Edith Stein

The domain of phenomenological investigation delineated by the Husserlian term authentic empathy presents us with an immediate tension. On the one hand, authentic empathy is supposed to grant the subject access (in some sense that remains to be fully specified) to the Other’s experience. On the other hand, foundational phenomenological considerations pertaining to the apprehension of a foreign subjectivity determine that it is precisely a disjunction in subjective processes that is constitutive of the Other being other. In my approach to (...) this problem, I seek, within the context of a reading of Edith Stein’s work On the Problem of Empathy, to clarify the place of ascription in authentic empathy, and to render more explicit a certain notion of “contiguity” that I take to be informing Stein’s understanding of the co-givenness of the Other’s mental life. I go on to argue that a resolution to the problem of empathy lies in the idea that the respective lived experiences of self and Other are, as a matter of descriptive fact, phenomenally connected by a relation of resemblance, and that, consonantly, the essential structure of authentic empathy is characterised in its mature phases by an homological relation to picture consciousness. (shrink)

Many genetic approaches in philosophy, psychology or sociology lead to a partially or fully deterministic understanding of the self and its position-taking. In this article, I argue that Husserl’s view of genesis differs broadly from such deterministic conceptions, as he investigates the genesis as the awakening of consciousness as consciousness or spirit as spirit. Husserl claims that the passive foundation of conscious life is the topsoil of activity and rational position-taking. But still the genetic process of the awakening of the (...) ego, far from being an automatism, demands a primary responsibility to proceed with the awakening itself. I discuss the issue of the responsibility of wakefulness in three interconnected ways. Drawing on Edith Stein, I first develop some theological implications to demonstrate how the paradox of responsibility points toward its divine ratio, because the unfounded givenness of responsibility links the awakening person to a phenomenological understanding of theosis: the more a person cultivates her responsibility the more she resembles the divine actus purus. In a second step, I show how the ethical implications of the responsibility of awakening connect it with the truth of will. The manifold obstacles that tend to undermine ethical love reveal a new level of both responsible position-taking and practical faith in the divine entelechy. Finally, the theological and ethical results motivate a social renewal, in which responsibility embraces the Other and longs for the communitization of the truth of wills. Clearly, the Husserlian view of genetic philosophy enables deep theological and ethical insights, that remain hidden from the method of static phenomenology and that are denied by most empirical genetic approaches. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Jewish-Catholic philosopher and Carmelite Edith Stein offers a rich notion of love, based on an original phenomenology, which resulted from an active engagement with her teachers Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, and was later enriched and deepened by incorporating religious philosophical and theological ideas. In order to locate Stein’s original thinking, the essay will first introduce the two thinkers by whom she was most clearly influenced, and show how Stein contrasted the ‘nothing’, as it is presented in Husserl’s other (...) pupil Martin Heidegger’s existentialist analysis, with the fullness of being to which the human person aspires, and which is given through love. Her phenomenological thinking, based on the intersubjective approach to its object, ultimately leads Stein to a triple philosophical statement about love: Love is a principle of being, a principle of knowledge and a principle of relationship. The passage through theology verifies what has been said philosophically about its relationship to God, in whom love ultimately finds its completion. The three basic principles of love complement and correct each other, to the point not only of issuing in an analysis of the phenomenon ‘love’ but of also opening up an ethics of love. (shrink)

The aim of the study is to find mystical elements in Edith Stein's anthropology as a connecting principle between phenomenology and Thomism. Relying on methodological definition of philosophical mystic, as a matching of theological and philosophical doctrines, based upon reflection on experience of ecstatic unity with the Absolute, it was shown that phenomenology is implicitly directed towards research of real structure of immediate experience which in all its limits approaches to mystical experience. Not the mind and not the faith, but (...) will is defining for the mystical character of Stein's creative method. Stein, being a bright representative of phenomenology, gradually disagrees with Husserl at some points: 1. Stein considers the world as an immediate contemplation on the entity that transcends the identity of being and thinking; 2. In her opinion, phenomenology neglects the ontological Absolute. As a result, there is misplace of the Absolute by structural-cognitive aims, that, in its turn, was a reason for amalgamation of onthology and epistemology, according to Stein's views. 3. Stein strives to overcome epistemological rationality and achieve a sphere of philosophical mystic where ontological object and epistemological subject are identical in the act of mystical contemplation. 4. Lack of metaphysical elements in phenomenology leads Stein to Thomism in which she potentially seeks a way out of metaphysical limits and the way which leads to the level of transpersonal states of mind. 5. Stein reproaches transcendentalism in loss of the world and she ignores the changes in Husserl's world outlook, his transcendental turn and genealogy of the trustworthy acquaintance with the world. An empathy, as a model of extrapolation of the principle onto mystical act of overcoming of subject-object opposition of transpersonal content and an intuition, as a movement inside the self, an ability to complete an integral image refusing the subjectivity and bringing back generic, spiritual subject, are considered to be key-constructs of the Edith Stein's evolutionary views development on her way to philosophical mystic. At the same time, mystical does not drop out of the phenomenological series but fills it with new existential meaning. The novelty of the study is in its showing up the productive meaning of philosophical mystics in the creativity of Edith Stein, who enriched contemporary anthropology by metahistorical content of moral and existential meaning on the basis of synthesis of philosophy of mind and Thomistic metaphysics. (shrink)

