Misunderstanding of Edith Stein begins, ironically, with "empathy." That word translates the technical term Einfühlung in the title of Stein's 1916 doctoral dissertation. Stein herself used the term with precision, for she appreciated the issues at stake in the turn-of-the-century academic debates out of which it came to her. For the contemporary reader, the term Einfühlung need not be a stumbling block. It can serve instead as a stepping stone back into the philosophical context in which Edith Stein began her academic career. The first two chapters of this work recover the state of the question of Einfühlung before the First World War when, as a student in her early twenties at Göttingen, Edith Stein confronted it.¹