of the individual life that completely fits into the medium of the community life. The transfer [Übertragung] of the own power to the other circulates throughout the social body , in virtue of the ability of the individual to become engaged with the other directly or indirectly. The artistically talented person, who has no real contact with the life of art, is socially not different from her artistically not gifted fellows. In this way, the social body is what realizes the transfer between the individuals, what makes the general communal judgement possible. This is similar to the communal life: the individual is able to perceive the communal life, but she will not automatically be a part of it. The participation in the communal life depends on the acceptance of the common values shared by the community . In the case of the artistically gifted person, it is important not only to detect the own talent but to participate in the communal life by the person’s own action . The action in a community , e.g. the action of the artistically gifted person is not simply the sharing of values in the community life and also not merely the acceptance of values of the community life, but the two together: in the consciousness of the common values and the acting upon these values. Whereas the act of empathy can be defined as a one-way act, individual –individual , or individual –community relationship, the common act or social act is directed towards the other in respect of the common values.

However, social life is a pre-given ability of the individual , and her social body must be transformed to the communal life. According to Stein , turning from exchanging of experiences individually to the participation in the community life entails a mental transformation.

Exchanges between individuals are effected for the most part in “social acts” in which the one [act] is pointed at the other, turned toward it. One is speaking and the other is understanding him. And it belongs to the sense of these acts that the material content pronounced, and accordingly heard, is not only meant but also imparted and received. This reciprocal linkage enters into the experimental content too. Where you’re just dealing with a transmission of material content, the direction toward the other ego that indwells the experience meets up with that ego not as a private personality of determinate qualities of its own, but purely as an understanding ego.³⁷

According to the main statement of Stein , there is a difference between the intended content of the expression and the real content of it. Stein points out that the communal act operates with a pre-given content of materials; that is, an established ontology identifies the community life. Contrary to the shared emotions in the act of empathy , where the experience of the other is a non-original experience of me, the social act of the community distributes the experiences of the community life by the specific common ontological field of the community . This means that, although the community contains a group of individuals, in other words it is a multitude of single subjects, it still constitutes a coherent super-individual , which overwrites and influences the decisions of the individuals. (We use the words “members” and “membership” in the everyday life without reflection on the contrastive meaning of the two. While members are always members of a community , the membership means the participation in the community life.) For the notions of individual and super-individual differ from each other in the act process. While the act of empathy induces a one-way relationship between individuals in which they mutually affect one another, the social act is a two-poled act that is, on one hand, directed towards the other and, on the other hand, directed towards the shared field of meaning. Stein is concerned with the transition from the subjective mind to the objective one from the point of view of the individual experience that is always part of the community life. As she claims in her book on empathy, the development of the individual presupposes the contact with the other. In this contact, during the action with the other, the personal value judgement of the individual and her relationship to the value judgement of the community appears.

Stein describes this value choice of the individual as its first engagement with the communal life.³⁸ In Individual and Community, Stein demonstrates, where the real connection between the community and the individual originates from, while linking the essence of value judgement to the spiritual character of the individual . Despite Stein using a new analogy about communal life, the concept of the communal soul is deeply problematic. Similarly to the psyche and the lifepower, which have two different meanings in the individual and the social life, the soul too has an individual and a communal form. This static core appears in the value judgement of the individual and reveals the individual in its own personality.

For every attitude is an attitude toward something and holds true for something objective that must be apprehended in some way or other. So we see, the answer is values: values that are inseparably bound up with the being of the person. As I take a positive or a negative stance toward a person, she stands before my eyes as valued as disvalue d. This is not to deny that I can find fault with a person whom I love or find merits in a person whom I hate.³⁹

Stein uses a quite broad interpretation for meaning of values. For her, history, personal ideas and the relationship to the other all belong under the category of values. The person is defined by Stein as a “value -tropic” being [werthaftes Sein], who is responsible for her values, and her properties appear through her value choices. “We see what the person is when we see which world of value she lives in, which values she is responsive to, and what achievements she may be creating, prompted by values”.⁴⁰ According to Stein , the personal core of the individual reveals itself by the choice of the values; that is, the spiritual life of the person is objectified in virtue of her value choices. “Then your soul opens itself, with that which is proper to it when it’s at home with itself: the world of value ”.⁴¹ Thereby the personal value judgement is the external appearance of the individual ontology , it is bounded to the individual . And while the soul of the individual manifests itself in these value choices, the values themselves are independent from the personal life. It is thus clear how the soul is involved in the value judgement of the personal life, and how it would be reflected by these values, but the question is how this personal aspect can become visible in the community through its individual members.

Stein claims that the personal values are independent from their carriers, their existence does not depend on the person, but rather they are objective.