Resumen El presente estudio investiga la importancia de la “experiencia originaria” husserliana para la comprensión del conflicto de las ciencias exactas con el problema de Dios, que Edith Stein califica de “angustia inconsciente de encontrarse” con Él. A través de su controversia con la Psicología del siglo XIX, la discípula de Husserl muestra en su obra Causalidad Psíquica que hace falta un adecuado conocimiento de la índole propia de la ciencia para remontar con rigor metódico a la originariedad de la (...) experiencia humana y el Dios presente allí. Esto conducirá a la ciencia al descubrimiento de su propia identidad por la superación del bloqueo consciente o inconsciente ante la revelación de Dios en el alma humana. De ahí que el presente estudio ofrezca un aporte relevante para la dilucidación filosófica de una cuestión teológica candente hoy ―aporte logrado a través de un esfuerzo interdisciplinario arduo.The present study investigates the importance of the Husserlian “originary experience” for the understanding of the conflict of the exacts sciences with the problem of God, which Edith Stein describes as “unconscious anguish of being” with Him. Through her controversy with of the 19th century Psychology, the disciple of Husserl shows in her work Psychic Causality that it is necessary to have an adequate knowledge of the nature of science to trace with methodical rigor the originarity of the human experience and the God present in there. This will conduct science to a discovery of its own proper identity by the overcoming of the unconscious or conscious blocking before the revelation of God in the human soul Hence, the present study offers a relevant contribution to the philosophical elucidation of a burning theological question today -a contribution achieved through an arduous interdisciplinary effort. (shrink)

This paper reviews the concept of ‘essence’ in Edmund Husserl and Thomas Aquinas as found presented by Edith Stein in her Festschrift article, ‘Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas: Attempt at a Comparison,’ in the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung (1929, 370). The aim of the paper is to perform an analysis of Stein’s understanding of the principal similarities and differences in the understandings of essence found in the writings of Husserl and Aquinas, and primarily in (...) terms of the immediacy of the intuition or cognition of essences. I begin by a basic analysis of this commonality and difference with a focus on the interweaving of the following themes: essence and existence; essence and sensual knowledge; essence and its objective ground; essence as intuited, as actively acquired and as passively received; insight into essence, immediate and mediate knowledge. Despite certain misunderstanding arising between the phenomenological movement and the scholastic tradition in this sphere, Stein recognises a number of points of agreement, namely, 1) the beginnings of all knowledge in sense experience, 2) the intellectual ‘work’ (erarbeiten) that is required to achieve a clear vision of essences, and 3) the finally passive nature of the act of understanding. I critically analyse each of these enumerated points of agreement towards clarifying how Stein conceives of the possibility of using the phenomenological method for achieving an understanding of essences coherent with a Thomistic metaphysical worldview, and how she parses and explains the further disagreements over the question of the mediacy or immediacy of human knowledge of essences of different kinds. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to deal with E. Husserl’s and E. Stein’s analyses on the anthropological and metaphysical questions. To perform this task it is necessary to explain the meaning of the phenomenological method, first of all in Husserl and then in E. Stein, underscoring the novelty of their approach to the knowledge of human being, world and God. The essay is divided in four parts; two are dedicated to Husserl’s and Stein’s investigation on the human being and (...) two to their development of metaphysical themes. Regarding the first topic we discover a significant connection between the two thinkers, regarding the second one we notice that it is possible to find a metaphysical approach to reality even in Husserl and an original development of the theme in Stein’s analysis linked up with the medieval philosophy and theology. (shrink)

Basing itself on Edith Stein's research into philosophy of psychology and the humanities, this article focuses particularly on discussions of the theory of association. Stein's approach, rooted in Husserlian phenomenological perspective, seems to represent a significant contribution to the establish of an intellectual framework for the exploration of the philosophy of consciousness, and also seems helpful for inquiries into the issue pf practical know-how pertaining to remembering things, as well as the use of schemata in intellectual activity generally.

