Person in the World: Introduction to the Philosophy of Edith Stein

213 Pages·1997·5.755 MB·English

by  Mary Catharine Baseheart S.C.N. (auth.)

PERSON IN THE WORLD
CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY
IN COOPERATION WITH
THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY
Volume 27
Editor:
John Drummond, Mount Saint Mary's College
Editorial Board:
Elizabeth A. Behnke
David Carr, Emory University
Stephen Crowell, Rice University
Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University
J. Claude Evans, Washington University
Jose Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University
Joseph J. Kockelmans, The Pennsylvania State University
William R. McKenna, Miami University
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University
J. N. Mohanty, Temple University
Tom Nenon, The University of Memphis
Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitiit, Mainz
Elisabeth Stroker, Philosophisches Seminarium der Universitiit Koln
Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University
Scope
The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy
through creative research. Contemporary issues in philosophy, other disciplines and in
culture generally, offer opportunities for the application of phenomenological methods that
call for creative responses. Although the work of several generations of thinkers has
provided phenomenology with many results with which to approach these challenges, a truly
successful response to them will require building on this work with new analyses and
methodological innovations.
PERSON IN THE WORLD
Introduction to the Philosophy
of Edith Stein
by
MARY CATHARINE BASEHEART, S.C.N.t
Spalding University,
Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A.
EDITH STEIN CENTER
FOR STUDY AND RESEARCH
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-4825-7 ISBN 978-94-017-2566-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-2566-8
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permissic;m from the copyright owner.
A Note About the Publication
Before receiving word from Kluwer Academic Publishers that her
manuscript, Person in the World, the culmination of her scholarly life's
work, had been accepted for publication, Professor Mary Catherine
Baseheart, s.c.n., died on November 25, 1994, after a brief illness. In its
written content, the manuscript was completely finished. The Edith Stein
Center for Study and Research, which Professor Baseheart had founded at
Spalding University in 1990, was pleased and honored to carry out the final
preparations for publication. Although we are sure there are many people
whom Professor Baseheart would have named in acknowledgment, we do
not know how she would have listed them. Nor do we know to whom she
would have dedicated the book. However, there are some people whom the
Center would like to thank for their work in bringing the manuscript into
final form: David Garrison, for copy-editing; Lisa Leonard, for copy-editing
and the preparation of an Index of Names; Mary Evelyn Thomas, for word
processing; and Edwin Weber, for computer-formatting. Finally on
Professor Baseheart's behalf, it seems fitting to name her three life-long
commitments: the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Spalding University, and
the study of Edith Stein.
John R. Wilcox
Edith Stein Center for Study and Research
Spalding University
Louisville, Kentucky
December 16, 1996
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Chapter I Light in Darkness: Edith Stein's Life 1
Chapter II Overview of Her Philosophy 21
Chapter III The Human Person 30
Chapter IV Community and State 58
Chapter V Woman and Education 76
Chapter VI Essence and Existence 88
Chapter VII Intuition of Essence 102
Chapter VIII Finite and Eternal Being 110
Chapter IX Concluding Postscript 123
Appendix 129
Notes 145
Bibliography 181
Index of Names 203
Preface
Edith Stein has become almost a legend in recent years largely because
of her heroic personality and her death in Auschwitz at the hands of the
Nazis. She is known also as an eminent German-jewish-Christian
intellectual and feminist, but more in the realm of the sacred than of the
secular. Both are essential to understanding her. To know the real Edith
Stein one must have some knowledge of her as philosopher, for philosophy
was central to her very being.
For this reason the present work is designed to be of interest to the
general reader as well as to philosophers. Many of the latter have given
evidence of interest in Stein's phenomenology and may welcome an
introduction that gives clues to its substance and quality.
Those who knew Edith Stein personally and professionally--Edmund
Husser!, Roman lngarden, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Peter Wust, and other
friends at the universities of G6ttingen and Freiburg--affirm her genius and
her passionate pursuit of truth in philosophy. james Collins, distinguished
American historian of philosophy, who discovered some of her works about
the time she died, wrote that "we may expect critical studies on her
philosophy to multiply rapidly with the issuance of her collected works and
the recognition of her high philosophical genius."l The fact is that this has
not happened, although fourteen of her major works have been published
posthumously by Nauwelaerts and Herder, and many are available from
other sources.
This is not to say that her work has been ignored. Herbert Spiegelberg,
in his two-volume work, The Phenomenological Movement, has a brief but
respectful entry on Edith Stein and seven passing references to her
contributions to phenomenology in her collaboration with Husserl and in her
own independent work. He singles out for special mention "her brilliant
dissertation, her studies on psychical causation, on individual and
community, and on the state" as "especially noteworthy.,,2 A number of
individual articles have appeared in philosophical journals in this country
and in Europe and several books in Europe, but Stein's work has not been
studied thoroughly in its breadth and depth. Fragmented interpretations do
not do justice to it and sometimes result in distorted views. So, too, have
brief comments by several of her biographers, who have relied on opinions
of critics from disciplines other than philosophy, who seem to have read
only a few of the German texts of Stein's works. The lack of English
ix
x
translations and the difficulties of her German phenomenological
terminology have, no doubt, discouraged study of her philosophy.
The title, Person in the World, refers to Stein's person and to her
philosophy. Neither can be considered in isolation. The guideline that runs
through all her work is the inquiry into the question of the nature of the
human person. Beginning with her dissertation on empathy and following
through to the works of her maturity, the reader becomes aware of the thrust
