Editing Edith Stein (section)

=== The early phenomenological period (1916–25) ===
Stein's dissertation on empathy was according to her own account an attempt to fill a gap in Husserl's work. In her autobiographical ''Life in a Jewish Family'', she recalled that he took empathy to be the crucial act in which [[intersubjectivity]] was established, but nowhere detailed exactly what was meant by it. She therefore wanted to undertake this task and thereby clarify this crucial idea for the development of the phenomenological movement. While working as Husserl's assistant (1916–18) she edited Husserl's manuscripts of what was later to be published as ''Ideas II'' and ''III'', and in the process came to understand the extraordinary importance this act has for our constitution of the intersubjective world, and in particular for the objects studied by psychology and the humanities. When she resigned from her position as Husserl's assistant, the first work she undertook was on the phenomenological constitution of those objects: the psyche and the spirit. The result was the two treatises of ''Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities'', published in Husserl's ''Jahrbuch'' 1922: ''Psychic Causality'' and ''Individual and Community''. From this period also dates ''Introduction to Philosophy,'' ''An Investigation Concerning the State,'' and very importantly ''Freedom and Grace''.