Person and Dignity in Edith Stein’s Writings

Investigated in Comparison to the Writings of the Doctors of the Church and the Magisterial Documents of the Catholic Church

Jadwiga Guerrero van der Meijden

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783110659429
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110659962
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Die Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann bietet ein Forum für wissenschaftliche Arbeiten in Systematischer Theologie und Religionsphilosophie. Die Reihe steht allen Aspekten einer weit verstandenen Systematischen Theologie offen, insbesondere Forschungen zu Dogmatik, Ethik, allen Epochen der Theologiegeschichte und Religionsphilosophie sowie auch solchen Arbeiten, die bibelwissenschaftliche Perspektiven mit theologischen Fragen verbinden. Der Name der Reihe erinnert an das Erbe des einflussreichen Verlegers Alfred Töpelmann (1867-1954).

Chapter One:Methodology

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1Interpreting Edith Stein’s Works

I base my reconstruction of Edith Stein’s philosophical anthropology on the critical edition of the complete works of Stein (Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe, Verlag Herder, 2000 –2015) and, where it is justified, the manuscripts kept in Edith Stein’s Archives in Cologne (Edith Stein-Archiv Köln).72 Since 2015, when the ESGA series was completed and the full body of Stein’s works was made available to scholars, a new approach has become justified as well. In light of the publication of the complete writings in a critical edition, the possibility opened up for researchers to formulate theses concerning the character of the whole of Edith Stein’s philosophy, in particular those concerning its development and phases. Such a holistic approach is implemented in the present study.73

I build my reading of Stein’s philosophy of the human person on the assumption that there is a red thread to her thinking – a reappearing analysis of the human person – and that it is marked with general consistency throughout all the stages of Stein’s intellectual development. Anthropological issues are indeed a permanent theme of all of Stein’s writings – even if they do not always play the central role in them, as, one might argue, is the case in Stein’s magnum opus, Endliches und ewiges Sein.

I find it, moreover, necessary to critically approach the methodological idea of distinguishing radically different stages in Stein’s philosophy, stages supposedly resulting from a drastic change of a standpoint.74 There is a visible consistency to Stein’s use of anthropological concepts, to her methodology and to her focus on themes concerning the human individual. For this reason, I decided to talk of the syntheses that Stein’s anthropology underwent, i.e., the processes of assimilation of the terminology and ideas from different thinking traditions to an already existent conceptual scheme: Stein’s own scheme. Such a process of the application of new notions to the fundamentally unchanging anthropological conception (except for some details) reappeared a number of times in the course of Stein’s intellectual development.75 None of those syntheses resulted in a radical change concerning the core of her anthropology or philosophy. (The most significant change to be observed is the abandoning of the concept of an anti-value, Ger. Unwert, after the medieval synthesis, perhaps due to Stein’s concurrent acceptance of the privative theory of evil. Apart from that alteration, the early and later periods differ only in details, which are discussed by me in Chapters Three and Four). The reasons standing behind the early reception of Stein’s philosophy, (e. g. in Poland), as discontinuous or marked by a radical change, have a lot to do with the partial access to her writing after the WWII, and, if reexamined today, they do not hold. Thus, based on the consistency of the whole of Stein’s writings and access to it, I employ a holistic approach to her philosophy understood as one and consistent throughout her life.

I find the middle period of Stein’s life (from 1918 up to the early 1930s; thus, ca. 1918–1933) to be the most independent, most originally hers and least influenced by the influx of the terminology and ideas of other philosophers and traditions. Her now famous and rather popular first work, the doctoral dissertation Zum Problem der Einfühlung (published in 1917), was planned to fill in a gap in Husserl’s systematic phenomenology, a gap that Stein identified when listening to Husserl’s lectures on nature and spirit. Due to its dissertational character and the mentioned inspiration, the work contained historical research into the history of the notion of Einfühlung (empathy), references to alternative approaches and a discussion of them. It was during the writing of this first academic investigation that Stein developed her own original standpoint in phenomenology.

The later, phenomenological works: Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften, which contains two independent treatises: Psychische Kausalität and Individuum und Gemeinschaft, then Eine Untersuchung über den Staat and Einführung in die Philosophie were written by a mature phenomenologist who is conscious of her methodology and scope of research. The first and the last of the listed works discuss anthropology in detail and focus on it. Later works, written after the syntheses of ancient and medieval philosophy, as well as Christian doctrinal documents and works of the Carmelite spiritual masters, include Freiheit und Gnade, Potenz und Akt, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person and Was is der Mensch? Theologische Anthropologie. Among these, the work most in line with the first phenomenological methodology, as presented in Einführung in die Philosophie, is perhaps the volume of Stein’s lectures on philosophical anthropology given in 1932, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, for it relies least on the conceptual framework of ancient or medieval times. From those and other middle period works (Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften, Einführung in die Philosophie or Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person) one might extract the originally Steinian philosophy that at different stages underwent a confrontation with ancient and medieval conceptions, resulting in an influx of ancient and medieval terminology into a philosophy that remained at its core consistent with the original intuitions.