toward revealing the person as person, in its universality, transcending time
and place and cultural milieu. Stein holds that phenomenology supplies the
most effective means toward arriving at knowledge of what it means to be a
person, and that phenomenological analysis can reveal the essential
constitution of human-being-in-the-world.
Stein is a philosopher of consciousness, but she is the antithesis of the
Enlightenment tendency to conceive consciousness as pure thought and the
subject as merely a thinking self, sufficient to itself. For her, consciousness
is turned to the world without as well as to the world within. The narrative
of Stein's experiencing, thinking self, as this book proposes to present it,
offers the possibility of revealing effectively the persona of this philosopher
of consciousness, whose life and thought are marked by encounter in and
with the world, not only with the Germany of her day, but also, through her
prodigious reading and study, with the Western world of thought and
experience down through the centuries, from the early Greeks to the time of
her death. Her work demonstrates how the facts of one's inner life can be
examined for metaphysical purposes without losing the reality of the extra
mental world.
The most striking characteristic of her investigations has been
mentioned above: her passionate pursuit of truth. Stein searched for
meaning, but she was not willing to settle for meaning only, without
constant reference to the actual "state-of-affairs." Perceptions had to be
checked and rechecked in order to arrive at the highest degree of objectivity
possible. It is clear, however, that Stein did not share unreservedly Husserl's
dream of absolute presuppositionlessness and apodictity. She examines
critically the extent and limits of certitude.
Her process of seeking knowledge was rooted in the perspectivist
character of phenomenological investigation: of looking at the object (thing,
person, idea, or whatever) from every possible angle in order to grasp that
which is essential to the object. In her investigations of the person, for
xi
example, in which the subject is also the object, the reader sees in action
Stein's own unique phenomenological approach to subjectivity,
intersubjectivity, and objectivity. In her analyses of the person's knowing
and feeling; of his/her drives, attitudes, and motivation; of will acts, both
immanent and transient, the person is revealed as an essentially valuing
being.
Phenomenologists, in many instances, have come to phenomenology
from the tradition, although Husserl, of course, attempted to wipe out his
knowledge of other systems and make a completely new beginning. Stein's
work shows what happens when phenomenology reaches back into the
tradition to broaden and illumine its vision through contact with the thought
of Plato and Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Scotus, to name only a few.
It is fascinating to follow the progressive evolution of her,synthesizing of
other worlds of thought with her contemporary world of thought and lived
experience.
Another interesting observation in the evolution of Stein's thought is its
movement beyond the limits of pure reason, to reason illumined by faith and
religious experience. In the course of this movement, she contributes fresh
insights into the polemic of "Christian philosophy." She invariably
distinguishes philosophy from theology and exemplifies it in practice by
having faith and theology take up where philosophy leaves off. The present
study will be confined to her philosophy.
My purpose in this book is to remove the wrapping and lid from the gift
that Edith Stein has given us and to say: "Look! See what is inside." In a
first attempt in English to do this in a comprehensive way, I have not
essayed a critique that might be an intrusion into the process of her
investigations, but I have indicated the need for ongoing study and critique.
In regard to my translations of passages from her work, the goal has
been clarity and fidelity to the content and style of the original German.
Edith Stein does not write philosophy in a smooth, literary style; she writes
in the style of German phenomenology, which is given to using German
terms which do not have precise English equivalents and compound words
which defy graceful rendering. Sentence structure is often awkward. I have
tried to render the English as readable as possible without sacrificing the
sense and sensibility of the original. Stein's own philosophy of translation
was that a translator should be like a pane of glass that simply lets the light
shine through.
xii
Stein's work is a rich lode of precious material that can be mined for its
relevance not only to phenomenology and metaphysics but also to practical
issues on the level of personal and societal life. In the current interest in
values, for example, her treatment of psycho-physical-spiritual-being has
much to offer on valuing as the essential activity that involves the whole
person--perceiving, imagining, feeling, and, specifically, thinking, loving,
and choosing. Her descriptive analyses put the reader in touch with hislher
own experience in a way that evokes awareness of self and values.
Although Edith Stein's approach to life and learning developed largely
in the Germany between World Wars I and II, she displays a hermeneutic
that transcends her own and other cultures. Her work may be studied as a
paradigm for a movement toward a valuable post-modem synthesis. It
invites a conversation that breaks barriers which separate time periods and
ideologies, and it seeks truth unremittingly whenever and wherever the
search may lead.
The scope of this book, as suggested above, is limited to exposition of
Stein's philosophy, with the object of opening it to critical studies, predicted
by James Collins, and revealing, as far as possible, her "high philosophical
genius," which he recognized. In the first two chapters, I will give a
developmental account of Stein's life and thought. Subsequent chapters will
present, as faithfully as possible, her progressive penetrating of pertinent
philosophic themes, beginning with person, community and state, woman
and education; proceeding to the metaphysics of essence, existence, and
knowledge; and culminating in the ascent to the knowledge of infinite being.
I frankly admit the difficulties of precise interpretation of her thought.
In many years of reading and research, I have come to know and love Edith
Stein as friend and scholar, and I have tried to avoid the fallacy of using her
philosophy as a "wax nose" (as one medieval philosopher expressed it) to be
turned in the direction that I might want it to tum. I have merely tried to
look in the direction she is looking and to see and understand what she sees
and understands. To what extent I have succeeded, time will tell. If this
book challenges others to explore Stein's writings in the future, it has served
a purpose.