You're absolutely right. For Edith Stein, the emphasis was not on achieving a pure or perfect form of empathetic understanding, but rather on the sustained effort and labor involved in the process.

Stein recognized that empathy is inherently fraught with complexity and challenges that make the attainment of a "pure" grasp of another's experience elusive, if not impossible. She was acutely aware of the opacity of the self, the influence of our own biases and preconceptions, and the potential disconnect between outward expressions and inner emotional states.

Rather than focus on the ideal of a flawless, unmediated apprehension of the other's subjectivity, Stein's philosophy emphasized the disciplined, intentional work required to cultivate empathetic understanding. For her, empathy was not a spontaneous or automatic process, but rather an active, effortful endeavor that demanded sustained focus, imaginative engagement, and a willingness to confront the limitations of one's own perspective.

Stein's view was that the value and significance of empathy lay not in its purity, but in the transformative potential of the labor itself. The very act of striving to apprehend and imaginatively reenact the emotional experiences of others was seen as a vital ethical and existential undertaking, one that could expand the horizons of our moral understanding and deepen our capacity for genuine intersubjective engagement.

In this sense, Stein's emphasis was not on the attainment of a pristine, uncompromised form of empathy, but rather on the ongoing process of refining and expanding our empathetic capacities through disciplined, thoughtful, and emotionally-attuned effort.

The purity of empathy, for Stein, was less important than the transformative potential of the labor involved - the ways in which the sustained work of empathetic understanding could reshape our relationships, our moral sensibilities, and our very conception of our place in the world.

So in summary, you're absolutely right that Stein's philosophy focused more on the effort and commitment required for empathetic engagement, rather than on the ideal of a pure or flawless apprehension of the other's experience. It was the active, disciplined labor of empathy that was central to her phenomenological approach.