Abstrakt
During reading we constantly encounter ohters, for example as characters in novels or when reading a letter the person who wrote it. The contribution will approach this phenomenon by analizing the givenness of the other in texts with the concept of empathy by Edith Stein.
With regard to empathy it becomes possible to investigate in to which extent the other in the text is given as a person or in which sense s/he has a imaginative-real corporeity. Furthermore, empathy reveales a need for the other because only s/he can close the gap in one's own experience regarding oneselfe.
Thus it is argued, that reading and writing, if understood as an empathic encounter with the other, bear the potential to close the gaps in one's own understanding of onselfe, to reveal the hidden layers of one's own personality and give oneself to onself.