In order to clarify the relationship among phenomenology, ontology and metaphysics I analyze Husserl’s and Thomas Aquinas’ influence on Edith Stein’s inquiry. One can discover that she succeeds in establishing a link between the phenomenological essential description of reality and the metaphysical one, particularly regarding the problem of ontology and the research on the human being, giving at last her personal and original contribution to these philosophical questions.

The aim of the study is to find mystical elements in Edith Stein's anthropology as a connecting principle between phenomenology and Thomism. Relying on methodological definition of philosophical mystic, as a matching of theological and philosophical doctrines, based upon reflection on experience of ecstatic unity with the Absolute, it was shown that phenomenology is implicitly directed towards research of real structure of immediate experience which in all its limits approaches to mystical experience. Not the mind and not the faith, but (...) will is defining for the mystical character of Stein's creative method. Stein, being a bright representative of phenomenology, gradually disagrees with Husserl at some points: 1. Stein considers the world as an immediate contemplation on the entity that transcends the identity of being and thinking; 2. In her opinion, phenomenology neglects the ontological Absolute. As a result, there is misplace of the Absolute by structural-cognitive aims, that, in its turn, was a reason for amalgamation of onthology and epistemology, according to Stein's views. 3. Stein strives to overcome epistemological rationality and achieve a sphere of philosophical mystic where ontological object and epistemological subject are identical in the act of mystical contemplation. 4. Lack of metaphysical elements in phenomenology leads Stein to Thomism in which she potentially seeks a way out of metaphysical limits and the way which leads to the level of transpersonal states of mind. 5. Stein reproaches transcendentalism in loss of the world and she ignores the changes in Husserl's world outlook, his transcendental turn and genealogy of the trustworthy acquaintance with the world. An empathy, as a model of extrapolation of the principle onto mystical act of overcoming of subject-object opposition of transpersonal content and an intuition, as a movement inside the self, an ability to complete an integral image refusing the subjectivity and bringing back generic, spiritual subject, are considered to be key-constructs of the Edith Stein's evolutionary views development on her way to philosophical mystic. At the same time, mystical does not drop out of the phenomenological series but fills it with new existential meaning. The novelty of the study is in its showing up the productive meaning of philosophical mystics in the creativity of Edith Stein, who enriched contemporary anthropology by metahistorical content of moral and existential meaning on the basis of synthesis of philosophy of mind and Thomistic metaphysics. (shrink)

Games Studies reveals the performative nature of playing a character in a virtual-game-world (Nitsche 2008, p.205; Pearce 2006, p.1; Taylor 2002, p.48). Tbe Player/Character relationship is typically understood in terms of the player’s in-game “presence” (Boellstorff 2008, p.89; Schroeder 2002, p.6). This gives the appearance that living-into a game-world is an all-or- nothing affair: either the player is “present” in the game-world, or they are not. I argue that, in fact, a constitutive phenomenology reveals the Player/Character relationship to be a (...) multi-dimensional matter of empathy. I advance a broadly Schutzian framework, drawing on his 1932 discussions of “face-to-face encounters” and ”historical predecessors,” showing how at- tention to empathy reveals a variety of “presences” that different kinds of Player/Character relationships afford. The central determinants of empathetic affordances which I focus on here are (i) how much players know about a character (especially the character’s past) and (ii) how players learn this information.The purpose of this discussion will be to show that a phenomenological analysis reveals that the relationship between a player and their character is complex, highly variable, and inherently social. Furthermore, it will add to the growing body of scholarship that demonstrates that video games are rich social objects deserving of study. (shrink)

In recent years, some simulation theorists have claimed that the discovery of mirror neurons provides empirical support for the position that mind reading is, at some basic level, simulation. The purpose of this essay is to question that claim. I begin by providing brief context for the current mind reading debate and then developing an influential simulationist account of mind reading. I then draw on the works of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein to develop an alternative, phenomenological account. In conclusion, (...) I offer multiple objections against simulation theory and argue that the empirical evidence mirror neurons offer us does not necessarily support the view that empathy is simulation. (shrink)

