Empathy, Truth, and Recognition. Phenomenological Foundations of Dignity and the Political in Edith Stein
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This article offers a phenomenological articulation of empathy, truth, and recognition based on Edith Stein’s thought, aiming to rethink the anthropological foundations of dignity and politics in contemporary contexts shaped by post-truth. It argues that empathy, far from being a merely affective or psychological phenomenon, constitutes an original intentional structure of intersubjectivity that allows non-original access to the other’s lived experience. Such access, however, can only unfold authentically insofar as empathy remains bound to a non-distorted relation to truth, understood both phenomenologically and politically. Engaging Husserl, Aristotle, Arendt, Honneth, and Ricoeur, the article shows that the erosion of truth leads to a degradation of empathy into an affective simulacrum, undermining the conditions of recognition, personal dignity, and care within the political sphere. From this standpoint, a phenomenology of care is proposed as a practical response to recognizing the other as a person, capable of resisting both dehumanization and affective manipulation in post-truth societies.
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References
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