- Lived:
- 1891–1942 · Breslau, Göttingen, Freiburg, Speyer, Cologne, Echt — murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau
- Tradition:
- Phenomenology; later a Carmelite nun who married phenomenology to medieval metaphysics
- The Big Idea:
- Empathy is a unique act of its own kind, in which another person's experience is given to you as theirs — the foundation of how we know other minds, how communities exist, and even how we know ourselves.
- In their words:
- "Come, we are going for our people" — her reported words at the convent door, August 2, 1942 (preserved by the tradition of her community).
- If you remember one thing:
- At twenty-five she wrote the century's most careful analysis of what it is to grasp another person's suffering; at fifty she was seen in a transit camp calmly washing and combing the hair of children whose mothers had collapsed in despair, days before the gas chamber.