Potenz und Akt was the first large work designed by Stein to formulate a coming together of Thomistic philosophy and phenomenology. If confronted with this work and Stein’s magnum opus, Endliches und ewiges Sein, one can hardly differentiate between what is originally Steinian and what is the influx of the notions and ideas stemming from different philosophical traditions. If, however, read in light of the earlier phenomenological volumes, these volumes clearly comprise the merging of the prior phenomenology and the adapted form of either ancient or medieval philosophical conceptions and distinctions. Thus, in my analyses, I treat the middle period of Stein’s intellectual development (from ca. 1918 until the early 1930s) as the most insightful into the originally Steinian conceptions and analyses, and the later works as a theoretical structure built upon the core worked out in the middle period. This core underwent further syntheses that, through the hermeneutical process of assimilation, led to the forming of Stein’s mature philosophy.

In regard to the problem of classifying Edith Stein as primarily a theologian and only secondarily a philosopher, I do not find any good reasons to formulate the claim that Stein was more of a theologian than a philosopher. I believe such a classification is an unfortunate result of the significant amount of attention Stein received from theological circles after her beatification, canonisation and establishment as a patroness of Europe. I briefly discuss this problem of reception at the end of Chapter Two. The early publication of Stein’s last work, Kreuzeswissenschaft, after WWII contributed to such a picture, one not at all deserved by Stein herself. In light of the full body of Stein’s work the claim that Stein is more of a theologian than a philosopher is unfounded. I, therefore, treat Edith Stein primarily as a philosopher, as do the majority of the scholars in Steinian research all over the world these days.

2The Current State of Research

The current state of research concerning Stein’s philosophical anthropology is of great relevance to all the parts of this study, the expository historical part being prime among them. In particular, chapters Two and Three, which lay out the network of anthropological concepts employed by Stein throughout her lifelong philosophical and theological reflection, are guided by the relevant commentaries available from current Steinian scholarship. The commentaries on Stein’s philosophy are plentiful today, especially in English, German, Polish and Spanish, and not just a few of them touch on the already mentioned problem of Stein’s early reception.

Having researched them, I have decided not to follow a relatively popular trend among commentators to intertwine the discussion of Stein’s philosophy with biographical remarks. Edith Stein’s life is well-documented and volumes have been written in both scientific and popularising style about it – they are plentiful today. Even though there is a deep connection between Stein’s life and her writing, I abstain from arguing from the perspective of the author’s life in my presentation of her philosophy, focusing on the conceptual relations between the ideas.

This does not mean that I abstract from the historical, social and cultural background of the writing of those works. Any concrete linguistic formulation is necessarily embedded in a particular time and the language it was formulated in. There is a fine line, however, between this hermeneutic principle of contextualisation and a tendency to psychologise one’s interpretation. Where concepts and ideas refer to one another and the personal history of the author is irrelevant to their understanding, I focus on the conceptual interrelations, rather than personal history.

Even though broad and well-developed, the state of research on Stein’s philosophy is lacking in some aspects. For instance, the issue of human dignity in Stein’s writings has not yet been fully explored. With the very notable exception of M. Lebech’s studies and her grand work, On the Problem of Human Dignity: A Hermeneutical and Phenomenological Investigation,76 the topic of the Steinian approach to human dignity has only been drafted in a number of articles,77 which do not offer a book-length investigation into the subject. On the one hand Stein’s philosophy is recognised as a significant voice in the 20th century debate over human personhood, on the other, the theme of human dignity, so closely linked to the problem of human personhood, is not fully developed.

Secondly, as already remarked in the introduction, Stein’s philosophy has been a subject of many comparative studies, yet there is not one that would do full justice to the relation of Stein’s philosophy to patristic and scholastic Christian philosophies. The present study is a humble attempt at filling in these two gaps lacking in the present scholarship.

3Symphilosophising with Edith Stein

One of the primary methods I employ in this study, especially in its later part, is a philosophical hermeneutical method of symphilosophising with the author of the texts I analyse. On one hand, I follow a careful hermeneutical method of interpreting the texts embedded in their original context and culture; on the other, I also seek to reveal the truth about the discussed subject matter. Therefore, the reader will find it common, especially in the later part of the study, that when the analysed material leaves significant gaps in the understanding of the problem or lacks the application to the contemporary example, I return ‘back to the things themselves’ and philosophise hand in hand with Edith Stein. This approach of symphilosophising with Edith Stein allows me to put forward a conception o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titelseite
• Impressum
• Dedication
• Inhaltsverzeichnis
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Methodology
• Chapter Two: An Outline of Anthropological Themes in Edith Stein’s Writings
• Chapter Three: The Network of Anthropological Concepts in Edith Stein’s Philosophy
• Chapter Four: The Human Person in Edith Stein’s Philosophy
• Chapter Five: Human Dignity and Value in Edith Stein’s Writings
• Chapter Six: Human Dignity in the Writings of the Church Fathers of the Doctors of the Church
• Chapter Seven: Human Dignity in Contemporary Magisterial Documents and the Functionality of the Steinian Model of Dignity
• Bibliography
• Index of Terms