Ari Marcelo Solon

This article presents a paradox in the thought of Edith Stein betweenher attitudes in relation to the state/law problem and her vision ofreligion. I seek to explain the paradox through the study of the Theoryof the State and Sovereignty. In this regard, basing herself onclassical authors, Edith Stein disagrees with the great jurists of hertime who did not always recognise the priority of the concept ofsovereignty. The examination of the relationship between the State andlaw breaks new ground within her phenomenological position, by, on theone hand, defending a strong concept of sovereignty of the State seen asa legal a priori while on the other hand stating that the State doesn'trelate to spiritual values. This leads us to propose a particular viewof the semiotic processes relevant to the relation between law/stateand religion, illuminating the semantic-pragmatic factors which promptedStein towards the above contradiction.

Religion is increasingly a social and political factor in post-modern societies nowadays and the question of the role of religion in the public sphere is more and more brought to the fore: a challenge to legal philosophers. Should religion be only a private affair, or should the public dimension of religion be more acknowledged? Do we have to interpret the freedom of religion and the separation of church and state in a strict (laicist) sense, or do we have to allow for a more benevolent relation between religion and the state? This collection of essays explores these questions in various and new ways.