Gerda Walther (1897–1977)

In this chapter, Gerda Walther weds her interest in political and social questions with phenomenological approaches and concerns, homing in on the nature of a social community. By posing and responding to a series of questions regarding the nature and structure of a community, Walther distinguishes community from society and argues that community is crucially connected to subjective feeling. In addition, she contends—contra Edith Stein and Edmund Husserl—that the feeling of community both differs from and precedes the feeling of empathy.