My aim in this essay is to show that Edith Stein’s influence on Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception is predominantly through her early work On the Problem of Empathy. Though he does not give Stein due acknowledgement, Merleau-Ponty is closer to her philosophically than to her near contemporary Max Scheler, who receives much more attention. Whilst Stein’s influence is in the main difficult to disentangle from that of Husserl, some of her reformulations of and additions to the latter’s ideas are (...) taken up recognisably in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment. I focus on her accounts of bodily ownership and embodied willing and acting, and on her view of how the ownness of conscious human life is a condition of explicit self-awareness and empathic experience. I conclude by showing how her contributions are developed further by Merleau-Ponty, most notably in his reworking of the representation, decision and implementation model of human action. (shrink)

In everyday language, we readily attribute experiences to groups. For example, 1 might say, “Spain celebrated winning the European Cup” or “The uncovering of corruption caused the union to think long and hard about its internal structure.” In each case, the attribution makes sense. However, it is quite difficult to give a nonreductive account of precisely what these statements mean because in each case a mental state is ascribed to a group, and it is not obvious that groups can have (...) mental states. In this article, I do not offer an explicit theory of collective experience. Instead, I draw on phenomenological analyses and empirical data in order to provide general conditions that a more specific theory of collective experience must meet in order to be coherent. (shrink)

It is commonplace to speak of social groups as if they were capable of the same sorts of activities as individuals. We say, “Germany won the World Cup”; “The United States invaded Iraq”; and “The world mourned the passing of Nelson Mandela”. In so doing, we attribute agency, belief, and emotional states to groups themselves. In recent years, much literature devoted to analyzing such statements and their implications has emerged. Within this literature, the issue of “intentionalism,” whether individuals must have (...) a certain self-conception in order to constitute a collectivity, has received surprisingly little attention. While Paul Sheehy has criticized this view, claiming that individuals may be related in such a way as to constitute a collective without their realizing it :377–394, 2002), little other scholarship on the topic exists. The purpose of this article is to contribute to this debate. I will argue, drawing on Edith Stein’s phenomenology of social groups, that intentionalism, as Margaret Gilbert defines it, is false. I begin by establishing Gilbert’s account, Sheehy’s criticism of intentionalism, and what I take to be its shortcomings. I then explicate Stein’s phenomenology of collectives and argue that plural subjects who do not meet intentionalist requirements can exist. Given this, intentionalism must be rejected. Because the intentionalism debate presupposes that there are irreducibly social agents, I do not argue for this claim. (shrink)

What is a society? What is political power? John Searle claims that previous political philosophers not only neglected these fundamental questions but also lacked the means to effectively address them. Good answers, he thinks, depend on theories of speech acts, intentionality, and constitutive rules first developed by analytic philosophers. But Searle is mistaken. Early phenomenologists had already developed the requisite theories. Reinach’s philosophy of law includes a theory of speech acts. This theory is based on Husserl’s account of intentionality. Edith (...) Stein extended that account by offering a detailed description of collective intentionality. And it was Stein who brought these strands of early phenomenological research together to address the very questions of political philosophy Searle regards as both fundamental and neglected. In this paper, I recount Stein’s answers to these questions and argue that they compare favourably withthose of Searle. (shrink)

In the study of the soul between psychology and phenomenology in Edith Stein works it becomes clearer that it is only phenomenology that really comes to gripswith the question of psychic causality by correlating the two moments and it is therefore only phenomenology that can respond to Hume’s objections while yetremaining on his selfsame terrain. It is very important to distinguish between psychology and phenomenology and also to clarify the relationship between psyche and consciousness; there is thus reproposed the distinction (...) already made by Husserl, who stressed that when one sets out to look for the causes that determine psychic life, they must not be sought in life feelings but rather in the „modes” of a life force that is announced in them. All this is indicated here within limits because psychology in itself is undoubtedly not a science of the spirit, though the psychic states, on the other hand, will not be validly understood unless and until one arrives, as is demonstrated in the essay under consideration, at the motivation and therefore the spiritual sphere. We would say that our body is animated by a psyche and further enlivened by the spirit. (shrink)

