“How Deep is Your Love?” Stein’s Notion of Emotional Depth and Its Relevance for the Constitution of the Other Person

Sara Dameno (University of Cologne)

BSP Research Seminar 2026

Session 3

Sara Dameno

Online | 12 October | Free

The 2026 season of the BSP Research Seminar runs for five months from August to December, with one session every month featuring a speaker from the world of phenomenology.

Sara Dameno

“How Deep is Your Love?”

Stein’s Notion of Emotional Depth & Its Relevance for the Constitution of the Other Person

Date and time: Monday 12 October 2026, 18:00–19:30 UK/Ireland time

How do we come to recognize another human being as a person? This paper argues that Edith Stein’s phenomenology of empathy answers this question by grounding interpersonal understanding in the structure of emotional life. While Stein famously maintains that only those who experience themselves as persons can truly understand others as persons, the phenomenological meaning of this claim has remained insufficiently clarified. I argue that Stein’s notion of the depth (Tiefe) of the person should be interpreted through Husserl’s theory of emotional intentionality developed in the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins. By distinguishing between value-apprehension and emotional position-taking, Husserl reveals different motivational nexuses structuring affective experience. I suggest that these motivational layers provide a phenomenological account of what Stein describes as the different depths of emotional life. Reflective awareness of these motivational structures enables subjects to constitute themselves as unified persons and, correlatively, to grasp others not merely as experiencing subjects but as persons whose emotional lives express coherent systems of values. Empathy, therefore, is not simply the apprehension of another’s affective states but the disclosure of their personal depth through the values that motivate their emotions. At the same time, empathic engagement contributes to one’s own personal development by expanding the horizon of values accessible to the self. By bringing Stein’s account of empathy into dialogue with Husserl’s analyses of emotional intentionality, the paper offers a new interpretation of affective depth that highlights the constitutive role of emotions in both personal identity and intersubjective understanding.

Find out more about session 3 - including free online joining instructions - and the remaining sessions of the BSP Research Seminar 2026 at BSP Online.