Antonio Calcagno

This article seeks to advance a way of being in the world of the hu-man person that encompasses both the truest sense of freedom of choice and its result, namely, happiness. Starting from the proposal of a relational ethics in Stein I intend to show how, in the authentic relationship through Einfühlung, it is possible to arrive at the “revelation” of what is deeper in ourselves, i.e., the personal core that characterizes us as unique and unrepeatable entities. The growth and development of our personalities occurs coherently with who we are. But the “choice” to adhere to the authenticity of a deep self is a choice of freedom that also leads one to harmony, to the acceptance of one’s finitude and weaknesses, and thus to living well with who one “really” is. This result coincides with being happy.

This paper explores the question of the meaning of life, not only from the perspective of its temporal unfolding from birth to death but also from the perspective of its own particular meaning and its final cause, to use Aristotelian categories. In order to discuss this argument I refer myself to Edith Stein to show how crucial moments of her own life give rise to important and de????ining philosophical positions that touch upon questions of personal identity, social and communal relations, and a relationship with God.

Edith Stein came to phenomenology after beginning her university studies in psychology. She struggled with the inability of psychology to justify and delineate its founding principles. She found in Edmund Husserl, though his sustained criticisms of psychologism, the possibility of a phenomenological ground for psychology. This article demonstrates how Stein, drawing from but also distancing herself from Husserl, justifies the possibility of a phenomenological psychology framed within a personalist structure of subjectivity and sociality.

Gerda Walther identifies the possibility of we-communities that are non-intentional and have no intentional object. What is expressed, shared, communicated, and understood between lovers need not necessarily manifest itself in an objective, social, or communal form, as is the case, for example, in a political party. I argue that this non-intentional we can be experienced at the level of habit or affect, a level that is lived but which is not fully grasped in terms of the consciousness of meaning and the relation between meaning fulfillment and meaning intention.

Jean-Luc Marion claims that God must no longer be thought of in terms of the traditional metaphysical category of Being, for that reduces God to an all too human concept which he calls "Dieu." God must be conceived outside of the ontological difference and outside of the question of Being itself. Marion urges us to think of God as love. We wish to challenge Marion’s claim of the necessity to move au-delà de l’être by arguing that Marion presents a very limited understanding of Being: he interprets the Being of God as causa sui. The thought of Edith Stein will be employed in order to bring out a fuller sense of the metaphysical notion of the Being of God. Stein offers us a rich backdrop against which we can interpret more traditional readings of God as Being, thereby challenging Marion’s claim of the caducity of Being.

This book explores the philosophical writings of Gerda Walther. It features essays that recover large parts of Walther’s oeuvre in order to show her contribution to phenomenology and philosophy. In addition, the volume contains English translations of her key work. The essays consider the interdisciplinary implications of Gerda Walther’s ideas for sociology, political science, psychology, women’s and gender studies, and religious studies. A student of Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, and Alexander Pfänder, she wrote foundational studies on the ego, community, mysticism and religion, and consciousness. Walther’s discussion of empathy, identification, the ego and ego-consciousness, alterity, God, mysticism, sensation, intentionality, sociality, politics, and woman is relevant not only to phenomenology and philosophy but also to scholars of religion, sociology, political science, and psychology. Gerda Walther was one of the important figures of the early phenomenological movement. However, as a woman, she could not habilitate at a German University and was, therefore, denied a position. Her complete works have yet to be published. This ground-breaking volume not only helps readers discover a vital voice. It also demonstrates the significant contribution of women to the early phenomenological movement.

In this chapter, I discuss the impact and legacy of Edith Stein’s philosophy in Canada and the United States. I identify three waves of reception of Stein’s philosophical work since her untimely death in 1942. The first phase we can refer to as the “Preservation of Edith Stein’s Legacy.” The second phase consists of a dissemination of her work and the third, more contemporary phase revolves around new scholarship and applications of her thought to various philosophical and social-political questions. Deeply structured and conditioned by Protestant sensibilities, Canada and the United States have divided Stein’s philosophical legacy along two lines: phenomenology and Christian philosophy.

Edith Stein and Gerda Walther explain how community comes to be and how it is structured, but they do not develop significant accounts of how communities disintegrate or die, albeit they make passing allusions to how this may happen. I argue that what makes communities vulnerable to their possible demise, following both Stein’s and Walther’s social ontology, is the breakdown of the sense of the communal bond, that is, the failure of the community members’ ability to make sense of their relationship to one another. Just as sense-making and sense-building can help give birth and meaning to communities, sense disintegration and the dying of the sense of a community bespeak a vulnerability that lies at the very core of all communities. In addition to the vulnerability of sense-making, I argue that the lived-body and habit also pose important challenges to the very possibility of community.

The phenomenological movement originates with Edmund Husserl, and two of his young students and collaborators, Edith Stein and Hedwig Conrad-Martius, made a notable contribution to the very delineation of the phenomenological method, which pushed phenomenology in a “realistic” direction. This essay seeks to examine the decisive influence that these two thinkers had on two specific areas: the value of the sciences and certain metaphysical questions. Concerningthe former, I maintain that Stein, departing from a philosophical, phenomenological analysis of the human being, is interested particularly in the formation of the cognitive value of the human sciences. Regarding the latter, Conrad-Martius, given her knowledge of biology, tackled the question of the role and meaning of the sciences of nature. The second question, related to metaphysical themes, became a specific and relevant object of research for both women phenomenologists.It will be investigated by comparing two works, one by each thinker, namely, the Metaphysische Gespräche by Conrad-Martius and Potenz und Akt by Edith Stein.

Thomas Langan's latest work, Being and Truth, sets as its object of inquiry the possibility of a genuine and meaningful intersubjectivity wherein both self and other come fully to nurture one another. The very condition for the possibility of such a significant onto-poetic relation is grounded and intertwined within a metaphysical Fundierung of Being illumined by Truth. In order to answer the aforementioned philosophical question, Langan maintains that the philosophical question must be cast as an ontological question. In other words, the key to understanding and responding to the possibility of a genuine intersubjective relationship where both self and other come to fully interact with one another lies within the framework of a serious attempt to comprehend reflectively the constitutive dynamic between being, esse and Sein. Central to a genuine understanding and "holy" living out of self, other and the communal relationship which exists between the two is responsibility--the ability to respond to the exigencies and gifts of being. Hence, the need for our question to be cast in an ontological light.