Since the character properties are abilities for value experiences and value -determined manners of behavior, they don’t themselves belong to your soul or to the core of your person. Yet in them, the core blooms outward. And they allow what inwardly fills up your soul to become visible.⁴²

In On the Problem of Empathy , she emphasizes that the value choice of the individual shows the typical character of the I.⁴³ It is by her value choices that that the person within the individual can be understood in the act of empathy . According to this formulation, the individual and the value are related to each other in a twofold way: on the one hand, values are created by the person, their existence depends on the choice of values on the other hand, they are independent from the personal individual and are available to everyone. This world of values [Wertewelt], in which the person lives, is the key to the connection between the individual and the community life. While the individual value system refers to the individual ontology of a person, the value choice of the community manifests itself in the variety of ontologies

…we see this value not merely in the modification of the individual persons and their possible accommodation to a more highly valued type , but rather in the release of the individuals from their natural loneliness, and in the new super-individual personality [überindividuellen Persönlichkeit] that unites in itself the powers [die Kräfte] and abilities of the discrete [members], turns them into its own functions, and through this synthesis can produce achievements.⁴⁴

This super-individual personality [überindividuelle Persönlichkeit], which is the carrier of the higher values of the community , is not different in its actions from a personal activity, as Szanto formulates: they stay in the same intentional mode; however, this activity is regarded as independent from the members of the community .⁴⁵

The objective appearance of the community is confined to a pure activity. So the communal life has an internal lifestyle, the sharing in the act of empathy , and an external front in the form of the activity, which is directed towards a common normativity , history and value system. A vivid example cited by Stein is the stories about family life that have different meanings for the closest community , for the friends, and for the official environment .

If I project a vivid image of my family to the circle of friends, among whom I dwell, if I describe the vigor and activeness that prevail there, then everyone who hears my words can be brushed by a breath of fresh air as a refreshing and invigorating breeze wafts out from what I’m describing. Here, I’m not in any way a “mediator” of the effect as in the case of the causal series. The effect that my words help to call forth doesn’t need to go through me. It can take place [even] if I have apprehended the vigor I’m describing as a cold observer, without being seized by it myself in any way, or if the impact that I originally underwent is long gone at the point in time at which I am speaking.⁴⁶

The example reveals how differently one expresses oneself in a closer friendship and in an official environment . Focusing on the value carried by [Tragen] of both the individual and the community , we have found that values are the connecting elements between the individual and the community . The friendship and the family are bound together by a historically determined coherent value system; that is, the members of the community are aware of their common mental lifepower. This awareness of the mental lifepower leads to the building of a common value system; that is, the members obtain the values of the community not by the personal sharing of the other, but by the active participation in the community life. This activity of the community is based on the common ontology of the community . According to Zahavi , that the narrative identity of the self is deeply embedded into a larger historical and communal meaning-giving structure,⁴⁷ which has a temporal relationship to the whole life, the community life also has a super-individual narration about its present life, and a narrative reflection on its history. Although community life and the life of the individual become intertwined in the act of empathy , empathy remains on the level of distinction between of the other and the I. While in the act of empathy, the individual gets a personal reflection of himself from the other’s perspective; that is, the individual see himself from the viewpoint of the other, the social act is directed not towards the other but towards a common values of the community life. This means the individual gains a new perspective on her life from the point of view of community life. The temporality of the community partly contributes to the individual ’s temporal dimension, but the subject’s own, internal relationship to the community life separates this shared temporality in the personal narrative. According to Stein , the transition from the individual value system to the community relieves the individual of the spiritual weight of the decision and makes him free to engage in communal activity. That is, the values of the communal are not of the individual , but they provide orientation for the personal scale of values, they are the source of the personal value system.

Therefore, there is a mutual transition between the individual and the communal by the act of empathy : during the exchanging of experiences, the individual not only receives a new point of orientation from the other, but in the social act the individual reflects on the common ties.

Social life is performance art, a technique for liberating yourself from the weight of existence. It is never said that anyone who belongs to “polite society” must go in for social life. Social living is built up more on the foundation of an underground, untamed, and uncurtailed life. And under the surface of theatrical and stylized human relationships, a maze of primitive and naive relationships crisscrosses: relationships that would be impossible inside of “polite society”.⁴⁸

While the communal life is confined to the activity based on common values, the exchange of personal values is achieved through the search for a shared point of orientation, that is to say, the personal value judgement prepares the individual for the participation in community life. In a closer interpretation of Stein , this means that the individual is able to participate actively in the community and the community thereby builds a social ontology around the individual , but this ontology constitutes only a part of the individual life; that is, the individual ontology exists in the diverse ontologies of the community .

Conclusion

In Stein ’s interpretation, the ontic and ontological features of the social life are revealed in the twofold relationship to the community , as an objective entity of the outside world and a subjective internal life of the multitudes of individuals. Stein describes the two sides of community life through the act of empathy , which is the act that fundamentally constitutes the intersubjective world. She differentiates between the act of empathy and the social act of the community life and claims that the life of the community oversteps the empathic subject–subject relationship by the common action of the multitude of individuals. This entail that the act of empathy and the social act differ in their direction: Both in the subject–subject relationship, as in the subject–community relationship, the act of empathy is directed to the other, and the one facing me is considered as the other. Contrary to this, the social act is not a one pole act, whose direction could be defined by the experience of the other, but it is directed once to the other and once to the common value system of the community . Thus, the community life regards the other as the common feature of the self , it interprets the social actions of the other as the actions of the self , the actions of the common We. In relation to this aspect of communal life, Stein introduces the notion of the social body .

Stein sees the connection between the community life and the individual life in the value apprehension of the two. While community life occurs in the mental and spiritual act of sharing values, the way in which individual values become communal values is significant. Here, Stein emphasizes the individual and the super-individual or independent feature of the values, which relate to each other in the common temporal dimension of the action . As the individual becomes aware of her personal values, she also transfers the practice of these values into community life. However, while the individual belongs to a number of the communities, the connection between these, through value choices, create the ontological field for the community as such. The individual ’s choice of communal values occurs individually though the narrative identity .