Although commonly associated with therapeutic communication, “empathy” is a recently made-up word, introduced into German medicine as “Einfühlung” in the late 1800s and into English as “empathy” just prior to WWI. Edith Stein, an early student of philosopher/phenomenologist Edmund Husserl and the second German woman to earn a PhD in philosophy, completed one of the first dissertations on empathy in 1916 after service in 1915 as a wartime nurse, but as a Jewish woman was denied professorships at German universities. After writing and lecturing widely on philosophy, community, and the roles of women, Stein, a philosopher, feminist, and later Carmelite, was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, and was canonized as a saint by St. John Paul II in 1998. Stein’s Zum Problem der Einfühlung, On the Problem of Empathy, is said to be one among “Ten Neglected Philosophical Classics” in a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press edited by Eric Schliesser. As Stein’s work is more closely studied today, her unique perspective as both philosopher and nurse can inform current bioethical inquiry.