Edith Stein’s early phenomenological texts describe community as a special unity that is fully lived through in consciousness. In her later works, unity is described in more theological terms as participation in the communal fullness and wholeness of God or Being. Can these two accounts of community or human belonging be reconciled? I argue that consciousness can bring to the fore the meaning of community, thereby conditioning our lived-experience of community, but it can also, through Heideggerian questioning, uncover that which (...) remains somewhat hidden from consciousness itself: its own ground or condition of possibility, namely, being—a being that is both one and many, unified, communalised, and very diversified. If my reading of Stein is correct, the traditional understanding of the split between Stein’s strictly Husserlian/phenomenological period and her later Christian philosophical period must be renegotiated, at least when it comes to the philosophical problem of community or human togetherness. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to analyze the way in which Edith Stein describes the human subject throughout her research, including her phenomenological phaseand the period of her Christian philosophy. In order to do this, I trace essential moments in Husserl’s philosophy, showing both Stein’s reliance upon Husserl andher originality. Both thinkers believe that an analysis of the human being can be carried out by examining consciousness and its lived experiences. Through suchan examination Stein arrives at the same conclusion (...) as Husserl, namely, that the human subject is formed of body, psyche, and spirit. Stein’s originalityconsists in a further development of the complexity of the human being. She maps this out, providing detailed analyses of the I, the soul, the spirit, and, ultimately,the person. She makes use of medieval philosophical anthropology, including that of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo. (shrink)

Phenomenology, understood as a philosophy of immanence, has had an ambiguous, uneasy relationship with transcendence, with the wholly other, with the numinous. If phenomenology restricts its evidence to givenness and to what has phenomenality, what becomes of that which is withheld or cannot in principle come to givenness? In this paper I examine attempts to acknowledge the transcendent in the writings of two phenomenologists, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein, and also consider the influence of the existentialist Karl Jaspers, who made (...) transcendence an explicit theme of his writing. I argue that Husserl does recognize the essential experience of transcendence within immanence; even the idea of a physical thinghas “dimensions of infinity” included within it. Similarly, he asserts profoundly that every “outside” is what it is only as understood from the inside. Jaspers toomakes the experience of transcendence central to human existence; it is the very measure of my own depth. For Edith Stein, everything temporal points towardthe timeless structural ground which makes it what it is. Transcendence is an intrinsic part of being itself. Furthermore, the very lack of self-sufficiency of my own self shows that the self requires a ground outside itself, in the transcendent. There is strong convergence between the three thinkers studied on the concept of transcendence, which is indeed a central, if largely unacknowledged, concept in phenomenology both in Husserl and his followers, but also, throughJaspers, in Heidegger. (shrink)

The new critical edition of Stein’s lectures on philosophical and theological anthropology makes it possible to research further her theory of the person as developed during her middle period in Munster, that is, between 1932 and 1933. Her project revolves around the anthropological foundations of a Catholicpedagogy. Th is phase of her work is marked by various debates. On one hand, she attempts to bring the intellectual legacy of Husserl and phenomenology intodialogue with Thomas Aquinas and other Scholastic thinkers. On (...) the other hand, she confronts the ideas and spirit of National Socialism with her Catholic faith.Stein’s Munster phenomenological method contrasts with Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology; she develops an “eidetic psychology within a universal ontology.” In her “somatological” anthropology, the human being appears as a unity of lived body, soul, and mind. As a person, the human being is investigated as species, double species, individual, as having a communal essence, and, ultimately, as a seeker of God. Stein examines the freedom of human beings, which lies between the givens of nature and grace, as well as the tension between knowledge and faith. In the final section of this paper, I discuss Stein’s position over against contemporary deconstructivist feminism. (shrink)

Within the phenomenological tradition, one frequently finds the bold claim that interpersonal understanding is rooted in a sui generis form of intentional experience, most commonly labeled empathy (Einfühlung). The following paper explores this claim, emphasizing its distinctive character, and examining the phenomenological considerations offered in its defense by two of its main proponents, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein. After offering in section 2 some preliminary indications of how empathy should be understood, I then turn to some characterizations of its distinctive (...) structure, considering, in section 3, the Husserlian claim that certain forms of empathy are perceptual in nature, and in section 4, Stein’s insistence that empathetic experience frequently involves explicating the other’s own intentional experiences. Section 5 concludes by assessing the extent to which their analyses lead support to a conception of empathy as an intuitive experience of other minds. (shrink)