Abstract

This paper investigates the individualistic and narcissistic culture typical of postmodern and technocratic society, which has replaced the ideal of formation (Bildung) with the logic of performance and competition, leading to transformism and conformism. In reference to the thought of Edith Stein, the strategy of solving the value crisis that permeates the world of intellectuals and university research is identified in the non-self-referential practice of philosophical reason, that is, in the declination of empathy (Einfühlung) as therapy: Bildung as service, self-preservation, care of others, of historical formations and of objective spiritual realities, due to the creativity of the human being and to the humanism of the relationship. The meanings of the universal singular humanitas and communitas and of empathy as being-for-the-other and with-the-other document the link between phenomenology, ontology and ethics: humility as morphology of thinking, responsability against egocentrism and totalitarianism.